Joc Pederson wore a snow ski-style mask as he cut down Jose Ramírez trying to stretch a first-inning single into a double.
Thairo Estrada donned a neck gaiter as he trotted around the bases after his homer in the second.
Alex Wood, a North Carolina native who has spent most of his career on the west coast, needed only a short-sleeve extra layer as he shut down the Guardians’ lineup.
The temperature in Cleveland at the time of Sunday’s first pitch was 35 degrees, the coldest Giants game since at least 1990, when weather data first became available. Occasional light snowflakes didn’t prevent the Giants from running away with a 8-1 sweep-securing victory.
The Giants (7-2) now head to Citi Field winners of five straight; SF won at least five consecutive games seven times last year.
Estrada ignited San Francisco’s offense Sunday with a two-run blast to left field — almost exactly where Joey Bart smacked his on Saturday. The second baseman drove in Wilmer Flores, who had doubled just before him.
With Tommy La Stella still rehabbing from Achilles surgery, Estrada has valiantly assumed everyday second base responsibilities. The Giants internally have always been high on Estrada, and he was the biggest reason they were fine letting Donovan Solano walk in free agency.
Shoddy defense against a string of hits that didn’t leave the infield let the Giants tack on two more runs in the fourth. At one point a ground ball got stuck in Cleveland first baseman Owen Miller’s glove, but that mishap was more likely related to the webbing of his glove malfunctioning than the weather freezing it. But it was Estrada’s grounder that sent Joc Pederson home.
In the sixth, Estrada drove in Pederson (2-for-4) again, this time with a two-out double ripped down the left field line. He jumped on the eighth pitch of that at-bat, a changeup over the plate from reliever Eli Morgan, and later came around to score on a Steven Duggar single.
After Sunday’s win, Estrada is now 7-for-22 (.318) while also flashing the leather at a position the Giants have struggled defensively at in recent years. He doubled his season RBI total from four to eight.
Wood, meanwhile, shut out the Guardians for five innings. His start continued the Giants rotation’s ungodly start to the year; as Bay Area News Group reporter Evan Webeck noted, only one other team has begun a season with at least nine starts allowing two or fewer runs.
Brandon Belt added a two-run home run in the seventh inning to push SF’s lead to 8-0. His third homer of the year left his bat at 108.3 mph.
In the Giants’ first sweep of the season, San Francisco out-scored the Guardians 16 to four. In the three games in Cleveland, San Francisco starters struck out 18 in 16.2 innings while allowing just three runs.
Ten days into the 2022 season, the Giants have ignited a national discussion about the unwritten rules of the game, publicly addressed how intolerance can afflict marginalized communities in baseball and beyond, and now completed their first sweep of the year. Ten days down, one-hundred-and-ninety to go.
