Giants 16, Brewers 3: The Offense Finally Erupted, and It Was Glorious
Sixteen runs. Seventeen hits. A seven-run sixth inning. Daniel Susac's first two career home runs. Against the best team in baseball. I have been waiting all season to write this column, and I am going to enjoy every word of it.
I need you to understand what happened at Oracle Park on Wednesday, because if you only saw the final score you might assume it was a typo. The San Francisco Giants — the same lineup I have spent three months describing with words I cannot print — scored sixteen runs. On seventeen hits. Against the Milwaukee Brewers, who walked into this series with the best record in baseball at 67-40 and walked out of it having lost two of three. Sixteen. I keep typing the number because I still do not fully believe it.
And the man swinging the biggest bat was the kid catcher. Daniel Susac had never hit a major league home run before Wednesday afternoon. By the time the day was over he had two of them, four RBIs, and three runs scored. The first one was the tone-setter: a three-run blast to center in the second inning, 411 feet, absolutely no doubt off the bat, and Oracle Park sounded like it was 2021 again. Then he went and did it a second time, because apparently once you figure it out, you figure it out. Two career homers, both in the same game, both against the best team in the sport. Welcome to San Francisco, kid. That is how you introduce yourself.
Susac's blast made it 3-0 in the second, and for a few innings this looked like every other Giants game — Milwaukee chipped a run back in the third and another in the fourth, and at 3-2 I was already rehearsing the usual complaints. Then the sixth inning happened, and the sixth inning was the single most beautiful half-inning of Giants baseball I have watched all year. Seven runs. Seven! The whole lineup just kept coming: Luis Arraez slapping RBI singles like it is the easiest thing in the world, Heliot Ramos lining a two-run single, Jung Hoo Lee smoking a two-run double into the gap, the Brewers kicking the ball around for three errors like they were the ones 16 games under .500. It was 10-2 before Milwaukee got a third out, and it was the biggest inning this team has put up at home in over two years.
They did not stop there, and I love them for it. Three more in the seventh. Three more in the eighth. Ramos finished 4-for-5 with three RBIs. Arraez finished with four hits of his own and two RBIs. Lee drove in three. Christian Koss singled in a run and crossed the plate three times. Even the bottom of the order joined in — Drew Cavanaugh singled in a run, Bryce Eldridge and Rafael Devers each chipped in an RBI the ugly way, and honestly the ugly RBIs might have made me happiest, because good offenses cash in the cheap runs too. Eight different Giants drove in at least one. That is not a hot hitter carrying a corpse. That is an actual offense, the thing we have been begging for since April.
Lost in all the fireworks: Logan Webb was quietly excellent again. Six innings, five hits, two earned runs, four strikeouts, one walk, and his sixth win of the year. Our ace has been throwing games like this all season and watching the lineup hand him nothing. Wednesday the lineup handed him a 13-run cushion, and I hope he enjoyed pitching with a lead so absurd he could have thrown batting practice. He earned one of these.
Let me say the part that actually matters: this was a series win over the best team in baseball. The Brewers came in 67-40, steamrolling everybody, and the Giants took Monday's shutout behind Mahle and McCray, absorbed the Tuesday clunker, and then delivered the most lopsided beating Milwaukee has taken all season. The Giants are 46-62 and I am not going to stand here and tell you sixteen runs changes the math on this season, because it does not. The deadline is Monday and the front office still needs to do what it needs to do. But for one gorgeous Wednesday at Oracle Park, the kids mashed, the ace dealt, and the best team in baseball got run out of our building. Both of our wins this series came against the team with the best record in the sport. Let no one tell you these kids cannot play.
Now it is off to San Diego to open a set with the Padres on Thursday, and yes, I know what this team usually does the day after a feel-good win. I do not care. Tonight I am not thinking about regression or the deadline or the standings. Tonight I am thinking about Daniel Susac rounding the bases twice, Ramos and Arraez spraying hits all over the yard, and a sixteen-spot on the scoreboard against the best team in baseball. Days like this are why we watch. Go Giants.
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