© Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports
Anthony DeSclafani’s season just gets sweeter. The 31-year-old right hander notched yet another sparkling outing on Tuesday night, and is in the midst of what is indisputably the greatest season of his career. He led the Giants to a no-stress, 5-0 win over the Los Angeles Angels (o’ Anaheim).
He wasn’t dealing with the same efficiency as his two complete game shutouts earlier this season, but he lived on the corners. When he missed, it was never over the plate. He painted and painted and painted, conceding a couple of walks rather than challenging dangerous batters unnecessarily.
That patience and persistence earned DeSclafani a season-high of nine strikeouts, tying his first complete game shutout against the Colorado Rockies on April 26. He retired 17 of his last 18 batters, and only improved as the game went on. He was a victim of 97 pitches through his seven, and more specifically of his his 58 pitches through three innings.
There has been just one disaster for DeSclafani this season, when he allowed 10 earned runs in 2 1/3 innings against the Los Angeles Dodgers on May 23. Outside of that performance, he has a 1.80 ERA, and is now down to a 2.77 ERA on the year, including that howler.
The conclusion of the third inning — the last one in which DeSclafani ran into any sort trouble or high pitch count — was realistically the end of this one. Thanks to some brutal non-fielding from Angels right fielder Luis Rengifo, who was inexplicably playing there after never doing so in the minors, Darin Ruf was gifted an RBI double to open the scoring and drive home Mike Yastrzemski in the first.
Brandon Belt followed that up two batters later with a brilliant RBI bunt, then Wilmer Flores opened up a comfortable 4-0 lead with a two-run home run to conclude the first inning’s run barrage. Mauricio Dubon opened the second with a solo home run to push that line to 5-0, which is when the scoring stopped.
The Giants tallied another six hits in the ensuing innings, but five of those were singles, untethered to other baserunners. From the third inning through the seventh, the Angels were held hitless by DeSclafani. That hitless streak was snapped by David Fletcher, inconsequentially, with a single to open the eighth, before Dominic Leone buckled down to keep the shutout going, and Jimmie Sherfy finished it off in the ninth.
With the win, San Francisco improves to an MLB-best 47-26, with seven wins in their last eight games. They’ll cap off their two-game, quick-fire trip to Anaheim on Wednesday night before a three-game home series against the Oakland A’s and two-game split against the Los Angeles Dodgers, who trail the Giants by 2.5 games, and will trail by 3.0 games if they lose to the San Diego Padres (who lead the Dodgers 3-0 at the time of posting).
