return to the Bay Area<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m so happy for him,\u201d said starter Logan Webb, who allowed one run over season-high eight innings. \u201cDealing with injuries last year and coming back this year, he\u2019s a huge part of our team. We missed him last year a lot. Seeing him healthy this year and back to doing what Wilmer does is really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added manager Bob Melvin: \u201cI don\u2019t know that anybody would predicted this, but when he came back in spring training and you saw that it was pretty normal to what we\u2019ve seen before, we felt good about him. But I don\u2019t think anybody could\u2019ve predicted this.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Giants gave Flores their vote of confidence multiple times this past offseason, hypothesizing that a healthy Flores could return to his 2023 form. That proposition was far from guaranteed.<\/p>\n
Flores sustained a knee injury earlier last year and tried to play through the pain. The result was a .206 batting average, .595 OPS and four home runs, all of which were the worst marks since he became a full-time player. On his 33rd birthday, he underwent a season-ending Tenex procedure on his right knee.<\/p>\n
Nine months later, he\u2019s one of their most valuable players \u2014 value that can\u2019t be fully captured in WAR. Most of that value derives from his at-bats when runs are on the line.<\/p>\n
Flores, with a grand slam in the third and three-run homer in the sixth, now owns a slash line of .381\/.469\/.667 with runners in scoring position. His 1.136 OPS in these situations is the sixth-best mark in all of baseball, well above his overall mark of .786. To outfielder Mike Yastrzemski, who has played with Flores for the last six years, that proficiency with men derives from his experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see the trends of trying to bring up guys when they\u2019re so young and replace a lot of older players. I think that Wilmer is showing what a true veteran should be doing, and it\u2019s really impressive. It\u2019s incredible. He\u2019s been in every situation that there has been in the game, basically. You see it in his at-bats. They\u2019re consistent. They\u2019re always really calm. He knows what he has to do, and he never tries to do too much.\u201d<\/p>\n
To Yastrzemski\u2019s point, Flores said that he wasn\u2019t trying to homer in any of his three at-bats that yielded one.<\/p>\n
Flores stepped into the batter\u2019s box in the third with an opportunity to break a scoreless tie: bases loaded, no outs. Flores got ahead in the count, 2-1, against the Athletics\u2019 JP Sears before fouling off five consecutive pitches. He ran the count full on the ninth pitch, then capped off a 10-pitch battle by sneaking a middle-middle fastball over the left-field fence to give the Giants a 4-0 lead.<\/p>\n
In the sixth, Flores strolled to the plate with runners on first and second with one out \u2014 another opportunity with runners in scoring position. The Athletics\u2019 Michel Ota\u00f1ez left a four-seam fastball over the heart of the plate and sent it towards those same left-field bleachers. Left fielder Tyler Soderstrom leapt and extended his arm, but Flores\u2019 drive had just enough juice to extend San Francisco\u2019s lead to 7-0.<\/p>\n
Flores\u2019 final plate appearance of the evening featured empty bases. He\u2019d hit two homers on nine other occasions up to that point, and Anthony Maldonado left him a fastball over the heart of the plate, he finally completed the trifecta.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody loves Wilmer here,\u201d Melvin said. \u201cEverybody around the league loves Wilmer. He\u2019s about as respected as a guy as you\u2019re going to come across. So, it\u2019s great to have someone have a game like that. It\u2019s doubly good that it\u2019s Wilmer, and I think everybody really embraces him. He\u2019s a leader.\u201d<\/p>\n
Originally Published: May 16, 2025 at 9:49 PM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Wilmer Flores believed he had more game to give. His track record provided him with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,162,7939,5775,853,4,378,66,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-33630","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-giants","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-giants","10":"tag-giants-alert","11":"tag-inside-sports","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-san-francisco","15":"tag-san-francisco-giants","16":"tag-sanfrancisco","17":"tag-sanfranciscogiants","18":"tag-sf","19":"tag-sf-giants","20":"tag-sfgiants","21":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114522772929562982","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}