Giants 7, Braves 3, and I Am Not Going to Pretend I Did Not Enjoy That

Anthony Molina goes five without walking anybody, the bullpen throws four scoreless, and a four run sixth ends it. Five wins in the last eight, and this club is genuinely watchable again.

Devers hit the ball 403 feet into the right field seats in the top of the first and I sat down on the arm of the couch instead of the couch, which is what I do when I think something might actually be about to happen. Then Atlanta got it right back in the bottom half on a Matt Olson groundout, Michael Harris II put one over the center field wall in the second, and I thought, alright, here we go, this is the version where we lose 6 to 4 and I feel dumb for having sat down at all.

It wasn't.

Giants 7, Braves 3, and it was more comfortable than the four runs make it look. I had it on the whole way and never once got up to do something else, which for this season is basically a rave review.

Anthony Molina gave them five and didn't walk anybody

Five innings, six hits, three earned, zero walks, six strikeouts. Not a masterpiece. He gave up the Harris homer and an RBI single to Drake Baldwin in the fifth, and there was a stretch where Atlanta hit four balls hard in a row off him. But zero walks is the whole thing with this rotation right now. Nothing this staff has done since the deadline has cost more than free passes in front of somebody's three hole, and Molina went into Truist Park and made Acuña and Olson and Riley beat him with the bat instead of gifting anybody a baserunner.

Then the bullpen, which I have spent this entire summer describing in language I wouldn't use in front of my mother, threw four scoreless innings. Jason Foley got four outs. Reiver Sanmartin got five, struck out two and didn't allow a hit. Dylan Smith worked the ninth. Twelve outs after Molina came out, one hit total, and I kept waiting for the part where somebody loads the bases and it never showed up.

The sixth inning was the game

Bryce Elder had already been through the order twice when Osleivis Basabe led off the sixth and hit his fourth home run of the year 409 feet to center. Andrew Knizner singled. Nate Furman singled. Turner Hill doubled into the right field corner past Acuña and both of them scored. Bryce Eldridge followed with a line drive single to left off Dylan Lee and Hill scored.

Ballgame.

Elder's night died right there in the middle of it, five and a third, eight hits, five earned, and he had to stand on the mound and watch the whole inning happen to him before anybody came to get him.

Eldridge went 2 for 5 and has been on base constantly since he came back. Jonah Cox laid down a bunt single in the fifth that scored Devers, which is a genuinely fun way to drive in a run, and then hit a home run of his own in the ninth off Ray Kerr. Knizner 2 for 4. Furman 2 for 3. Eleven hits spread all the way through the order, against a team that still thinks it is playing for something in September.

Nobody is going to notice this, but they have been better for a week and a half

Five wins in the last eight. Two in a row now, after they split Saturday's doubleheader at home with a 7 to 2 nightcap. Before that they took two of three from Cincinnati and beat Arizona 6 to 1 in the series opener. That's not a run. I'm not going to insult you by calling a 57 and 81 club hot. They're 25 and a half back and there's no version of this September that changes anybody's life.

There's a difference between bad and unwatchable, though, and for most of July this team was the second one. The at bats have gotten longer. Guys are working counts. Eldridge and Devers in the same lineup means there are two spots where the other manager actually has to think, and it turns out that changes the shape of the whole game. Molina and Whisenhunt have both handed over starts you can build a plan around.

The other thing, and I know I've complained about this man more than any adult should complain about a baseball manager, is that Vitello got through nine innings without doing one thing I wanted to throw a remote about. Foley for four outs, Sanmartin for five, Smith for the ninth. A normal, correct way to run a bullpen with a lead, which isn't a sentence I've gotten to type since roughly June.

My brother texted me in the seventh asking if I was watching. I said yes. He said he had it off since the second because he assumed. I told him to put it back on, and he said no, he wasn't going to jinx it, which is the most Giants fan answer available and also probably correct.

Two more in Atlanta. I have no idea what happens next, and for the first time in about six weeks I mean that in a good way.

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