SAN FRANCISCO – Casey Schmitt angrily pounded his fist into the dirt so hard, he must have bruised a knuckle or three. For the second game in a row Saturday, almost inconceivably, Schmitt was tagged out after rounding second base too far then slipping as he tried to clamber back to the bag, wasting his own leadoff double.
Four innings later, Schmitt had time to round second base slowly and carefully, and the only things he pounded with his fist were a bunch of other fists in the Giants’ dugout after his two-run homer in the sixth inning broke a 1-1 tie and keyed a 6-2 victory against the Marlins.
Schmitt and manager Tony Vitello both described the baserunning mistakes as a player being too aggressive, although Vitello said wryly, “It led to a strategy of ‘Hit a home run. That way they can’t back-pick you at second base.’”
Drew Gilbert and Heliot Ramos must like that strategy, too, because Gilbert homered to tie a 1-0 game in the fifth inning and Ramos hit a rare opposite-field homer to right to lead off the eighth.
The Giants’ three-homer game was notable beyond the win it created. It nearly matched the four they had totaled over their first 14 home games and, Vitello said, was a sign that some of his hitters are staying true to their own swings after weeks of trying too hard to produce.
“Because those [power] numbers didn’t tally up right away, I think our guys tried to force the issue a little too much,” Vitello said, “and you saw maybe a head being pulled a little bit or a shoulder flying open a little bit or chasing pitches that not even Manny Ramirez or Brandon Belt could hit out of the park.”
Players rarely succeed if they try to compensate for mistakes by doing something spectacular on the field, so no, Schmitt would not confess to squeezing his bat that much harder and whipping his wrists that much faster to hit a tiebreaking homer after his identical baserunning muffs.
On Friday night, Schmitt was running from first base on a slow roller by Jung Hoo Lee that shortstop Otto Lopez gloved on the grass. Lopez decided not to throw to first, but as Schmitt strayed too far off second base he swiveled and threw to second baseman Xavier Edwards. Schmitt had no chance to return to the bag in time because he lost his footing and slipped. Edwards tagged him out.
On Saturday, Schmitt led off the second with a double and fans saw a rerun at second base. This slip and fall was more glaring because a scorching-hot Lee followed with his own double.
Schmitt said that after Friday night, “I think I just should have learned from it, but now I’m going to.”
To Vitello’s point, Schmitt’s home run was less about redemption and more about the team’s fifth-place hitter spending a lot of time in the cage just trying to hone the Casey Schmitt approach.
“The younger me would have gone to the batting cage and tried to change everything,” he said. To the Giants’ benefit, Schmitt said he took the same swing he had been practicing into the box when he redirected Pérez’s first-pitch, 96.3 mph fastball toward the left-field bleachers 404 feet from the plate.
Unlike Friday night, when the Giants found themselves down 8-0 after four innings, Saturday starter Robbie Ray found a way to hold Miami to one run over a five-inning slog. Ray needed 97 pitches to get through 23 hitters.
The run he gave up scored on a two-out check-swing by Edwards in the third inning that sent the ball floating over first baseman Rafael Devers’ glove.
Winning pitcher Matt Gage, Keaton Winn and Erik Miller each followed Ray with a scoreless inning before the Marlins mustered an unearned run off Ryan Walker in the ninth.
A Giants win Sunday would complete a 4-2 homestand and their third consecutive series victory.