There was a whole lot of a “Bye Bye Baby” playing on Friday night. The San Francisco Giants began the last series of their road trip by bullying the Miami Marlins into submission with a five-homer, 15-6 win.
It was all Giants from the jump, as the Marlins tried to get creative with an opener in Richard Bleier, who relinquished a run, and would have given up another if not for a nice Jazz Chisholm stop.
The only negative part of this game for the Giants was that Luis Gonzalez had to exit in the top of the second after taking a fastball to the shin. Luckily his X-Rays also came back negative, with the Giants diagnosing him with a lower right leg contusion.
Aside from that hiccup, it was an unceasing assault on the Marlins’ pitching staff.
A Wilmer Flores RBI double in the second was promptly followed up by a red-hot Mike Yastrzemski ripping a three-run home run to right-center for his fifth of the season. It amounted to a 5-0 lead for Sean Hjelle before he ever stepped on the mound, following a scoreless opener from John Brebbia.
Hjelle was a mixed bag, not that it mattered in this one.
He showed some of that excellent movement in his pitches, helping him to five strikeouts in just three innings, but he wasn’t exactly keeping Miami off the basepaths. His command was iffy, and he allowed a couple hits, a couple walks and a couple earned runs in just his second appearance of his career.
Again, the Giants’ pitching wasn’t all that consequential.
The home run brigade continued in the third, as Joc Pederson mashed this upper-decker a cool 410 feet.
The Marlins tagged Hjelle for a pair in the fourth, but the Giants retorted with a pair of their own in the fifth, courtesy of Thairo Estrada.
He was gifted the hanger of all hangers and took it for a walk to left field.
At this point, you should have an idea of where this story is going. The Giants’ bats didn’t exactly simmer down in the ensuing innings.
Next up was Jason Vosler, who executed the classic, inch-perfect doink off the right foul pole to give the Giants a three-field-goal tally on the night.
They saved the best for last, though.
In the seventh, Yastrzemski continued his torrid stretch with a 2 RBI double, and an Evan Longoria walk provided the proper preamble for the Giants’ punctuation mark.
With the bases loaded, Brandon Crawford secured the fifth grand slam of his career, a 103.4 MPH bomb to right center.
Things got so inconsequential and out of hand by the ninth, that when the Marlins put position player, “La Tortuga” — otherwise known as Willians Astudillo — on the mound, that the home plate umpire forgot the count when he walked Wilmer Flores.
Flores jogged to first and then had to have a discussion with the umpire crew to remind them he wasn’t looked at the count through rose-tinted glasses.
The Marlins’ three ninth-inning runs against Donovan Walton — basically a garbage time field goal — made things look closer than they were, which is to say, they were never close.
