The San Francisco Giants offense broke out in a major way in Monday night’s game vs. the Colorado Rockies. The team recorded 12 runs off of 12 hits, both season highs for the Giants. It’s hard to imagine the Giants offense being overshadowed after scoring twelve runs, but Anthony DeSclafani was firing on all cylinders throwing a complete-game shutout. The Giants are now 9-2 at home and share a three-way tie for the best record in MLB with the Oakland A’s and Los Angeles Dodgers at 15-8.
At the end of the second inning, the Giants had scored nine runs. Visions of September 1st, 2020 began swirling around in the minds of Giants fans. On this date, the Giants offense scored 23 runs off 27 hits vs., you guessed it, the Colorado Rockies. This explosion of offense which could rightfully be described as “The Mile High Massacre,” was the first time the Giants had scored 23+ runs since 1990.
Every batter that stepped to the plate wearing a Giants uniform aside from DeSclafani got on base at least once in the victory. DeSclafani, who had an 0-4 night, couldn’t join in on the fun, at least not at the plate. The Giants have not scored many runs this year. And last night’s offensive explosion was something fans have been anticipating for a month now. Even more impressively, they were able to put up these numbers without star outfielder Mike Yastrzemski in the lineup, who is out due to injury.
Buster Posey Leads Giants Offense
It’s about time backup catcher Curt Casali let Buster Posey join the shutout party. Casali, who had caught five consecutive shutouts on the year combined with Posey’s shutout last night, equal six on the month. You probably didn’t need help with that math there, but six shutouts in a month are significant–significant because the Giants have had six shutouts in one month just twice since 1950.
Along with catching a shutout, Posey also went 4-5 at the plate. The Rockies collectively had three hits. This is the eighth time in Posey’s career that he has caught a shutout while recording more hits than the opposing team. This mark is the most by any catcher in the modern era. In the sixth inning, Posey clobbered a fastball over the center-field wall. This homer was good for Posey’s second and third RBI of the game. His first was recorded on a double in the first inning. Posey’s 4-5 night raised his batting average to .327 and his home run total to five. Five home runs in the month of April match Posey’s home run total from all of 2018, 105 games.
Along with Posey’s big night, Evan Longoria was another big part of the Giants offense. Longoria having success at the plate was a great sight. He hasn’t played since leaving Friday’s game with hamstring tightness and went 2-2 with three RBI. Longoria is now batting .389 at home and a whopping .556 against lefties. It doesn’t appear the hamstring is slowing Longoria down, at least not at the plate. He was removed from yesterday’s game in favor of Jason Vosler. Manager Gabe Kapler said post-game that Longoria is fine. He wants to ease him back into action slowly, and he would have removed him no matter what the game’s score was.
Disco Anthony DeSclafani Dominates
It took only one inning to see that DeSclafani had his good stuff last night. “Disco,” as his teammates call him, struck out the side in the first inning. He would end his night with nine total strikeouts on 100 pitches. The complete-game shutout was the second of DeSclafani’s big-league career.
DeSclafani now holds a 1.50 ERA, tied for fourth-best in the majors. A far cry from his disastrous 7.22 ERA in 2020, DeSclafani has given a lot of praise to the Giants and their coaching staff. He had this to say after last night’s game,
“I think a lot of it is giving the Giants credit with the whole pitch design thing. Kind of getting my fastball back to what it was in 2019, helping me get my slider shape back to what it was in 2019. I think the credit goes to them for recognizing maybe what went wrong last year and helping me fix those things.”
DeSclafani deserves a lot of credit here too. At what point does a pitcher start to gamble? It is not that a pitcher would start to take it easy, but with a nine-run lead, as DeSclafani had, pitchers tend to get more aggressive and are willing to take more risks with their pitch selection. This, however, was not the case for DeSclafani. After the game, Buster Posey had this to say
“It’s just important to not deviate from the gameplan, and not pitch any differently than if it was a tight game, and I think he did that”
“Main Photo”
Embed from Getty Images
Players Mentioned:
Anthony DeSclafani, Mike Yastrzemski, Curt Casali, Buster Posey, Evan Longoria, Jason Vosler,
