© Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports
We are back to your regularly scheduled Giants programming. After a much-needed All-Star break, in which just one of the Giants’ three All-Stars actually participated, San Francisco got back to business in St. Louis with a 7-2 win over the Cardinals which improves their record 58-32.
It was supposed to be a scheduled Kevin Gausman return to the mound, but Gausman was scratched Friday due to a personal issue; his wife, Taylor, was hospitalized due to pregnancy complications in Louisiana, according to Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle. Manager Gabe Kapler said she is doing well and the situation is being approached day-to-day.
Gausman’s absence meant a spot start for Logan Webb, who accomplished what the Giants needed from him in four innings of one-run baseball. He was on a pitch count and clocked out at 60 pitches, striking out one, walking one, allowing five hits and crucially escaping a bases-loaded jam in the fourth inning.
The Cardinals tacked on a run in the bottom half of that fourth inning to tie the game, courtesy of a Tommy Edman single, but it was a get-out-quick home run that dropped just into the right field corner from Mike Yastrzemski which opened the scoring.
A quick Yaz ? to open the second half pic.twitter.com/lpi6sr5tiv
— KNBR (@KNBR) July 17, 2021
But St. Louis failed to capitalize on their ensuing chances, stranding four baserunners in the fifth and sixth innings, while the Giants did what they’ve done all year, remain ruthless with their opportunities.
They did so in a way that will surely have annoyed the Cardinals, leaning on very short porch home runs. Yastrzemski’s first home run in the fourth set the tone, and was followed up an inning later by LaMonte Wade Jr. with a similar poke to right field.
It was a ball that got out nearly as quickly as it arrived on Wade’s bat, taking the form of a very odd, 21-degree launch angle, 372-foot home run which jumped off the bat at 104.8 miles per hour. It’s a ball that, like Yastrzemski’s 24-degree, 354-foot opener, doesn’t get out in every ballpark.
Wade Jr getting things going in STL ? pic.twitter.com/Y8zw2rk1Vy
— KNBR (@KNBR) July 17, 2021
But as viable as a three-run lead may have proven after five, Yastrzemski made sure the Giants needn’t lean on that slim lead. This one wasn’t quite a no-doubter, but it certainly escaped that line-drive, corner-shot vein that defined the prior two.
Yaz hits his second homer of the game. ??♀️
Giants lead 7-2pic.twitter.com/AaXs21wNuW
— KNBR (@KNBR) July 17, 2021
And it was further “ownage,” as Giants broadcast Dave Flemming calls it, of Cardinals reliever T.J. McFarland by Yastrzemski, who now has three-career multi-home run games and is 9-for-10 with three home runs in his career against McFarland.
But it wouldn’t be a true matchup with these Cardinals if one or both of Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt didn’t get the better of the Giants. Arenado was singled home by Edman for the Cardinals’ first run and Goldschmidt, of course, ripped a monster solo home run 440 feet to center field off Dominic Leone to cut the Giants’ lead to 7-2.
Leone had a howler of an evening, throwing 35 pitches and leaving he bases loaded for Jay Jackson, who was making his Giants debut after being recalled from Triple-A Sacramento earlier in the day. He took his chance and made his mark, striking out Harrison Bader looking on his first fastball of the at-bat after six-straight sliders. Jackson went another scoreless inning for an important 1 1/3 scoreless innings in stressful situations.
That strikeout represented seven stranded baserunners by the Cardinals over three innings and their best, and really last chance, gone. As has been the theme this year, the Giants were as clutch at eliminating danger opportunities as they were at taking advantage of them.
It was all relatively smooth sailing until the eighth inning, when Brandon Crawford singled sharply to right field, then pulled up lame, discernibly reaching towards his hamstring. Crawford was pinch-run for by Chadwick Tromp, and the Giants now wait with bated breath to find out the severity of Crawford’s injury. Crawford’s impact this season for the Giants has been MVP-level on its own, but with Buster Posey, Brandon Belt and Evan Longoria all still sidelined, the impact is even further magnified.