Giants beat Mariners in amusing fashion, 4-3

The Giants beat the Seattle Mariners tonight, 4-3. The game felt an awful lot like a metaphor for the 2018 season and its never-ending dance with .500. The Giants would take the lead, then give it right back a half inning later, rinse, repeat. Had the Giants lost this game, they would have been back at .500 on the season. Thankfully, however, that was not to be as the Giants were able to close it out when it mattered, which will perhaps continue to be a metaphor for the rest of the season. But I’m not going to hold my breath.

It was a wild night. The Giants’ starter, Andrew Suárez went five and two thirds innings, getting only one strike out, issuing two walks and giving up three earned runs on eight hits, including a solo home run to Guillermo Heredia that tied the game after the Giants took an early lead in the third.

Suárez later got into a jam in the fourth inning, after the Giants had again taken the lead in the top of the inning, but managed to get out of it with only one run scoring. This was thanks to stellar defensive plays behind him, especially this rocket of a throw from Austin Slater to throw out Kyle Seager at home.

(As always, pictures and videos are stripped out by Apple News, so make sure to open this in another browser to see these!)

He was replaced by Reyes Moronta in the sixth inning with two outs after walking Denard Span. Moronta walked his first batter and allowed a single that scored Span to re-tie the game after the Giants had yet again taken the lead in the top of the inning.

Thankfully, the merry trio of Dyson, Watson and Smith came in and shut the Mariners down with four strike outs between them, no hits and no walks.

Sam Dyson, in particular, had a particularly memorable appearance, as he went one pitch shy of an immaculate inning. After striking out Jean Segura and Mitch Haniger, he had an 0-2 count against Nelson Cruz, but settled instead for a ground out to third base.

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You’ll notice I left out all details of the Giants offense in the first half of this recap. If you missed the game, I dare you to name the three heroes of tonight’s game.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

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That’s right, Kelby Tomlinson, Hunter Pence and Pablo Sandoval were the heroes tonight, just like you guessed.

Tomlinson, who I honestly didn’t realize was back with the team, smoked a triple in the third inning and was knocked in by a single from Chase d’Arnaud. Tomlinson came up big again in the fourth inning, hitting a single up the middle to score Brandon Crawford. This came in a particularly good eight-pitch battle with Roenis Elias, who wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight, and somehow thought throwing the fastball hitter nothing but fastballs was a good idea. This ended his night.

Hunter Pence got another hero moment tonight as well, hitting his first home run of the year. And it wasn’t a cheap one either. Pence, who had gone 140 at-bats without leaving the yard, hit this one 445 feet to left field, the Giants’ third longest home run of the season behind Mac Williamson (464 feet) and Pablo Sandoval (447 feet).

Of course, as mentioned before, this game was very much a “take a penny, leave a penny” game and the Giants immediately gave that run back.

Enter Pablo Sandoval.

With two outs in the top of the ninth and Steven Duggar on second, Sandoval hit an infield single towards second base. Meanwhile, the Mariners’ second baseman Dee Gordon was...in the outfield grass. Sandoval ran out the play just as Gordon’s throw to Ryan Healy went wide, spinning towards the dugout and allowing Duggar to score easily to give the Giants their final lead of the night.

Steven Duggar could not believe it as he rounded towards home. His face is all of us after this game:

The Giants did, however, manage to win this game and it was ultimately a lot of fun and not at all extremely frustrating watching the Giants strand runner after runner, needing 11 hits to score four runs.

/takes sip of coffee while the offense burns runners in scoring position left and right

This is fine.

But hey! The important thing is that they won, and they won in nine innings. They very easily could have gone for their third extra-inning game in a row, or been like the Dodgers who lost in 16 innings tonight. So really, this IS fine, and I will happily take it. It’s all about perspective.