The Colorado Rockies and San Francisco Giants played each other to a stalemate for most of their second game in the series. Second verse similar to the first. But not the same.
Rather than having to wait around for 16 innings and over five hours of baseball, the Giants’ Jaylin Davis put a merciful end to the Wednesday night contest, giving his club a 2-1 win to even the set at one apiece.
It was the first home run of his career.
In a game where offense was hard to come by on both sides, Colorado had the unfortunate reality of hitting hard line drives that all seemed to be aimed directly at fielders. And the Giants best contact, until the last play of the game, kept coming on pitches they couldn’t wait back on enough to keep fair. They even sent a couple of splash hits into the bay: for strikes.
Starter Tim Melville was able to dance around hard contact and once again live on the edges of the strike zone despite an erratic umpire behind home plate. As such, he limited the damage to a single run on four hits over five innings pitched as he continues to make his bid for a 2020 MLB job.
He narrowly worked out of the one jam in which he found himself during the third. Mauricio Dubon opened the inning with a line drive to left and he moved up on a sac bunt. Melville got Brandon Crawford to roll over one to right side of the infield for the second out, moving the runner to third.
After getting squeezed on the first pitch of an encounter with Mike Yastrzemski, Melville ended up walking him before catching too much of the zone on a fastball to Kevin Pillar. The Giants’ center fielder pulled a line drive just over Trevor Story’s head at short for a single that drove in the first run of the game.
Colorado tied it up in the seventh on an unusual play. Josh Fuentes started the inning with a single and he moved up when Tony Wolters was struck by a pitch. Pinch-hitter Yonder Alonso grounded out and Garrett Hampson struck out but Raimel Tapia came up with a grounder up the middle and used his speed to apply pressure to the defense.
Crawford unleashed a throw in the dirt that Brandon Belt was unable to handle and not only was Tapia safe, but Fuentes was able to race all the way around to score as Belt continued to fumble for the baseball.
The Rockies bullpen, consisting on this night of Phillip Diehl, Yency Almonte, and James Pazos, kept the scoreboard clean until DJ Johnson surrendered the game-winner in the ninth.
