The last time the San Francisco Giants saw Washington’s Jake Irvin, the right-hander tossed 8 shutout innings. It was way back when on May 24th, back in the heyday of the Giants no-offense nonsense, about a week before playing in 8 straight one-run games.
Since that game, the outlook for both individual and team has changed. After that 3-0 loss to Washington, San Francisco would still take the series, still float around ten-games above .500 but they were no longer padding their record, just struggling to maintain it. They left Washington to go get swept in Detroit, barely manage two wins in Miami, drop two straight against San Diego.
For Irvin, the 8-inning shutout was the best outing of his season up to that point, and would prove to be the best outing of his season since. The last we saw of him was his silhouette as he rode off into the sunset, kicking dust up over a Giants line-up sprawled out and scattered in his wake. The game felt like it could be a turning point for the young righty (much like Miami’s Edward Cabrera’s performance a couple of days later). The future was wide and bright…but just beyond the horizon, Irvin fell off his horse. In his next start he gave up 6 runs over 5 innings against the D-Backs. In total, he’d allow 45 earned runs over the 62.1 intervening innings between his two Giants starts, good for a 6.50 ERA.
Irvin rode into town on Friday night snake-bit, broken, not the man the Giants saw back in May. For better or for worse, time wore on. Once fresh hope has rotted. Expectations changed. Summer has been tough on both opponents, but seeing Washington hobble into town is a good reminder to count your blessings.
San Francisco managed just three hits over 8 innings against Irvin in May; they topped that total in five batters on Friday night. They eclipsed their run total by infinity in two.
Rafael Devers’ homer in the 1st shot off his bat at 106 MPH, it traveled 427 feet, landing in Bonds country out beyond triple’s alley. A brassy, audacious, set-the-tone kind of swing for the evening. The meat of the Giants order followed suit with four straight singles (including one for Dom Smith, giving him a career high 12-game hit streak) capped off by Matt Chapman sawing through a high-and-tight fastball for an RBI bloop into center.
Irvin, to his credit, bucked up after a rough 1st and managed to pitch into the 6th. The contact he surrendered was as sizzling as a Chili’s fajita skillet, but he managed to hold off the break-through hit for longer than expected.
But one can bend for only so long, and the resounding break came with one-out in the 6th, when Casey Schmitt ambushed a first-pitch curveball with a runner on second. I guess Schmitt was sitting off-speed, he calibrated his swing to match the path of the ball and launched it into orbit, eventually plummeting into the fourth row of the left-field bleachers.
That was the night for Irvin, and jumping out to a 4-0 lead pretty much called game for the Giants as well. Jung Hoo Lee would add on an insurance tally in the 8th after he singled, then came around to score on two balls in play that didn’t leave the infield, thanks to some more aggressive, heads-up base running.
Despite the boisterous bats clashing and clanging early on, the game felt much more comfortable than it actually was. Two runs really ain’t that much. It’s pocket change for a lot of teams — but what made it feel like a fortune was San Francisco’s stinginess on the mound and on defense.
Lefty Matt Gage, working as the opener, handled the big boy lefties of James Wood and CJ Abrams at top of Nats order in the 1st. Kai-Wei Teng took over for his second career start after a somewhat intriguing, but ultimately very disappointing outing against the Mets. He struggled on shaking up his mix in that start, putting away hitters quickly, and got burned by walks and had to work from behind after an early 3-run job by Pete Alonso.
While the Nationals are not the Mets in terms of line-up quality, Teng’s bounce back performance was still impressive. He saw the Giants lead through the middle innings, throwing 5 scoreless innings and needing 64 pitches to do it.
In the 2nd, Teng introduced himself to Washington by fanning the first two batters he faced.In the 4th, James Wood led off the frame with a double (the Nats’ first hit of the evening), but Teng stranded him there with two flyouts and an 8-pitch K of Nathaniel Lowe.
Trouble brewed again in the 5th. Thw two-run lead started to look real small after the Nats loaded the bases with nobody out on a walk and two singles. But just when it looked as though everything was going to unravel, Teng pulled it all together in a blink of an eye. Three pitches, two groundballs, three outs, no runs.
A well-placed first pitch sinker for Jose Tena to roll the ball over into the drawn-in defense. Devers made a nice backhand at the cut of the grass and with Josh Bell trotting in from third, had plenty of time to get the force out at home. Teng then dropped an 0-1 curve that Jacob Young pounded into the ground towards Willy Adames at short. For most, it was a tailor-made double play ball, but Young also boasts one of the fastest spring speeds in the league. Doubling him up wasn’t going to be easy — that’s when having a third base arm playing second helps. Schmitt received the toss from Adames, stepped back and gunned to first to get Young by a stud.
Earlier in the inning, Schmitt kept a run from scoring early in the frame by laying out and keeping a single from Drew Millas from reaching the outfield. He made a nice play in the 3rd, charging in on a high-hopper off the bat of Tena that ended with an unorthodox catch by Devers. Carita doesn’t stretch at first, he lunges. A ball well-received is one in which ends with him on his stomach.
Unorthodox, grace-less, but it works, I guess. Drew Gilbert, making his MLB debut in right, clearly subscribes to this tenet of the Raffy School of Fielding.
With two outs in 3rd, Gilbert lost his footing while tracking his first fly in the big leagues. Right field at Oracle is already weird. It takes years to master the idiosyncrasies of its geometry (miss ya Yaz), add on that funk with the adrenaline of a debut, the baseball sinking, slicing away from him, the low wall fast approaching in his periphery — the play was already gonna be an awkward one, so why not have your feet give out beneath you? Somehow, as the rest of his body crashed into the warning track, Gilbert kept his eye on the ball and his glove up and open, making for a memorable first put-out.
After the stress of the 5th, Teng responded with a 7-pitch 6th to end his evening. A trio of relievers in Joey Lucchessi, José Buttó, and Tristan Beck followed suit with a relatively breezy 7th, 8th, and 9th.
There’s finally some daylight between the Giants record and .500 (two whole games!) after being caught in its strong orbit over the last couple of series. If they want to not just stay on the right side of .500 but maybe even make a magical run at the third Wild Card spot, a sweep of these Nats feels like a necessity.