CINCINNATI — Bob Melvin laid out two imperatives in recent days.
The Giants needed to start racking up series wins, and they would have to do so on the road, where they have played the fifth-worst baseball of any team this season.
Romping over the Reds, 8-2, they checked both boxes Sunday afternoon.
Robbie Ray struck out nine over five innings while limiting the Reds to a pair of back-to-back solo home runs, and the Giants got their own power display from Matt Chapman, LaMonte Wade Jr. and Tyler Fitzgerald, whose homers accounted for all the runs San Francisco would need to secure a win in the series’ rubber game.
Taking two of three from Cincinnati, the Giants (56-57) earned their first series win away from Oracle Park since this time last month and created some separation at the bottom of the National League wild card race. They now lead the Reds (53-58) by two games but still trail four teams with four games separating them from playoff position.
The score was tied at 2 when Wade stepped to the plate against Cincinnati starter Carson Spiers to lead off the sixth inning, and one pitch later the Giants held a one-run lead that they wouldn’t relinquish. Wade lined a knee-high sinker just high enough but plenty hard — 107.7 mph off the bat — to clear the wall in right field.
The home run was Wade’s fourth of the season and his first since July 2, a 19-game drought. It was one of 11 home runs around the majors this season with a launch angle of 17 degrees or less, and together with his towering 50-degree blast in May gives him the Giants’ highest home run of the Statcast era and their lowest since 2017.
Chapman’s two-run blast that tied the score in the fourth was no wall-scraper, leaving his bat at 109.1 mph and traveling an estimated 421 feet to straightaway center.
It was Chapman’s second home run in as many games and — if you count his Little League homer Friday (a double and two errors in the scorebook) — his third of the series. In 11 games since July 24, Chapman is batting .357 (15-for-40) with four homers, four doubles, eight RBIs, 10 runs scored and seven walks.
Fitzgerald’s 11th of the season — and also his second of the series — padded the advantage in the eighth, driving in Wade after his second hit of the game. Michael Conforto doubled home two more and then traded places with Jerar Encarnacion to make it a five-run inning, more than they had totaled in any of their previous four games.
Robbie Ray #23 of the San Francisco throws a pitch against the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ball Park on Aug. 4, 2024 in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
Lowering his ERA to 4.40 in three starts since returning from Tommy John surgery, Ray was dominant other than for a stretch of two batters — two pitches, really — in the second inning. After Stuart Fairchild went down swinging for the second out, Jeimer Candelario connected with an 0-1 heater to open a 1-0 lead, and Santiago Espinal sent the next pitch — another fastball — into the seats to make it 2-0.
The Reds put only two other runners on base against Ray and stranded men at third base in three separate innings, including Elly De La Cruz twice.
In the third, De La Cruz reached on a fielder’s choice and advanced to third when Curt Casali’s throw sailed into center field but was stranded there when Ty France bounced out to Wade at first base. In the sixth, he represented the tying run when T.J. Friedl hit a slow roller toward Chapman.
Similar to his game-saving play earlier this season in New York, Chapman charged the ball, barehanded it and fired an accurate sidearm throw just in time to first base to end the inning. It was Espinal who used his dynamic speed to reach third in the fifth, swiping two bases after a leadoff single.
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All it would have taken was an opportunistic ball in play to push across Espinal with less than two outs, but Ray reared back and struck out the next three hitters. He slowly backpedaled off the mound after powering a fastball past Jonathan India to end the inning with his ninth strikeout of the afternoon.
The pitch was clocked at 97.3 mph, his fastest of the day by a full mile-an-hour and his hardest fastball since undergoing major elbow surgery and missing 16 months.
Notable
Catcher Jakson Reetz had a locker in the visitors’ clubhouse with Curt Casali expected to go on the paternity list.
Up next
The Giants are off to Washington, D.C., where they will finish up their road trip with four games against the Nationals. RHP Logan Webb (8-8, 3.49) gets the ball in Game 1 against LHP Patrick Corbin (2-11, 5.88) on Monday (3:45 p.m. PT), RHP Hayden Birdsong (3-0, 2.97) will be recalled to start Tuesday and LHP Blake Snell (1-3, 4.29) will make his first start since his no-hitter on Wednesday before LHP Kyle Harrison (6-4, 3.69) goes Thursday in the series finale.
