In 1st game back, Williamson homers to spark Giants.
ANAHEIM — Poor Nick Hundley. After hitting a career’s worth of hard outs to start the season, he finally crushed one over the fence in right-center to give the Giants a lead on their way to an 8-1 victory Friday night.
That shot off Angels lefthander Andrew Heaney will be remembered by no one but Hundley’s kin because of the unreal two-run homer that Mac Williamson hit three innings later in his second bigleague at-bat this season.
With nobody out in the fifth inning, Williamson hit a line drive that kept rising and carrying until it landed 434 feet away from the plate — to the opposite field. At 114.2 mph it was the hardest-hit ball by a Giant this season.
“Hundley’s was awesome, but Mac’s was really awesome,
what he did to the dugout there,” right-hander Jeff Samardzija said after he benefited from a rare largesse of run support to win his 2018 debut.
Williamson arrived from Triple-A, where he hit six homers in 39 at-bats, joined a team that was starved for runs and declared, “I’m definitely not a savior.”
But nobody can deny that Williamson provided a necessary jolt with a home run that had tongues wagging not just in the stands and on living-room sofas throughout the Bay Area, but also in the players’ dining room after the game. One teammate asked Williamson, “Do you know how hard you hit that?”
Length and velocity aside, Williamson’s homer gave the Giants a 3-0 lead and sparked a six-run inning that ended with the Giants’ third homer of the night, a three-run Andrew McCutchen moonscraper.
The Giants had not scored six in an inning since 2016. In the span of seven batters, the Giants scored a shade over 10 percent of their runs for the season.
Hundley had walked and was on first base when Williamson destroyed Heaney’s 3-1 fastball.
“That ball was unloaded,” Hundley said. “I started running. I thought the ball was in the gap. When they told me it was 15 rows deep, I had to come in and see the video for myself. He’s put in a lot of quality work. It’s nice to see it carry over from spring training to Triple-A, and to here.”
Williamson arrived at the Big-A and saw a team whose stress level did not match its 7-11 record.
“Everyone in here was superpositive today, very welcoming and inviting,” he said. “I hadn’t been in here before today, but I felt a positive energy buzzing around here before the game, in batting practice. It was fun to be a part of.”
As the only healthy Giants starter who throws gas, Samardzija generated his own energy upon ending his first career trip to the disabled list. The last time he missed anything, he said, was a seventhgrade football practice because of an ear infection.
Samardzija held the Angels to two hits in five innings, including a Shohei Ohtani single. Samardzija walked the bases loaded in the fifth and pushed past his 75-pitch limit. Manager Bruce Bochy visited the mound with two outs to ask Shark if he was OK.
The old-school manager wanted Samardzija to get a win, and let him face Justin Upton, who nearly hit a grand slam. But Williamson caught the ball at the track.
Hundley saw a connection between Samardzija’s return and the scoring outburst.
“Obviously it’s nice to have Shark out there,” the catcher said. “He adds a dimension to this team, a competitive fire. When he takes the mound you know you’re going to get a lot of aggression, a lot of attack. That attack carries over to the offense.”
An offense that will include Williamson for the foreseeable future.
“I hope he keeps putting good at-bats up there,” Bochy said, “because he's going to be out there in left field.”