Another day, another massive jolt in the arm from Casey Schmitt.
In just his third game, the Giants rookie continues to flash the heaps of potential that had folks raving about him in spring training and ecstatic for his debut on Tuesday night.
So far, he’s provided in eye-catching fashion.
On Thursday night, Schmitt sprung San Francisco’s scoring early with a monstrous, two-run home run in the second inning, and some run relief with a chopped, RBI double that set up a four-run ninth.
In concert with an efficacious, shutout performance from Alex Cobb, it made for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, 6-2 road win over the Diamondbacks.
This game began in the top of that second inning, when Schmitt absolutely launched.
Preceded by a Michael Conforto walk, Schmitt took Tommy Henry a nonsensical 443 feet to deep left field. Per Alex Pavlovic, it’s the longest home run for the Giants not part of that comical Mexico City split.
Henry, also a rookie, allowed just five hits over 6 2/3 innings — three of which came from Schmitt.
He looked like a veteran at the plate. In the top of the fourth, he inside-outed a tight, inside fastball for a shot single up the middle. Per John Shea, he’s the only other Giant besides John Bowker to have at least two hits and score at least one run.
He wasn’t even close to done, though. He tagged Henry for his third hit — 60 percent of the Giants’ hitting — with another single up the middle, this time a slower roller that snuck through.
Per OptaStats, no other Giants shortstop has begun his career with three-straight multi-hit games, each of which included an extra-base hit.
But it got better, somehow. He came up with runners on first and second with no outs in the top of the ninth. The 2-0 lead he singlehandedly established still stood up until that point.
It would stand no longer. With the Diamondbacks playing in, Schmitt shot a chopper over the head of third baseman Josh Rojas, driving in J.D. Davis and moving Michael Conforto to third.
That eight-hit mark over his first three games? Well that just tied Willie McCovey for the most hits by a Giants rookie over their first three games. McCovey did that in 1959.
A Joey Bart single followed up Schmitt’s double, increasing the lead to 4-0. But it didn’t stop there.
Schmitt got himself in by the skin of his teeth on a fielder’s choice grounder from Lamonte Wade Jr., advanced to second as the throw home skirted away from Diamondbacks catcher Gabriel Moreno.
The sixth and final run came in courtesy of a Bryce Johnson sac fly that brought home Bart.
There were a couple defensive highlights, too.
In the bottom half of the second, Alex Cobb induced a 6-4-3 double play networked by Schmitt and Estrada with runners at the corners. In the bottom of the fourth, Schmitt looked composed when he threw a dart to first to throw out Ketel Marte.
He’ll want a fifth-inning play back when he just barely failed to throw out Dominic Fisher. He was shaded over the second-base bag, then ranged to his right on a bouncing ball. Schmitt spun, got up and fired, with Lamonte Wade Jr. just barely failing to pick it.
He was relieved moments later with a 5-4-3 double play turned by J.D. Davis and Estrada. It would have been a spectacular play if he’d nabbed Fisher. On his other opportunities, he looked like he’d been playing short for years.
It’s early. Crazy early. But on a team that has longed for identity since that 2021 campaign, it’s hard to fight the feeling that this kid just might be something special.
That good feeling didn’t emanate solely from the rookie, though. It was a well-rounded defensive outing and resoundingly impressive night on the bump from Cobb.
He worked quick and, as he has a proclivity towards, worked himself out of the limited trouble he faced.
While he wasn’t dominant, though the result wouldn’t tell you that. The contact against him was frequently sharp — with 10 hard-hit balls — but he benefited from a handful of nice defensive plays, and as is often the case with his sinker, many of those sharp contacts were directly at infielders.
In the bottom of the first, Wade Jr. mishandled a sharp grounder, but managed to recover back in time for Thairo Estrada’s scoop and last-second throw over to catch the speedy Pavin Smith.
That aforementioned double play in the second got him out of a runners-at-the-corners, one-out jam. An inning later, Cobb avoided any potential trouble by using his compact, incisive pickoff move to nab Alek Thomas at first following a leadoff single.
The later innings started to provide Cobb more trouble, but he’d worked so efficiently in the early innings that his pitch count was a complete non-factor until the eighth, which he entered having thrown 92 pitches. He threw an overwhelming number of strikes (65 strikes to 39 balls) and didn’t start laboring until late.
In the sixth, he allowed a pair of two-out singles, but nursed a Smith pop up to end the inning. In the seventh, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. ripped a stand-up double into the gap, and got to third on a mishandled ball by Joey Bart in the dirt. Cobb allowed his first walk of the night to Gabriel Moreno a pitch later, leaving runners at the corners with two outs.
Still, nobody was working in the Giants bullpen. Despite getting off to a 2-0 count to the following batter, Cobb worked a bouncing grounder to Estrada to get out of the seventh with a seven-hit shutout intact.
He continued into the eighth, securing a leadoff ground ball, but walked his way out of the game on a 3-2 miss. He got an ovation from the dugout and now has an outrageous, 1.70 ERA on the year.
Cobb’s departure injected Tyler Rogers into the game, who quickly mopped up with a 1-6-3 double play.
The Giants’ electric, four-run ninth inning should have prevented Camilo Doval from making an appearance. Schmitt and co.’s heroics seemed to have rendered his services unnecessary.
Instead, rookie Cole Waites — who has been woeful thus far in his early Giants tenure — was called upon for some work. It was, err, ugly.
He could not seem to find the strike zone, and when he did, it didn’t work out all that well.
Smith torched a leadoff single into the outfield. Then Waites walked Christian Walker. A phone call was made to the bullpen, and Camilo Doval got back up in the bullpen.
After missing the strike zone twice again, Waites got a pep talk from Andrew Bailey and Joey Bart.
He was bailed out by an objectively poor call that gifted him a strike, and 2-1 count. He found it again on the next pitch, and worked an off-the-hands ground out from Gurriel for the first out.
It was back to being unpredictable for his next batter, getting behind 2-0 and 3-1. His capacity to only rely on his fastball made him predictable. After fouling off a couple pitches, Dominic Fletcher ripped a single up the middle two drive in a pair and call Doval into action.
It’s now the third-straight time that Waites has given up at least one earned run in his 2 1/3 innings of work. That’s a brutal 15.43 ERA.
The anxiety evaporated with Doval’s introduction. He struck out Gabriel Moreno so convincingly on a slider a foot out of the zone that Moreno lost his helmet. A similar fate, albeit with a helmet-intact swing, befell Alek Thomas to seal a Giants road win.
It’s a series-opening win that moves San Francisco to 17-20 and the Diamondbacks to 20-18. The Giants could overtake them in the standings by the conclusion of this four-game split.
