Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports
When the Giants have a pair of Brandons and an ace going strong, their hand is hard to beat.
They’re hard to beat at home, where they are 12-3 this year, the best mark in the majors. They’re hard to beat when facing one of the majors’ best teams, now 5-3 against San Diego. And the 20-13 Giants have made an early case that they are just plain hard to beat, extending their NL West lead to 2.5 games.
Brandon Belt and Brandon Crawford, who are both reborn, and the undisputed ace since he came aboard, Kevin Gausman, led San Francisco to a 7-1 win over the Padres on Saturday afternoon in front of 9,764 at Oracle Park on the most picturesque day of the year, a beauty that heated up the Giants’ bats, too.
The Giants have claimed the series from one of their Southern California rivals before Sunday’s finale. The Padres have one of the best rotations in baseball, and the Giants had totaled five hits or fewer in each of their last six games against the Padres — the Giants’ longest such streak against anyone since 1901.
And so they jumped out to six hits within three innings to snap that skid in a hurry.
First it was Crawford, who connected on a three-run shot in the second off Joe Musgrove, just clearing the right-field wall. Since the calendar flipped to May, the 34-year-old is 5-for-10 with six walks and three homers, his OPS suddenly .855.
? BCRAW
? 407ft
? 105.9mph
? 26° pic.twitter.com/8x4533oQ5A— SFGiants (@SFGiants) May 8, 2021
Crawford’s blast put the Giants ahead to stay, but Gausman gave one back in the fifth. So in the bottom of the inning, Belt reclaimed the three-run lead by crushing his seventh homer of the year, again off Musgrove. The Brandons are knotted at the number and trail Buster Posey (eight) by one. It is remarkable what the Giants’ core has done through five-plus weeks of work.
Padding the lead in the eighth was a mustachioed Austin Slater, who razered a two-run shot to dead center that went 456 (!) feet, the farthest of the Giants’ season. Mustache May is going well.
As is Gausman, who was facing the Padres’ offense for a third time this year, and thus threw more sliders than he normally would, maybe trying to bend slightly away from the heavy dose of fastballs and splitters. The fastball, though, was better than it has been all year, maxing out at 98.6 mph, while averaging 96.2; his average for the season had been 94.3.
For a third straight time, he set down Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado & Co. without much issue.
Gausman went six strong innings, letting up one run on three hits with a walk while striking out seven. In 19 innings against San Diego this year, he has allowed three runs (1.42 ERA) with 18 strikeouts.
The run San Diego got came from an assist by Curt Casali, who sailed a throw to second while trying to catch a stealing Jake Cronenworth on a pitch on which Tommy Pham walked; he didn’t need to throw in the first place. And while Cronenworth came around to score, that was all the Padres could get. Opposing batters are 1-for-21 with runners in scoring position this year against Gausman.
He and the bullpen behind him (Zack Littell, Tyler Rogers, Caleb Baragar) benefited from pretty solid defense, including a few nice plays by Evan Longoria at third. Everything was working, which is a sign of a team in first place.