SAN FRANCISCO – For one night in an otherwise dismal season, Oracle Park echoed greater times.
Thursday night’s crowd was announced as a sellout, and the place was rocking during a four-run eighth inning that secured the Giants’ 6-1 win over the Diamondbacks. A postgame Pokémon drone show had kept people from slinking out early.
The Giants played as fundamentally solid a game as they had all year and, like those years when banners were raised, the bullpen prospered with four shutout innings, three while protecting a one-run lead.
That performance carried more weight than usual because it happened one night after the bullpen shouldered Wednesday’s historic, seven-run collapse in the ninth inning.
Manager Tony Vitello spoke to the players about rising to the challenges of evicting memories of that 10-9 loss to the Reds, as well as taking on an Arizona team that beat the Giants eight straight times to start the season. The Giants carried that message onto the field.
“We haven’t really done that all year, come back from a tough loss and really show the grit that we still have,” shortstop Christian Koss said.
Vitello went further, arguing this might have been the biggest of the Giants’ 55 wins this year.
“You could throw tomatoes at our record,” Vitello said, “or say a playoff win would be better, [winning] Opening Day would have been better. But if you’re just talking about the circumstances from yesterday, how we’ve struggled this year bouncing back appropriately … You wrap it all into one and it stacks right up there.”
Analysis of Thursday’s win has to start with the obvious. After Landen Roupp pitched five good innings, en route to ending a five-game losing streak, relievers Trent Harris and Carson Seymour combined for three hitless frames in a 2-1 game.
Ryan Walker, back from the Minors with more control, allowed two singles to start the ninth in an “uh oh” moment for those still shellshocked after the Giants blew a 9-3 lead in the ninth Wednesday. But Walker got a strikeout and two ground balls to end it.
Drew Gilbert set the Giants on the right path with his first career leadoff home run and also drove in the go-ahead run in a 1-1 game with a fifth-inning sacrifice fly after Koss got hit by a pitch, went first to third on a bunt when he noticed no Diamondback at third base and did not get fooled into thinking Gilbert’s sinking liner would fall for a hit. He retreated to third, tagged and scored after Max Kepler’s sliding catch.
“Red Sox 2021 organizational Baserunner of the Year, and I only had 10 steals,” Koss said, smiling.
Harris called Gilbert’s homer “a great answer for a tough inning yesterday.” Before the game, Harris said, “there were a lot of unspoken words. Nobody had to really say anything. We knew what happened and just came out ready to play.”
Before the bullpen went to work, Roupp held Arizona to a Gabriel Moreno solo homer over five innings, the first he allowed this season on his changeup.
The other reminder of better times was the crowd noise that began when pinch-hitter Jung Hoo Lee drew a leadoff walk in the eighth against Kevin Ginkel. The din grew when a Rafael Devers single, a Bryce Eldridge double, singles by Jonah Cox and Turner Hill and Shay Whitcomb’s safety squeeze -- all consecutive -- resulted in four more runs.
“We’ve just got to keep playing like that,” Roupp said on a night the Giants forestalled their 80th loss, if only for the sanity of the players and their fans over the final month.