Bryce Eldridge Went 4 for 5 With 4 RBI and Suddenly the Giants Are Fun Again

Giants 7, Diamondbacks 2 in the Saturday nightcap at Oracle Park. Four hits, four driven in, a career high matched, and the first Giants rookie since Buster Posey in 2010 to put up that line. He's been a different hitter since he got back.

I turned the nightcap on out of habit. That's the honest starting point. We'd already lost the opener 7-1, Wotus got run before anybody threw a pitch, and I had the game on in the kitchen the way you leave a radio on, not the way you watch a baseball game.

Then Bryce Eldridge came up in the fifth with the game tied and put two runs on the board, and I stood in front of the television for the rest of the night like it was July of a year that mattered.

4 for 5. Four RBI. Career high matched on both. Giants 7, Arizona 2, and the doubleheader gets split.

Here's the number that got me. He's the first Giants rookie since Buster Posey in 2010 to put four hits and four RBI in the same box score. Buster Posey, 2010. You know exactly what that season was and you know exactly what that rookie turned into, and now the kid who's the entire reason this last place team still gets watched in the Bay is standing in that sentence with him.

I'm not saying he's Posey. Nobody's saying he's Posey. I'm saying it's been sixteen years and nobody else who came up here got close, and that's worth stopping on for a second before we go back to being miserable about the bullpen.

The fifth was the inning. It's 1-1, Arizona has Mitch Bratt out there, the Giants load it up, and Eldridge does what he did all night, which is take the pitch he was given and shoot it the other way instead of trying to launch it into McCovey Cove. Three runs that inning. Two more in the eighth. Nine hits, zero errors, and a lineup that scored seven while Rafael Devers went 2 for 5 with two driven in and Jung Hoo Lee added another.

Four singles. Four runs. No home run anywhere in it.

Yunior Marte made his major league debut in that game, up from Double A Richmond, and gave them four and two thirds of one run ball with three strikeouts. That's a nice thing that happened. I'd love to tell you I noticed at the time. I was watching the first baseman.

He's been a different guy since he got back

Three days ago the only thing I cared about was that Eldridge was back with the club and that whatever put him on the bereavement list was a great deal bigger than a last place baseball team. That's still the part I care about most, and I'm not going to pretend a family thing is a baseball storyline, because it isn't and it never was.

But I'd be lying if I said the difference in his at bats wasn't obvious.

Go look at what he's done since he was activated. First game back, 1 for 4 with a run driven in. Next night, 2 for 5 with a home run and two more. Then the 4 for 5 with four. That's 7 for 16 in his first four games back with seven driven in, and his season average went from .252 to .261 in three days, which at 326 at bats is not a small move. He's at .261 with a .353 on base, a .451 slug, fifteen home runs and forty two RBI in ninety one games, and he doesn't turn twenty two until October.

The swings look lighter. He isn't chasing the elevated fastball the way he was in the middle of August, when Vitello kept getting asked about the drop in production and kept giving those manager answers about process. He's staying inside the ball. He's letting the single be a single. Every hit Saturday night went where the pitch asked it to go, and that's a twenty one year old doing something a lot of thirty one year olds never learn.

Maybe going home reset something. Maybe he just got hot the way hitters get hot and I'm building a narrative out of four games because it's the end of August and there's nothing else to build one out of. Both can be true. I know what I saw, though, and what I saw was a kid who came back looking like the weight was off him.

What's actually left

Nothing. There's no October here, there hasn't been since the deadline, and Arizona pulled into a virtual tie for the last wild card by losing the game, which tells you plenty about how far from that conversation this team is.

So what's left is what it's been for a month. Thirty odd games of watching whether Bryce Eldridge is the guy, and Saturday night he answered louder than he has all year.

I'll take the split. I'll take the fifth inning. Mostly I'll take the fact that for three hours on a Saturday night in a dead season I forgot to be annoyed at this baseball team, and that hasn't happened since June.

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