KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Coming off their most disappointing home stand of the season, Bob Melvin had a directive for his club.
“We realized that we can’t just let the season end,” the Giants’ skipper said before their series finale against the Royals. “We’ve got to win some games and dig a little bit harder.”
Message received.
On the same road trip they were mathematically eliminated from postseason contention, there’s a strong case to be made the Giants are playing their best baseball of the season. Their series against the playoff-hopeful Royals ended the same way as their series against another American League contender began, with a shutout win — 2-0 — behind Blake Snell at his very best.
“Getting two in Baltimore, then sweeping the Royals — those are playoff teams — there’s nothing better,” Snell said. “It’s frustrating because we know how good we are, so for us to not get it done the way we could (earlier in the season), that’s frustrating.”
Snell yielded just two hits and one walk over six shutout innings while striking out nine as the Giants swept only their third series of the season. The damp Sunday matinee represented the Giants’ 12th chance this season to complete a sweep but they had been successful only in their two tries against the lowly Rockies.
Despite objectively having less at stake than their opponents, the Giants have gone 5-1 and outscored them 31-9.
“It speaks a lot about how we want to win, we’re not just going to cave in,” Snell said. “We’re want to play, we want to win, we want to make it hard on these teams to beat us. We’re doing a great job of that. We’re all playing for a lot right now. Bob has made that very clear.”
Snell issued his lone walk to lead off the second inning, then responded by striking out the next five hitters he faced, coming one shy of his sixth game in double digits this season, trailing Chris Sale, Garrett Crochet and Tyler Glasnow, despite his first only coming July 27.
In 12 starts since returning from the injured list July 9, Snell has a 1.23 ERA with 114 strikeouts in 80⅓ innings. With one start left this season, he has lowered his season ERA in the 20 total times he’s taken the mound to 3.12, after it sat at 9.51 when he landed on the IL for a second time June 2.
San Francisco Giants starting pitcher Blake Snell throws during the first inning of a baseball game against the Kansas City Royals Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
As a team, the Giants have thrown three shutouts through the first six games of the trip after doing it eight times in their first 150 games of the season. After a 9-0 win Saturday, they recorded back-to-back shutouts for the first time since Aug. 2, when Snell threw a no-hitter.
They’ve limited the Royals and Orioles to nine runs in six games, a team ERA of 1.51.
After a sloppy home stand in the field, they also have gone the first six games of the trip without committing an error.
And although their bats produced only two runs in Sunday’s series finale, they have recorded two of their top 13 single-game outputs of the season and scored first in every contest. The offense also woke up after being shut out three times while dropping their previous four games at Oracle Park.
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Against Seth Lugo, who shared a rotation with Snell under Melvin in San Diego last season, the Giants put up a two-spot in the second inning for all the scoring they would need to secure their first sweep since the last week of July.
Jerar Encarnacion got things started with a sharp single to center field and scored from first base when Grant McCray tripled into the gap in right-center field. With the speedy McCray on third, Tyler Fitzgerald fouled off two bunt attempts and went down swinging, but Brett Wisely delivered a piece of timely hitting to extend the lead to 2-0, poking a two-strike, two-out curveball in front of Tommy Pham in left field.
Notable
Encarnacion laced his second-inning single at 115 mph off the bat, tying him with Joc Pederson for the Giants’ third-hardest hit ball of the Statcast era (since 2015).
Up next
The Giants head to Arizona, where they wrap up their final road trip of the season with three games against the Diamondbacks. RHP Hayden Birdsong (4-5, 4.74) flew there ahead of the club and will start the first game of the series against LHP Eduardo Rodríguez (3-3, 5.09). First pitch is scheduled for 6:40 p.m. PT.
