PHOENIX — Messaged received.
After manager Bob Melvin dressed down his players following a season-worst sixth loss in a row Tuesday night, they responded the next afternoon with an onslaught against the Diamondbacks’ starter, Jordan Montgomery, and stopped the bleeding at six games with a 9-3 win to avoid being swept for a second straight series.
“Yeah,” smiled Jorge Soler, who singled and scored on one of two Giants home runs in a six-run third inning, then contributed his own solo shot in the seventh. “He kind of squeezed a little bit (more out of us) and let us know how he was feeling. So today, yeah, we were motivated to win for him.”
“Oh,” Melvin blushed, “it had nothing to do with me. We just had good at-bats today. We’ve been really aggressive this entire series on their starting pitchers — they do like to throw strike one — but we got a good pitcher out of the game and made him work.”
Melvin and the Giants know a thing or two about disappointing starts from free-agent pitchers who signed late, and Montgomery trudged back to the third-base dugout to a chorus of boos from the 24,178 on hand with six runs in and no outs recorded in the third inning.
Bringing a dozen men to bat, all six of the Giants’ runs in the inning came on a pair of powerful swings from Heliot Ramos and Wilmer Flores.
Ramos launched a towering two-run shot on to the concourse in center field, an estimated 424 feet away, to open the scoring, and four batters later Flores turn the ambush into a full-blown assault, depositing a hanging curveball into the left-field seats for the Giants’ third grand slam of the year.
Drawing four walks to pair with his home run and a single, Ramos became the first Giants player besides LaMonte Wade Jr. (who has done it twice) to come to the plate at least six times and not make an out since Pablo Sandoval in 2013.
Since being moved to the top portion of the lineup four games ago, Ramos has come to bat 20 times and reached safely in 12 of them with three home runs, raising his batting average to .304 and OPS to .918, both of which would lead the team if he had enough plate appearances to qualify.
“He’s just so balanced, every take, every swing,” Melvin said. “He’s just completely locked in. Who walks four times? Especially when you’re hitting like he is, you want to swing. But they’re deep counts, it’s 3-2, he ends up taking a ball off the plate. It’s really cool to watch because he’s such a good kid and it’s been kind of hard road for him to get here.”
The .211 average and .573 OPS that Flores took into Wednesday’s contest would have each been the worst marks of his career since he was a 21-year-old rookie, and the underlying data hasn’t been any better, with an average exit velocity in the bottom 1% of big-leaguers.
But with a line-drive single to go with his grand slam, Flores has reached base five times in the past two games, and his five RBIs were a season-high.
Jorge Soler tacked on another run with a 427-foot solo shot off lefty Brandon Hughes in the eighth, and the Giants added two more against him in their half of the ninth. The nine runs amounted to their best offensive output since a 9-5 win in Pittsburgh two weeks ago and only the sixth time they have reached that total in 63 games.
Waiting until to sign until March 29, 10 days after Blake Snell, Montgomery’s ERA in nine starts rose to 6.80, a far cry from the pitcher who helped lead the Rangers to the World Series last fall but still nearly two runs lower than Snell’s 9.51 mark in the six starts he has been able to make.
Both starting pitchers had left the game by the time the Giants came to bat for a fifth time, as Arizona ran up Jordan Hicks’ pitch count and backed him into a bases-loaded jam in the fourth inning, prompting Melvin to call on Sean Hjelle, who coaxed a soft ground ball from Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to escape the inning.
Hicks required 92 pitches to record 11 outs, his shortest outing of the season, but limited the Diamondbacks to two runs while striking out seven. His velocity also ticked up, registering regular 98 mph readings on his fastball and averaging an extra mph across his arsenal.
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Since making the move from the bullpen, Hicks had gone at least five innings in all but one of his previous 12 starts but hasn’t completed six since April 27.
Returning to the lineup after missing 22 games with a concussion, Austin Slater started the third inning by lining a single the opposite way.
Slater took over duties in center field, shifting Mike Yastrzemski back to his natural right field and Ramos into left, where he made another running grab to track down a line drive from Corbin Carroll that was slicing away from him, reminiscent of the pair of catches he made in right field in the first game of the series.
Entering the game, Ramos had been worth plus-6 Defensive Runs Saved and plus-2 Outs Above Average, providing elite defense in the outfield corners, and Melvin said the Giants could explore playing him in center after Luis Matos was demoted to clear space for Slater.
“When you’re playing inspired and you feel good and you’re playing loose and confident,” Melvin said, “that’s what happens.”
Notable
The Giants won a game at Chase Field for the first time in eight meetings. They had been 4-13 over their previous 17 games in this ballpark, dating back to July 4, 2022.
Up next
The Giants travel to Arlington, Texas, where they will enjoy a day off before beginning the second leg of their road trip with a three-game series against Bruce Bochy’s Texas Rangers. RHP Logan Webb (4-5, 2.95) will get the ball in the first game of the series, and RHP Keaton Winn (3-6, 6.17) is expected to return to the rotation over the weekend.
