Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports
RiDickulous.
It is hard to pick what was more impressive from Alex Dickerson’s Tuesday night: What he did in his first at-bat or the onslaught that followed.
First came a 480-foot moon shot that disappeared into the thin Colorado air, the farthest-traveling ball the Giants have hit since at least 2015, when Statcast began tracking. It was the second deepest ball hit this season by any major league player, the Yankees’ Giancarlo Stanton slamming a 483-foot shot earlier this year. The ball never seemed to land; you try finding it.
Let's rock and roll.
#SFGiants pic.twitter.com/5mEIDgO6Ih— SFGiants (@SFGiants) September 2, 2020
What looked like the entree, though, was the appetizer. What came next was a total of 16 bases that featured three homers and two doubles, matching Willie Mays for the most total bases by a Giants player in San Francisco-era history. It was the first time a Giant had five extra-base hits; the last time a Giant had four extra-baggers in a game was Barry Bonds on Aug. 27, 2002, also at Coors Field. Dickerson sprayed them all over, his third and final long ball a three-run shot he guided over the left-field wall. His five hits traveled a total of 1,986 projected feet, and if traditional stats are more your bag, the five runs scored and six RBIs will help teams win games.
As will a club on which every starter recorded a hit and all but Wilmer Flores recorded at least two. According to Stats by Stats, Dickerson, Donovan Solano and Brandon Crawford are the first trio of teammates to have six-plus RBIs since the stat became official in 1920. The Giants finished with 27 hits and scored in every inning except the ninth, demolishing Colorado pitching to the tune of 23-5 in the first game after a trade deadline in which the front office sent a message it believes in this club.
Farhan Zaidi and Scott Harris could have offloaded pitching like Kevin Gausman, who was far better than he had to be in a five-inning, two-run, five-strikeout performance nearby his hometown. They could have added a lefty bat, which Zaidi said they had targeted, because their lineup of lefties has been weaker than the lineup of righties. The Giants entered play the eighth best in baseball with an .805 OPS against lefties, while they fell to 18th with a .721 OPS against righties.
If the team wanted to prove this regime correct, crushing Rockies righty Jon Gray was a nice place to start.
Everyone on the team contributed: Crawford crushed a three-run shot among his three hits; Brandon Belt did not record an out (3-for-3 with a walk); Solano added four hits and six RBIs; Joey Bart had never had a multi-hit game, and now he has a three-knock game.
But only one Giant surpassed Bonds in history and became the first Giant to hit three homers in a game since … Mike Yastrzemski last year, also at Coors. (Yastrzemski himself had a triple among two hits Tuesday.)
Dickerson had been slumping until Saturday, his average falling to .195 and Gabe Kapler publicly backing his left fielder, saying the team believed his luck would turn. Since that pronouncement, the 30-year-old is 9-for-15 with four home runs, his surreal few days launching the slashline to .261/.337/.543.
Colorado brought in Drew Butera, a catcher, to take the mound in the eighth and ninth, and he fared far better than the ostensible pitchers who preceded him, throwing 1 2/3 innings of one-run ball. Dickerson led off the last inning and came up a few feet shy of his fourth homer, lining one off the left-center field wall and just missing tying Mays’ four-homer game.
It was about the only way that the Giants came up short.