It’s a new day for McCovey Chronicles, as you could probably tell. And hey, maybe — just maybe — it’s a new day for the San Francisco Giants as well. Our site looks new, clean, and fresh, as evidenced by the homepage. And the Giants? Well hey. They look new, clean, and fresh too, as evidenced by their 8-1 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates, a team that, up until Tuesday, appeared impossible for the Giants to vanquish.
But it wasn’t just the absence of defeat that made Tuesday’s victory feel like a new day. Nor is it just forced symmetry with me trying to play off website changes as narrative arcs.
No, it felt like a new day for the Giants because of the manner in which they won. They scored runs for Logan Webb. Not just a few, but a whole bucket full. They hit home runs. Plural. And not even the minimum number needed to qualify as “plural.” They performed well with runners in scoring position. They didn’t strike out often. They made savvy moves on the basepaths. They made less than one silly mistake.
They won the way other teams usually win; the way good teams usually win. That’s distinctly different from how the Giants normally win games, at least these days. And it sure was enjoyable.
Let’s start with the offense because the pitching was more predictable. I say that lovingly to Mr. Webb, whose brilliance we shouldn’t take for granted. So we won’t. We’ll just, like $680 million of Shohei Ohtani’s salary, defer it for a little while.
At first things looked grim. The Giants were up against Mike Burrows, an inexperienced rookie. It is customary for the Giants to struggle against inexperienced rookies and, as evidence, I present Burrows’ last start in which he … held the Giants to one run over six innings while striking out seven. You were worried that would happen again, and at first the Giants did little to dispel that fear. Heliot Ramos lined out on three pitches. Rafael Devers ground out on two pitches. Willy Adames struck out. Matt Chapman lined out. Dominic Smith struck out. Jerar Encarnación struck out. Jung Hoo Lee ground out.
Seven up, seven down, and damn you have seen this movie, read this book, listened to this album before. And with the likely listless back of the order up, you may have turned an eye or two away from the TV, the tablet, the phone, or whatever other newfangled device you watch your baseball on.
Silly you. Patrick Bailey, who has sneakily started to look much more comfortable at the plate lately, stared down Burrows, dared him to throw strikes, and refused to bite when that request was refused, earning a free trip to first base. Up came Christian Koss, making his first start since returning from the Injured List.
It’s easy to forget that Koss was the team’s hottest hitter when he suffered an injury. It’s easy to forget that because it didn’t seem right. He’s supposed to be the glove-first, scrappy backup infielder, not the spark plug bat with some pop.
He saw one pitch from Burrows, and did everything he could to make you view him in a different light. Glove-first, scrappy backup infielders will run into a homer or three here and there, but they’re not supposed to hit the ball 419 feet, taking on the most challenging part of the yard and making it look small.
But that’s exactly what Koss did, and it put a charge in the Giants and, more importantly, a “2” on the scoreboard.
One inning later, after Pittsburgh had cut the lead in half, Encarnación came to the plate for just his second at-bat since returning from the Injured List (sensing a theme?). He had looked rather useless and helpless in his first at-bat, understandable given the circumstances. But in his second at-bat? Well, like Koss an inning prior, it took just one pitch for Encarnación to make Burrows question why he was still throwing fastballs right over the plate, and to make the poor baseball question why it chose the life that it did.
They added on in the fifth, in small ball fashion that was delightfully refreshing to see. With two outs and the bases clear, Ramos singled routinely to left, one of four times he would safely reach base as he seems to be embracing the leadoff role and all it entails. And then, in a complete role reversal, left fielder Tommy Pham threw perhaps the worst throw a Major League outfielder has made this decade and Ramos, alert and ready, took second. It was a breath of fresh air to see Ramos make a smart base-running play on a mistake by a left fielder, given how often lately he’s made base-running errors and left field gaffes. And it took just one pitch for him to be rewarded, as Devers ripped an RBI single on the very next offering.
And then, as if to remind you that these are the new Giants, who do all that newfangled baseballing, Adames stepped to the plate and blistered a baseball the other way, majestically clearing the right field wall and turning a nice lead into a comfortable one.
They weren’t even done there. They made it runs in four straight innings in the sixth, when Smith singled (how good has he been?), Lee doubled (he’s heating up!), and Bailey scored them both with a two-run single (here he comes!).
Suddenly it was 8-1 which, you might remember, was the final score. It was all chilling from there on out.
But we can’t leave without talking about Webb, who continued his new brand of dominance. Webb is still one of baseball’s great innings eaters — arguably it’s greatest innings eater. But he’s traded in a touch of efficiency for a bit more power, and looks more the part of a 2025 ace as a result. Tuesday was one of his clearest examples yet. He only made it through six innings, and he needed 110 pitches to get there. But he gave up just one run, and struck out 10 batters without a single walk. It was his sixth time this year with 10 or more strikeouts, surpassing his total for 2024, 2023, and 2022 combined. Baseball’s biggest workhorse has slyly turned into one of the game’s strongest strikeout artists, and it hasn’t even cost him much in the way of workhorsing.
But he’s still the same old lovable Webb, as evidenced by the run he gave up, on a chaotic run of BABIP-fueled sequencing. Webb gave up four consecutive one-out singles in the third, scoring a run and loading the bases. But then his newfound strikeout prowess came into play: where he normally would have looked for a double play, Webb instead changeupped Oneil Cruz into oblivion, earning a critical strikeout in an RBI situation, before getting Nick Gonzalez to weakly ground out to end the inning.
Save for that hiccup, Webb was on cruise control. In the other five innings he pitched, he only faced two batters with a runner in scoring position. With a gigantic hat tip to his offense, he handed an 8-1 lead to his bullpen, as Bob Melvin sighed in relief at not having to worry about protecting a close lead. Matt Gage was unhittable for two innings and Tristan Beck perfect for one, and 24 hours after a gut-punch of a loss, the Giants finally had the win over Pittsburgh that seemed promised to them on Monday.
Enjoy our shiny new website. I don’t say it enough, but thank you for being here. It’s neither lost on me nor taken for granted.