SAN FRANCISCO–The Giants could have left Matt Moore in limbo.
After spending the majority of the season with the highest earned run average among qualifying starters in the National League, Moore understood that San Francisco didn’t owe him much.
Moore was prepared to enter the offseason with his future in jeopardy, but last week, the 28-year-old left-hander learned that the Giants planned to pick up his $9 million option and pencil him into the rotation for the 2018 season.
Following nearly an entire season in which he looked like he didn’t belong, Moore pitched like the force the Giants expected him to be all year, logging six shutout innings before turning it over to his bullpen in the Giants’ 4-0 win over the Rockies. With the victory, the Giants have now won three straight games for the first time since June 30, July 1 and July 2.
The Giants collected their fourth shutout win of the season on Wednesday, and remarkably, neither Madison Bumgarner or Johnny Cueto has had a hand in any of those games. Instead, the four starters in the shutouts are Moore, Jeff Samardzija and rookies Chris Stratton and Ty Blach.
Though pitcher decisions don’t count for much in modern baseball, the win Moore earned on Wednesday marked his first against a winning ballclub since he beat the Arizona Diamondbacks on April 10. Since then, Moore’s picked up wins over the last-place Reds, the fourth-place Braves and the last-place Phillies, but it’s been 28 starts since he last beat a team with a winning record. It’s not as if he was shy on opportunities, either, with 16 of those starts coming against clubs hovering above .500.
Last week, Moore admitted he was surprised that general manager Bobby Evans announced the club was picking up his option before the season ended, but also suggested it offered him a shot of confidence. Moore appeared relieved to know the Giants still had faith in him, and on Wednesday, he rewarded them with one of his best outings of the season. Though Moore has struggled to accumulate wins, he’s turned in a much more successful second half of the season, tossing at least six innings while surrendering just two runs or fewer in six different starts since the All-Star break.
While Moore’s 5.20 ERA still ranks dead last –by nearly .30 points– among all National League qualifiers, it’s a significant improvement over the 6.04 mark he carried into the All-Star break.
Moore isn’t the only Giants’ left-hander who’s helped his cause of late, as San Francisco’s first reliever, Steven Okert, also turned in another impressive outing. After being demoted to AAA Sacramento near the end of July, Okert was called up at the start of September and has now recorded five consecutive scoreless appearances.
On Tuesday, Okert entered in relief of Moore with two on and no one out in the top of the seventh, and promptly struck out pinch hitter Pat Valaika before inducing a weak groundout from Rockies’ center fielder Charlie Blackmon. After Okert faced a pair of hitters, right-hander Cory Gearrin entered and struck out D.J. LeMahieu to end the Rockies’ threat and preserve San Francisco’s shutout bid.
Moore and the rest of the Giants’ staff had the luxury of pitching with a lead for most of the afternoon after second baseman Joe Panik tripled with one out in the bottom of the first. The next batter, Denard Span, knocked in Panik with a sacrifice fly to give the Giants a 1-0 lead.
Panik was the Giants’ offensive catalyst all afternoon, which is no surprise considering he’s enjoying one of the best months of his career. With three hits on Wednesday, including an RBI single in the bottom of the seventh, Panik fell a home run shy of the cycle and raised his batting average to .291. The 26-year-old second baseman is now hitting .435 in the month of September, and he’s raised his average nearly 30 points over the past six weeks.
The Giants’ biggest hit of the afternoon came off the bat of shortstop Brandon Crawford, who launched his 14th home run of the season just over the right field wall to extend San Francisco’s lead to 3-0 in the bottom of the third. Crawford’s 14 home runs rank second only to first baseman Brandon Belt, who leads the team with 18 but hasn’t played since August 5 and was transferred to the 60-day disabled list prior to the start of Wednesday’s series finale.
Perhaps the greatest oddity from the Giants’ two-game sweep of a Rockies’ team in contention for the second National League Wildcard spot was the fact Colorado’s star third baseman, Nolan Arenado, finished the series 0-for-8 at the plate. A notorious Giants’ killer, Arenado went 0-for-3 against Moore, who twice faced him with a runner in scoring position on Wednesday.