Giants 1, Guardians 0: Three Pitchers Threw a Shutout in Cleveland and a Victor Bericoto Ground Ball to Shortstop Was the Entire Baseball Game

Twenty four hours after getting run out of the building eight to one, they won a game in which the offence produced exactly one ground ball that found a hole. I'll take it. I'm not going to pretend I enjoyed watching it.

One to nothing. On Wednesday in Cleveland the San Francisco Giants scored a run in the fourth inning on a ground ball to the shortstop, and then three pitchers stood on that mound for nine innings and didn't let a single Cleveland runner cross the plate, and that was the whole game. Nine innings. One run. And it held up, which after Tuesday night is the most surprising sentence I've typed all month.

I want to be clear about something before I say anything nice. This offence struck out fifteen times. Fifteen, in a game they won. The lineup that got shut down by a journeyman on Tuesday came back on Wednesday and got carved up by a rookie named Parker Messick for six and two thirds, and the only reason anybody around here went to bed happy is that our pitching was better than the rookie was.

The run, in full, because it only takes four sentences. Fourth inning. Rafael Devers doubled to centre field, his thirty first double of the year. Willy Adames popped out in foul ground and Bryce Eldridge flied out to left, which is two outs and a man on second and normally the point in the evening where I get up and do the dishes. Then Victor Bericoto hit a ground ball at Brayan Rocchio and it snuck through the left side and Devers came around to score. Jung Hoo Lee doubled behind him, Bericoto stopped at third, and Osleivis Basabe flied out to end the inning.

That's the offence. One run in nine innings, on a two out ground ball to the shortstop. And it was enough.

It was enough because Adrian Houser was outstanding again and nobody is going to write about it. Matt Wilkinson opened the game and gave two clean innings. Then Houser came in and threw five innings, four hits, no runs, two walks, three strikeouts, and picked up the win. This is the same Adrian Houser who threw six shutout innings against Houston last week and got absolutely nothing for it because a rookie dropped a fly ball and Adames walked off holding his back. He has been the steadiest arm on this staff for six weeks, on a team nobody is watching.

And then Dylan Smith, whose name I'd like everybody to remember. He came in with Steven Kwan standing on first and one out to get in the eighth, and he struck out José Ramírez swinging, struck out Nathaniel Lowe looking, and struck out Angel Martínez swinging on a ball in the dirt that Drew Cavanaugh had to throw down to first. That's the middle of the Cleveland order and he punched all three of them out with the tying run on base in a one run game.

Then he went back out for the ninth. Travis Bazzana grounded to Adames. Angel Genao singled. Petey Halpin struck out swinging. And Patrick Bailey, who caught for this organisation for three years and who half of you still think of as ours, struck out looking to end it. Two innings, one hit, five strikeouts, save. That's a young man throwing the two best innings of his life in a game that means nothing to the standings and everything to him.

Ten strikeouts, no walks, and Parker Messick lost the game. That's what our lineup did to him. He struck out ten San Francisco hitters, walked nobody, gave up six hits and one run in six and two thirds, and took the loss, because one of those six hits was a two out ground ball that found a hole. Baseball is a stupid sport and on Wednesday it was stupid in our favour for once.

Willy Adames had three hits. Three for four, back at shortstop, moving fine. After the back spasms in Houston that's genuinely good news, and it's allowed to be good news even in a lost season. Jung Hoo Lee had two more and is up to twenty seven doubles. Devers had the double and scored the only run of the afternoon.

Now the ugly column. Jonah Cox went nought for four with four strikeouts. Four, in one game, at the top of the order. Bryce Eldridge went nought for four with two more, which happens to twenty one year olds against left handers who can spin a breaking ball, and the kid has banked enough credit around here that I'm not spending a paragraph on it. Drew Cavanaugh, nought for three. Christian Koss, nought for three. Osleivis Basabe, nought for four. Five men in that batting order never reached base at all.

And Adames kicked one at shortstop in the seventh to put a Cleveland runner in scoring position with a one run lead on the line, because this team physically can't get through nine innings without handing somebody a free base. Houser worked around it. Somebody always has to work around it.

Fifty two and seventy four. It moved by one, in the right direction, for the first time in a few days. Thirty six games left. None of this changes where the rebuild actually stands or what the manager keeps doing to lineups, and I'm not going to sit here in the third week of August and tell you a one to nothing win in Cleveland means a thing in October.

What it means is that Adrian Houser and Dylan Smith deserved one night where the result matched the work, and they finally got it. That happens about four times a year on this roster. Take it. The rest of the season is in the season hub, the names are on the depth chart page, and everything else lives on the Giants hub.

Across the country, the Athletics carried a five to one lead into the eighth inning in Kansas City and lost by two. So one Bay Area baseball team won a game it had no business winning and the other lost a game it had every business winning, on the same afternoon. That's about right for this summer.

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