SF Giants’ rookie hits grand slam for 1st homer, Rodón retakes strikeout lead in win over Rockies
SAN FRANCISCO — Two grand slams, separated by about 10 minutes but thousands of miles, could change the course of baseball’s playoff race. What’s crazy isn’t the coincidence; it’s the fact that it matters at all.
On the cusp of elimination seemingly since the All-Star break, the Giants are hanging by a thread to the mathematical possibility of a postseason berth. Not only will they not die — they beat the Rockies, 6-4, on Thursday for their ninth win in 10 games — their competition hasn’t exactly broken out the shovels, either.
At 78-78, the Giants improved to .500 for the first time since they were 61-61 on Aug. 23.
“We’ve played some really good baseball leading up to the end here,” said starter Carlos Rodón, who lowered his ERA this season to 2.88 and retook the National League lead in strikeouts with six shutout innings. “I guess it’s better late than never, right? Hopefully some things will go our way.”
A lot — a lot — would have to go the Giants’ way for them to make good on their sliver of a chance remaining at the playoffs. But it is no less remarkable that a team eight games under .500 as recently as last Sunday has climbed all the way back into the black and is even sniffing the postseason.
One loss by the Giants and one win by the Brewers or the Phillies will officially end their playoff hopes. But that was the case Saturday, too, and it remains true five days later.
Sometime around 7:15 p.m. PT Thursday — after Philadelphia lost its fifth straight earlier in the day — the Marlins’ Avisail Garcia launched a grand slam over the center field wall in Milwaukee. Once on the cusp of retaking the third wild card spot from the Phillies, leading 2-0 in the eighth inning, the Brewers were instead sent to a 4-2 loss.
At about 7:25 p.m., the first home run of Ford Proctor’s career sailed into the first row of the bleachers in left field at Oracle Park. After a pair of walks and a pair of singles already loaded the bases and plated one run, Proctor’s first career homer also happened to be a grand slam that broke open their win over Colorado.
As he rounded first base, Proctor pumped his first. And when he reached home plate, he was greeted by a hurricane of high fives.
Proctor called it his best baseball memory — second place being his major-league debut last week — even though he said he blacked out rounding the bases.
“It was the fastest I’ve ever run around the bases, I know that,” said Proctor, who traded a signed ball and a signed bat and took a photo with the fan who caught the home run ball. “This past week has been a whirlwind. Just trying to take it all in and enjoy it.”
Proctor, 25, a utilityman acquired via trade from Tampa Bay last month, became the 16th player in Giants franchise history to hit a grand slam for his first career home run, the first since Kelly Tomlinson did so against the Cubs in 2015. (It was also how Brandon Crawford recorded his first home run and hit in his very first game in 2011.)
The grand slam was made all the more meaningful when the Rockies rallied off Jharel Cotton and John Brebbia for four runs in the ninth, after being blanked for eight innings. The Giants had to call on Camilo Doval to record the final out.
With Rodón his usual dominant self in what could be his final home start in orange and black, manager Gabe Kapler said it immediately felt like enough to win the game.
“You could feel it the moment,” Kapler said. “That felt like the story of the game right there.”
Will it matter, though?
With the Giants’ win and losses by the two teams ahead of them, San Francisco staved off elimination again. With six games to play, they are 5.5 back of Philadelphia and 5.0 games behind Milwaukee for the third and final wild card spot.
As Kapler said pregame when presented with the information that the Phillies lost again, crazier things have happened. (But, as one reporter responded, have they?)
One crazy thing happening every five days or so since the start of April has been Rodón’s sensational season, which continued Thursday, buoyed by Proctor’s grand slam.
Rodón made no matter of the Giants’ monitoring his workload Thursday night, steamrolling through six shutout innings and reclaiming the National League lead in strikeouts, anyway.
Rodón’s 95th and final pitch registered 97.7 mph on the radar gun, coaxing a fly out to end the sixth inning. He finished off the previous two hitters with a rare curveball that Yonathan Daza took for strike three and a sweeping slider that sent Brian Serven back to the dugout, too — his ninth and 10th punchouts of the night.
Rodón, who already set the single-season franchise record for double-digit strikeout games, added to his lead with his 11th of the season. His total victim count for the season grew to 237, six more than the Brewers’ Corbin Burnes, who is scheduled to start Friday.
“It’d be pretty cool, but we’ll see,” Rodón said of the strikeout crown.
If he holds off Burnes, Rodón would become the sixth pitcher in Giants history to lead the NL in strikeouts and the first since Tim Lincecum, who did it in three consecutive years from 2008-10.
Will he be paying attention to Burnes’ start Friday night?
“I’ll worry about that later,” Rodón said. “We’ve got our own game, so I’ll pay attention to that.”
And somehow, still, that game will carry meaning in the NL wild card race.
If the craziest outcome doesn’t come to fruition, 24,112 paying fans witnessed Rodón’s final start at Oracle Park this season. Nobody can say they were shafted at the box office.
In 15 starts on the shores of McCovey Cove, Rodón limited opponents to a 1.93 ERA, struck out 121 and walked 26 in 84 innings. His first start here, striking out a dozen over five innings against the Marlins back in April, merely served as a preview of what was to come. The only pitcher to finish a season with a lower qualified home ERA was Tim Lincecum (1.88) in 2008.
“There’s definitely a home field advantage when I show up and pitch at this park,” Rodón said. “It seems like when the crowd’s behind us, we play well.”
Even better: his numbers with catcher Austin Wynns (1.74 ERA, also in 15 starts), who helped out offensively Thursday night, too. Wynns extended his hit streak to five games with two more knocks, including an RBI knock with the bases loaded in the second that preceded Proctor’s grand slam and got the Giants on the board.
With one more start set to come next week in San Diego, the focus shifts to the pressing question of whether it will be Rodón’s last start ever at Oracle Park as a member of the Giants. He can opt out of his contract and is expected to receive a long-term, nine-figure deal on the open market.
“It kind of feels like a blessing for all of us to be able to send him out there every fifth day and you know you’re going to have a chance to win the game,” Kapler said. “In many ways, he’s come as advertised. The reports on Carlos when we first got him were this is a guy when he’s on the bump is as good as anybody in the league, as electric as anybody in the league and can do things that most can’t. That’s really what’s happened.”