With 4 more HRs, Giants clinch series vs. Mets to salvage home stand
SAN FRANCISCO — There was no possible way, no imaginable scenario, that Joc Pederson and the Giants could find an encore Wednesday to match the maniacal back-and-forth with the Mets from the previous night, featuring three Joc Jams.
That wasn’t going to stop them from trying.
After mashing three home runs Wednesday night, Pederson did it again in his first trip to the plate Wednesday afternoon, barely 12 hours since his last one the night before. That was only the start of San Francisco’s onslaught in a 9-3 win over the Mets that clinched the three-game series with the NL East leaders and provided a positive spin on a home stand that couldn’t have started any worse.
The Giants launched three more long balls in the first two innings, providing more than enough support for Jakob Junis in arguably the high point of an already impressive run of starts since joining the big club.
Junis limited a Mets lineup that had exploded for 26 runs the past two nights to just two over six innings of work, actually managing to raise his rotation-best ERA ever so slightly to 2.76. The only damage the Mets were able to muster came on one mistake pitch that Francisco Lindor placed in the left-field seats and a leadoff walk in the second that doted around the pond.
At one point, spanning from the third inning of Tuesday night’s game through the second inning Wednesday, the Giants played nine innings of baseball and launched eight home runs.
Four of those came from Pederson in the span of six at-bats.
But it was a different player with a multi-homer game Wednesday.
After a jammed shoulder kept Evan Longoria from participat
ing in the festivities Tuesday night, he took the first pitch he saw Wednesday from Mets starter Thomas Szapucki over the wall in dead center. Longoria, maybe suffering from a bout of FOMO from the previous night, went deep again in his second at-bat only an inning later, with a high shot that looped down the left field line.
“It’s been a while since I put together two good swings in a game, so that felt pretty good today,” Longoria said on NBC Sports Bay Area. “I knew it was going to take a little bit of time to settle in. I was hoping it would happen sooner and quicker, but it’s a long season. I’ve been making some hard contact that hasn’t landed, so just trying to build off those at-bats and keep moving forward.”
Longoria’s second home run immediately followed a similar blast to straightaway center from Mike Yastrzemski, giving the Giants their second set of back-to-back dingers this season (and first off a nonposition player, with Luis González and Joey Bart’s homers off Albert Pujols as the only others).
Longoria has as many hits (4) in his past 12 at-bats as he did in his first 28 trips to the plate since returning from finger surgery, doubling his OPS, from .321 to .650, in the span of three games. His two home runs Wednesday gave him the 20th multi-homer game of his career and his first since July 2019.
Yastrzemski’s home run extended his hitting streak to a team-best nine games. Over the course of his hitting streak, Yastrzemski has 13 hits — eight for extra bases — in 29 at-bats and also took the seventh walk of the stretch in his first trip to the plate Wednesday, scoring one of his two runs on Longoria’s three-run blast.
It all amounted to one heck of a heel turn for the home stand.
The Giants started the six-game set by dropping the first four, often in ugly fashion (a 33-12 run differential), and saw their losing streak reach five games. But they now hit the road riding wins in their past two games — taking two of three from the NL East-leading Mets — transferring the momentum from Tuesday night’s thrilling 13-12 win in to their rout Wednesday afternoon.
No team in the majors has been streakier than the Giants, who hold a 24-19 record despite two fivegame losing streaks. They are the only team in the majors with multiple stretches of five straight wins and multiple stretches of five straight losses.
Heading to Cincinnati for three against the dreary Reds (12-30), the Giants seem primed to build on their positive end to the home stand. They’ll send Carlos Rodón (4-3, 3.43) to the hill Friday in the series opener.
Tuesday: Pederson’s career night helps Giants win instant classic
SAN FRANCISCO — Just call this the Joc Pederson game.
Pederson left the yard not once, not twice, but a career-high three times. However, it required even more for the Giants to end their five-game losing streak, as Pederson delivered a game-tying single in the ninth and Brandon Crawford ended the maniacal back-and-forth battle with a walk-off single to left field. Final score: 13-12.
Darin Ruf chugged home from second base and just beat the throw, ending one of the most memorable games in recent memory and putting an end to the Giants’ losing streak at five games.
Pederson tied the game twice, first with his third blast of the night, into McCovey Cove in the eighth inning. Then with an RBI single again in the ninth. He drove in eight runs and became the only Giant besides Willie Mays to slug three multi-run home runs in a single game.
The game-tying blast that Pederson walloped in to the waters of McCovey Cove in the eighth inning came immediately after the Mets rallied for nine runs the previous two innings to erase what was once a sixrun San Francisco lead.
Only a few minutes had elapsed since anything and everything at could go wrong seemingly was, as the Mets sprayed hits off San Francisco’s bullpen and reliever Tyler Rogers couldn’t turn off the spigot.
Of the nine runs the Mets mounted after Logan Webb left the game, two came on a seventh-inning home run served up by Dominic Leone, and the remaining seven came the following inning. All seven runs and all but two of the Mets’ nine hits — eight singles and one bases-clearing triple by Francisco Lindor — in the eighth were credited to Rogers, who recorded only one out.
But Pederson, always with a flair for the dramatic, would not allow his two home run game to go to waste.
So he slugged a third. As soon as Pederson made contact with the 1-1 offering from Drew Smith, it was clear he knew it was gone. Pederson froze and struck a pose. He pointed back to the Giants dugout as he began his slow trot around the base paths. When the ball landed, splashing down 415 away, the Giants had tied it at 11, and Pederson had his third blast of the night.
After Pederson’s final home run, however, the Giants left the bases loaded. Dominic Smith led off the next inning with a 404-foot triple to center field and his pinch-runner scored on a sac fly, providing Pederson yet another chance to deliver more heroics the following inning.
The late inning rally ensured the Giants’ winning streak with Webb on the mound at Oracle Park would reach 18 games, dating back to Sept. 8, 2020.
Back in command of his swing-and-miss slider, Webb gave the Giants five innings of two-run baseball, striking out six and issuing just one walk. He could have prevailed in the pitcher’s duel that was expected with Mets starter Chris Bassitt (4-2, 2.77 ERA entering Tuesday), but that was not the game the baseball gods had in mind Tuesday night.