SAN FRANCISCO — The pregame scene at Oracle Park on Friday afternoon — originally known as Pacific Bell Park when it opened 25 years ago — was an exercise in nostalgia.
The jumbotron featured a montage of the best moments in the ballpark’s two-and-a-half decades, from Barry Bonds’ milestone homers, to Matt Cain’s perfect game, to the World Series runs. The team recognized members of the 2000 Giants, a list featuring Bonds, J.T. Snow and Dusty Baker. Bonds then took the microphone and rallied the crowd, imploring the fans who supported the team over the last 25 years to rise to their feet.
Buster Posey, upon becoming San Francisco’s president of baseball operations, said the team was in the business of making memories. They created plenty during their first 25 years at this venue. And on Friday, the Giants and Seattle Mariners engaged in arguably the most thrilling home opener in this ballpark’s history, a gritty, grimy barroom brawl of a ballgame that lasted a shade over four hours and ended with Willy Adames, the franchise’s new $182 million dollar man, hitting a walk-off, two-run single in the bottom of the 11th. The Giants stand at 6-1. The vibes, so far, are high.
And in their longest game of the pitch clock era they, indeed, made a whole lot of memories.
“They’re a bunch of dogs,” Adames said. “They’re going to go out there and fight and try to beat the other team. We showed it today. We never give up. We were battling, punching back and that’s what I’ve seen so far from the group of guys that we have in here.”
Added manager Bob Melvin: “A lot of twists and turns. We obviously didn’t do some things right. Kind of went both ways. But for an Opening Day like that with a packed house and nobody left for one second. It seemed like there was drama every single inning. We put on a good show.”
The Giants have put on six good shows to begin Posey’s first season at the helm, and most of those wins have required a different calculus than the last.
On Opening Day, Wilmer Flores hit a go-ahead, three-run home run in the top of the ninth inning that stunned the crowd at Great American Ball Park. In Houston, Jordan Hicks and Logan Webb turned in masterful outings in the first and second games of that series before the Giants completed their sweep of the Astros by outslugging them in the series finale. Through it all, they relied on excellent pitching (2.72 ERA), spotless defense (zero errors) and timely hitting (.308 batting average with runners in scoring position). The home opener, by contrast, was neither crisp nor clean, and what they did well on the road didn’t transfer home.
Justin Verlander, making his first start in this ballpark since Game 1 of the 2012 World Series, recorded seven outs and allowed three earned runs. The 42-year-old needed 30 pitches to finish his first two innings but threw 35 pitches in the third inning, many of them coming in a 13-pitch battle with Seattle’s Cal Raleigh that ended in a walk. With Verlander turning in the Giants’ shortest outing of the year, Melvin relied on seven pitchers — Randy Rodríguez, Lou Trivino, Camilo Doval, Erik Miller, Tyler Rogers, Ryan Walker and Spencer Bivens — to eat innings.
Along with Verlander’s short outing, San Francisco’s defense and situational hitting weren’t as proficient compared to the road trip.
Adames did make a leaping catch to rob Julio Rodríguez, his friend, of a base hit and joked that he’ll have to pay for Rodríguez’s lunch, but second baseman Tyler Fitzgerald committed the Giants’ first error of the year, leading Doval to give three unearned runs. Doval, though, didn’t do himself any favors by allowing three steals — one to Raleigh, a catcher — in one inning. As far as timely hitting, the Giants went 6-for-28 with runners in scoring position on the afternoon and squandered opportunities to win the game in the ninth or 10th.
The win-loss column, though, does not feature adjectives. For what it’s worth, the fans at Oracle Park certainly didn’t seem to mind watching their new shortstop deliver a win.
“Good teams find different ways to win ballgames. You can’t just win one way and sustain that over the course of a season,” Verlander said. “Today was a slugfest, and we were able to pull it out that way. It’s like I said in spring: This team has something special and I think we were kind of overlooked. It’s early, but I think you can see that this team is pretty good.”
True to Verlander’s description, the home opener was a true see-saw affair that featured numerous lead changes, 17 pitchers, 18 runs and 32 hits over 11 arduous innings, one in which neither team could maintain control for more than half an inning.
Both teams scored a run in the first. San Francisco scored two in the second; Seattle responded with two in the third. 3-3. The Giants scored two more in the fourth; the Mariners countered with two more in the fifth. 5-5.
San Francisco, once again, took the lead with a run in the fifth, but coughed it up as Seattle scored three runs thanks in large part to Fitzgerald’s error. The deficit, appropriately, didn’t last long. Matt Chapman hit a solo homer, then Patrick Bailey legged out a potential inning-ending double play to score a run. 8-8.
Then, for four innings, silence.
The scoring ceased in the seventh, eighth, ninth and 10th, both teams failing to capitalize. During the ninth, in particular, San Francisco had a runner on third with no outs but couldn’t push him home. In the 11th, the damn finally broke.
With Rodríguez up and the bases loaded, Bivens threw a wild pitch to the backstop that allowed Luke Raley to score from third, giving the Mariners a 9-8 lead. The Giants needed, at the minimum, an equalizer. Adames, instead, called game.
“It was kind of apropos that the new big signing for us ended up coming up with a huge hit to win a game,” Melvin said. “There was a lot going on out there, but it was pretty cool that he ended it.”
Originally Published:
Source: Paradise Post
