Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports
The Giants’ two most valuable players this year have been Buster Posey and Brandon Crawford, and with good reason. Neither has missed significant time; both have been superstars at their position.
In Saturday’s edition of the Resilient Giants, there was no Posey, and Crawford booted a rare ball.
So their other team MVP candidate took yet another step forward.
Kevin Gausman was dominant through seven innings, the offense did enough, the Giants waded through some ugly and painful ninth-inning play and held on to take the first three games of a four-game series against the Cubs, the latest a 4-3 victory in front of 12,792 at Oracle Park on Pride Day. Chicago entered the series sizzling and had just swept the Padres at Wrigley Field. The Giants are a game away from giving them some NL West payback.
With the win, the Giants (37-21) added to the best record in baseball and moved 1.5 games up on the Padres and two above the Dodgers before either had finished play Saturday. Since that disastrous sweep at home to the Dodgers, the Giants have taken nine of 11.
There is no Logan Webb (shoulder), and no Scott Kazmir or Nick Tropeano in the wings (both DFA’d in the past two days). The offense is lacking Mike Yastrzemski, Brandon Belt, Tommy La Stella and Darin Ruf, while Posey is sitting just about every third day, which arrived Saturday.
But the Giants do not need a whole lot of offense when Gausman is on the mound.
A hip scare shortened his last start, in Los Angeles, but the hip and the arm looked just fine as he struck out 10, his third double-digit strikeout outing of the season. All 10 arose from Chicago batters swinging and missing; all 10 arose from splitters.
His best pitch again was untouchable, Chicago swinging at 26 of them and missing 16 times. His third pitch is typically his slider, and he only threw one Saturday, allowing his four-seamer to get ahead in counts and turning to his splitter to put hitters away.
He struck out the side in the third, including three pitches — all whiffs off splitters — to Javier Baez.
The only two runs he allowed were unearned. In the second, Anthony Rizzo hit a would-be ground out to Crawford, but it took a bad hop for an error. Patrick Wisdom, from St. Mary’s, then drilled a home run to center. It was one of the two hits off Gausman, who might interpret this as a poor start: After all, he had gone eight straight surrendering either one or zero runs.
Among qualified pitchers, his 1.27 ERA is third best in the majors, behind only Jacob deGrom (0.71) and Lance Lynn (1.23). At this point, Gausman is more jockeying to start the All-Star Game and less jockeying to make it.
Jake McGee and Tyler Rogers did their jobs, though it got hairy for Rogers. He continues to induce ground balls, but Mauricio Dubon made an error on one, and Evan Longoria and Brandon Crawford crashed into each other on an Anthony Rizzo ground ball that scored one and wound up with no outs. Longoria left the game and looked to be in pain.
Rogers bounced back, striking out Willson Contreras and inducing a Jason Heyward ground out, to record his eighth save of the year, and the Other Giants authored another chapter in this strange season.
Alex Dickerson is the lone Normal Giant now contributing, his second home run in as many days giving the Giants their first run in the third. He has slumped just about all season, but now is 4-for-9 in three games.
The Giants took the lead for good in the fourth, when they sent seven batters to the plate and got opposite-field, RBI singles from first Chadwick Tromp and then LaMonte Wade Jr. At the beginning of the year, those two projected as probably the fourth catcher in the organization and a Triple-A Sacramento outfielder — who is now a solid major league first baseman.
They added a cushion with more familiar names in the fifth, when Crawford’s double knocked in Longoria.
As it turned out, they needed the run.
