Last year, during their historic 107-win campaign, the Giants feasted on the bottom-feeders.
San Francisco went 17-2 against the last-place Arizona Diamondbacks. The Giants took 15 of 19 against the fourth-place Rockies. That’s an .800 winning percentage against the National League West’s have-nots.
This isn’t last year’s NL West. Entering Monday, every club was over .500; it’s the only division in baseball with five winning teams.
“This division is playing as tough as it’s ever played,” Evan Longoria, close to a return from the IL, said Monday.
The Rockies walked into Oracle Park with the best OPS in baseball, the NL’s home run leader and an identical record as the Giants. But Colorado hadn’t yet faced Carlos Rodón, who pumped fastball after fastball for his 14th career double-digit strikeout game. The Giants’ new starter now has an MLB-best 53 strikeouts and a 1.80 ERA in six starts.
Tearing through the NL West will be much tougher in 2022 for the Giants (17-2). But having Rodón will help. Producing runs by stacking lineups with platoon advantage, like SF did with Austin Slater and Mauricio Dubón Monday, will help. San Francisco’s 8-5 series-opening victory — SF’s third straight win — will, too.
The Giants started off the scoring with the 1-2 punch at the top of the order in Slater and Dubón. The righties stacked against southpaw starter Austin Gomber, giving the Giants two positionally flexible athletes with a righty-versus-lefty edge.
Slater roped Gomber’s fifth pitch of the evening off the wall and wheeled around the bases for a triple. Dubón scored him with a sacrifice fly.
Their next time up, Dubón supplied the power. Slater cracked a single into shallow center, then Dubón blasted a fastball 405 feet from home into the Giants’ bullpen.
It was Dubón’s second home run of the year — and second in his past three games. Not bad for the infielder whose listed weight of 175 pounds makes him the skinniest on the club.
Before Monday’s game, manager Gabe Kapler was asked about Dubón’s placement near the very top of SF’s lineup, as well as of his power. One moment from last year that stuck out to the skipper was one day, when the team was on the road, Dubón was taking batting practice alongside SF’s “bangers,” he said. The exit velocity and launch angle trackers were reading live on the scoreboard, and Dubón’s balls were traveling the furthest.
“He’s got real sock,” Kapler said of Dubón. “It doesn’t necessarily come out in the same way or as often as the guys who were hitting with him that way, but it’s in there.”
Dubón (3-for-4, 3 RBI, 2R) and Slater (2-for-4, 2R, 1BB) supplied the power from the plate, and Carlos Rodón provided it from the mound.
The Rockies’ approaches drove Rodón’s pitch count up, but the southpaw still fanned 12 in six innings for his 14th career double-digit strikeout game.
Kapler sent Rodón back out for the sixth inning, with the starter at 94 pitches, to face the heart of Colorado’s order. Cron, who struck out the first two times he saw Rodón, got put away by Rodón’s 101st offering of the night — a 97 mph fastball. Rodón’s 107th delivery, a 95 mph heater, rang up Elias Díaz. His 110th pitch got him out of the inning.
Any sign of trouble would’ve ended Rodón’s night. He instead slammed the door shut. Sixteen of the 23 whiffs Rodón generated came on his fastball — the pitch Baseball Savant deemed the most valuable single pitch in baseball last year. Colorado just couldn’t catch up.
The Giants lineup acted inspired by Rodón’s rugged sixth by tacking three runs onto their 3-2 lead. They did so not with power like Dubón and Slater’s earlier work, but with four singles, a walk and aggressive base running. Then they tacked on two more in the eighth for a Coors Field-esque eight-run game.
San Francisco’s lead ballooned big enough to hold despite a Jake McGee-induced mini scare of a ninth inning.
In the 19 meetings between the Giants and Rockies of 2021, San Francisco struck out 16 or more hitters just once. This year, they’re 1-for-1, with Rodón providing 12 of 16 on Monday night.