Brandon Crawford, SF Giants beat Arizona Diamondbacks

SAN FRANCISCO – Maybe the Giants really can leave last month’s hitting woes in the rearview mirror.

Brandon Crawford and Lamonte Wade Jr. hit home runs in the sixth and seventh innings, respectively, as the Giants overcame a three-run deficit to earn a 4-3 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Tuesday before an announced crowd of 25,806 at Oracle Park.

Down 3-0 in the bottom of the sixth inning, Luis Matos doubled to right-center off Diamondbacks ace Zac Gallen to score Blake Sabol from first base and cut Arizona’s lead to two. Crawford followed that with a two-run homer, as he crushed a 93 mph fastball from Gallen over the center field wall to tie the game 3-3. It was Crawford’s first homer since July 7 and just his second since the start of May.

Wade then hit a 96 mph sinker from Diamondbacks reliever Miguel Castro over the right field wall to give the Giants the lead for good as they won for the fifth time in seven games on this homestand.

The Giants hit a modest 23 homers in both June and July and now have 122 for the season, sixth most in the National League.

“We came into the season thinking we were going to hit home runs as a team,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler said. “That didn’t mean that any one individual was going to lead the team by a huge margin or that we were going to have guys in the 30s right now, or even in the 20s.

“But we were pretty confident that we would have home runs up and down the lineup, and we’re going to need that to get where we want to go.”

Ryan Walker, taking over for starter Alex Cobb, threw 2 1/3 scoreless innings before he gave way to Sean Manaea with one out in the ninth. With Geraldo Perdamo at first, Manaea retired Corbin Carroll before catcher Patrick Bailey snapped a throw over to first back to get Perdamo and end the game.

Bailey also threw out Jace Peterson as he attempted to steal second base in the eighth inning, and Blake Sabol caught Perdomo stealing second in the fourth.

“Perdamo’s obviously a really aggressive baserunner and they’re a really aggressive baserunning team,” Bailey said. “Lamonte, kind of the pitch before (the pickoff), we both kind of made eye contact. It was a good time to pick off and it worked out well.”

“Our catching was as responsible as anything else for winning that game,” Kapler said. “Our catching has just been excellent all the way through, obviously since (Bailey) joined us, and Sabol’s been really good as well, doing a really nice job back there framing and leading the staff.”

The result marked just the third time in their last 13 games that the Giants had scored at least four runs in a game, as they maintained a half-game lead over Philadelphia for the National League’s top wild-card spot and remained 2.5 games behind the Dodgers for first place in the NL West.

The Giants went 12-13 in July with a .209 batting average and a .632 OPS that resulted in an average of just 3.32 runs per game, the worst in MLB. San Francisco’s .632 OPS last month was its lowest in a full single month since September 2019 when they posted a .602 OPS as a team.

Fair to say the Giants’ players and front office do not expect those paltry numbers to become the norm. Both Farhan Zaidi, president of baseball operations, and Kapler both said before Tuesday’s game – and about two hours after the trade deadline came and went – that their group can turn it around at the plate.

“We have the same group of guys we had the first three months of the season, so I think we’ll get we’ll get going here a little bit,” Zaidi said. “Obviously, we haven’t had our ‘A’ lineup out there very often this year. That’s been challenging, but we just have to make the best of what we have.”

Cobb had an uneven outing as he allowed a solo home run to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. in the fifth inning and solo shots to both Alek Thomas and Ketel Marte in the sixth. Per the Giants, it was the first time Cobb had allowed three home runs in a game since Sept. 11, 2020, when he took the loss against the New York Yankees in the Bronx as a member of the Baltimore Orioles.

There was a question as to whether Cobb would start Tuesday. He was too sick to start Monday and remained under the weather Tuesday afternoon, so much so that Kapler didn’t know for sure two hours before the game whether Cobb could go.