A weight lifted off the collective shoulders of the San Francisco Giants as Luis Matos rounded the bases. 3-run homers are generally pretty life-giving, they feel down-right miraculous when you’ve averaged only 2-runs a game for weeks, and just yesterday, you watched every well-struck ball at the wall get wrassled out of the air by a Miami outfielder.

But this one off Matos’s bat kept carrying, and with it safely over the fence and in the bullpen, we could breathe a sigh of relief/disbelief. “That was therapeutic,” Mike Krukow’s apt words. One swing, a game’s worth of offense. The missing big hit. A crooked number — and the Giants hadn’t put a number that crooked in a frame since their last 3-run homer (from Wilmer) on May 16th.

The drive put the Giants up 4-0 in the rubber match against Miami. Marlins’ starter Ryan Weathers had given up just two runs total across his first three starts (15.2 IP) against the Padres and twice against the Cubs. Considering San Francisco’s offensive state, their woes against southpaws and the caliber of Weathers’s mix, this felt like a game the Giants weren’t going to win.

Weathers’s average fastball velocity is 97 MPH, and he often shoots 98, 99, often right at the knees. He likes the low fastball because it effectively cloaks his hard change-up. 80% of his mix is the interplay of these two offerings, and then he’ll sling a sweeper every now and then to keep hitters on their toes. He ambushed Adames with that breaking ball to get out of a minor 2-on, 2-out jam in the 1st.

It was clear that the game-plan going into this one was to be aggressive on the base paths. Turn 90 feet into 180, the risk worth it at this point, nothing to lose, anything to jumpstart this unresponsive lineup. By the 3rd inning, Heliot Ramos already had two singles and two stolen bases. He swiped second with one-out in the 1st, and again after a 1-out walk by Tyler Fitzgerald, the Giants pulled off a rare double steal in the 3rd, which set up an RBI fielder’s choice by Flores.

With the 1-run lead, San Francisco maintained the pressure in the next inning. Casey Schmitt worked the count full and spat on a shoe top fastball to reach first, and with two outs, Patrick Bailey kept the inning alive by yanking a single through the 5.5 hole. Enter Matos, who didn’t miss a misplaced change-up belt-high.

Hayden Birdsong and five relievers made the four runs stick — good thing, because that appears to be the max output of the line-up these days. Matos’s long ball was their only hit with runners in scoring position (1 for 6), and they stranded 6 runners. Though 3 walks and 5 hits was the most action Weathers had allowed on the base paths so far, he still managed to frustrate, going 6 innings while collecting 7 strikeouts.

Birdsong worked into the 6th as well. Through 5 IP, matching his longest outing so far, he had allowed just two hits, both to lead-off man Xavier Edwards. Most impressive was the zero free bases allowed with five strikeouts (all swinging) and a lot of splintered contact on the ground.

But trouble started on his third trip through the order. Edwards again (spoiler: he’d go 5-for-5 on the day) flared a single into center and scored on two more singles. The run and three consecutive knocks chased Birdsong from the game with 88 pitches thrown.

Things didn’t get easier with the bullpen on the mound. Ryan Walker closed out the 6th without further harm on a devastating slider to Kyle Stowers, but trouble immediately started up again when Jordan Hicks, in his fourth appearance as a reliever, provided a fully-funded rally in the 7th. Hicks threw 20 pitches, and 14 of them missed the zone…by a lot. The indifference Javier Sanoja had to moving his bat from his shoulder during his plate-appearance was palpable. Standing straight up in the box, he dared Hicks to throw it over the plate, and the struggling righty couldn’t. Four straight balls loaded the bases, Hicks graciously inviting the tying run to the plate — who was, of course, Xavier Edwards.

Tyler Rogers was called upon to clean up the mess and was immediately burned on the most ridiculous infield single imaginable.

The baseball shot directly into the ground off Edwards’ bat so quickly that it even baffled the Statcast robots. No launch angle or exit velocity registered on the contact — but a run scored.

Rogers settled things down by striking out Jesús Sánchez (who, as we all remember, hit a walk-off sacrifice fly against Rogers three years ago…pay back!) and getting Otto Lopez to ground out to short.

The Marlins would once again put the tying run on base against Erik Miller in the 8th, and once again Camilo Doval would be called upon to secure the four-out save in front of his mom. He did, erasing a lead-off single by Edwards in the 9th with a double play, and securing the final out by charging off the mound on a swinging bunt and stylishly sending a sinker over to first.