It was 1970 when Bay Area musical legend Carlos Santana released his timeless hit, “Black Magic Woman.”
Nearly 50 years later, a different Santana arrived in San Francisco to record a hit of his own, and it featured every bit of black magic as the lyricist’s Latin groove.
With two outs and the bases juiced in the top half of the fourth inning, Minnesota Twins starting pitcher Ervin Santana found himself at the plate, staring down Giants’ left-hander Matt Moore.
Over the course of 13 Major League seasons, the light-hitting righty from the Dominican Republic had three career runs batted in on 11 base hits. Enter the magic.
On the first pitch of his at-bat, Santana launched a 91-mile per hour fastball from Moore into the right-center field gap, and three Twins’ teammates raced around the base paths to give Minnesota a 4-0 lead.
On a single swing, Santana doubled his career RBI total, and became the first Minnesota pitcher to record a three-RBI game since Cuban right-hander Luis Tiant knocked in three runs against the Milwaukee Brewers on May 28, 1970, three seasons before the American League adopted the designated hitter rule.
“You’ve got the bases loaded, you’re going to challenge him, the guy hasn’t had a hit in what, three years?” Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy said. “He was in the American League and he just placed it just right. (Denard) Span couldn’t quite get to it and he did hit it pretty good but that’s a good break for them I guess. He’s a great pitcher, but I know he’s not a very good hitter and we got burned by a pitcher in the American League. They don’t take BP or anything.”
The double off the bat of Santana was the sixth hit of the night allowed by Moore, who surrendered singles to .237 hitter Brian Dozier, .221 hitter Jason Castro, and .198 hitter Byron Buxton before Santana tagged him for the two-bagger that propelled Minnesota to a 4-0 win.
Though Santana’s bat produced the game-defining blow, it was his arm that kept Giants’ hitters off-tune throughout the night.
Santana continued his torrid start to the season with a complete game, four-hit shutout, the first complete game shutout against the Giants since Colorado’s Tyler Chatwood blanked San Francisco on April 15 at AT&T Park. The contest also marked the seventh time the Giants have been shut out this season.
“I think we saw why this guy (Santana) is having such a great year,” Bochy said. “He’s got the third best ERA in the American League. He stays on the corners with that slider and fastball. That slider’s got late depth to it and we just kept beating the ball into the ground. Left-handers are hitting .140-something off of him and right-handers are hitting .160. He just didn’t pitch in the heart of the plate at all. He hit the corners really well and he made it look easy.”
San Francisco’s hitters never hit their stride against a pitcher coming off of his shortest outing of the season against his old club, the Los Angeles Angels.
Aside from a leadoff triple off the bat of second baseman Aaron Hill in the bottom half of the third inning, the Giants failed to threaten Santana before the Twins built up their edge.
And about that Hill triple.
A day after Hill produced his second pinch-hit go-ahead double of the Giants-Brewers series with a shot to the gap at Miller Park, Hill laced a ball with a nearly identical trajectory and found himself on third base as the ball nestled up against the 421-sign in Triple’s Alley.
However, as the Giants’ hitters have done for much of the year, they found a way to strand Hill in scoring position. Consecutive ground outs from left fielder Austin Slater, Moore and center fielder Denard Span helped Santana lift himself off the hook.
All told, a sixth-inning pinch-hit bunt single off the bat of Kelby Tomlinson was the worst the Giants made Santana look on Friday evening, as the right-hander was slow coming off the mound and threw a one-hopper to first baseman Joe Mauer.
Moore, who has thrived at AT&T Park this season, lasted six innings, allowing seven hits and four runs as he took his seventh loss of the season.
The defeat dropped the Giants to 25-38 on the season, and pushed them 15.0 games back of the first place Colorado Rockies, who recorded their National League-leading 40th victory of the season on Friday.
“You keep going and that’s all you can do,” Bochy said. “You try to stay positive through all of this, it just takes a good win streak to kind of change everything. It gives us mojo back.”
