SF Giants beat Reds with Mike Yastrzemski walk-off home run

SAN FRANCISCO – Midway through the last game of a six-game homestand Wednesday, the Giants seemed primed to fade into oblivion.

Instead, the Giants rallied from a five-run deficit to the delight of an announced crowd of 35,186 at Oracle Park to eventually tie the game in the eighth inning and win it 8-6 in the 10th. Mike Yastrzemski won it with a two-run home run in the 10th against Emilio Pagan that landed in McCovey Cove.

It came on the first pitch he saw, with free runner Matt Chapman on second base.

“Just wanted to keep this flight happy, you know,” Yastrzemski said after the Giants’ third walk-off win in six games. “Keep everybody going in the right direction.”

After a day off, the Giants begin a 10-game, three-city road trip to New York, Philadelphia and Anaheim, with the Yankees up first Friday night.

Wilmer Flores tied the game with a solo home run leading off the eighth inning against Tony Santillan. The Giants scored one in the fourth inning and four in the sixth after losing the two previous games to the Reds by scores of 1-0 and 2-0.

Those games came after a three-game sweep of Seattle, including two walk-offs.

“You sweep a series in dramatic fashion, then you go ahead and lose three games,” Giants manager Bob Melvin said. “It’s not a terribly good feeling. So it went from what could have been a rough period to one that we feel really good about.”

It was the fifth homer for Flores, one more than he had all of last season. Yastrzemski’s home run was his second.

Erik Miller (1-0) was the winning pitcher for the Giants, pitching a scoreless 10th. The Giants are 9-3, with the Reds falling to 5-8.

Center fielder Jung Hoo Lee finished 3-for-5 with a double and a triple and Flores was 3-for-4.

Trailing by five runs, the Giants rallied within 6-5 in the sixth with one run scoring on a wild pitch and three more coming in on four consecutive two-out hits — a double by Yastrzemski, a single by Flores, a triple by Patrick Bailey and a single by Tyler Fitzgerald.

It was at that point, Melvin said, “I felt like we were going to win the game.”

“That was a huge inning, getting extended four times with two outs,” Yastrzemski said. “To have that kind of fight and drive is huge.”

Cincinnati starter Nick Martinez was replaced by Taylor Rogers before Bailey’s triple, and he finished giving up four earned runs in 5 1/3 innings.

Giants starter Justin Verlander had one bad inning in the third when the Reds scored five times but he ended up pitching into the sixth, giving up five hits with three walks and nine strikeouts in 5 2/3 innings.

In the first two innings, the 42-year-old right-hander looked like the Verlander of old, rather than an old Verlander. He threw 20 pitches, 18 of them strikes, and struck out the side in the second. It was a welcome sight, coming as it did after a 2 1/3-inning struggle against Seattle in which he gave up three earned runs and threw 65 pitches.

Things changed dramatically in the third. No. 8 hitter Jake Fraley walked, and Austin Wynns drove a single past Chapman at third base. Chapman had his hand checked after scraping it on the dirt and stayed in the game.

TJ Friedl, the five-year veteran from Pleasanton’s Foothill High, doubled off the right field fence for the first Cincinnati run. After Santiago Espinal’s infield single, Elly De La Cruz doubled down the right field line on a bouncer that ticked off the glove of leaping first baseman LaMonte Wade Jr. and Cincinnati led 3-0.

Gavin Lux was next, and with the infield in, he drove a single just under the glove of Fitzgerald at second base. It was scored a hit, and drove in two more runs for a 5-0 Reds lead.

Verlander then struck out Will Benson and got Spencer Steer on a popup. But by then he’d faced eight batters, given up five hits, five runs and thrown 34 pitches in the inning.

Melvin chalked it up to Verlander being “unlucky,” lamenting the seeing-eye grounders as well as Friedl’s hit that left the bat at just 91 miles per hour. Verlander didn’t entirely agree, but said that in terms of his pitches having velocity and life, “It’s the best I’ve felt since 2022. Not even close.”