Giants 5, Reds 0: Five Runs in Two Innings Off Chase Burns, and Six Pitchers Finished the Shutout
Two in the first off Chase Burns, three more on a Rafael Devers swing in the second, and then six pitchers took turns not letting Cincinnati do anything about it. Five hits, eleven strikeouts, nobody scored. Fifty three and seventy eight, and the best two hours this team has given anybody in a month.
I'd made peace with this one before it started. Chase Burns walked out there 14-3 with an ERA under three, we'd just been swept out of Fenway on Sunday, and I turned the game on in the first inning the way you check a score you already know the shape of. Sound down. Dishes in the sink.
Drew Gilbert doubled. Jung Hoo Lee lined one to center and Gilbert scored. Turner Hill doubled into the right field corner and Devers came around behind him, and it was 2-0 and I was standing in my own kitchen with a wet plate in my hand watching a baseball game again.
Then the second inning happened and I said something out loud in an empty room.
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cincinnati | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| San Francisco | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | X | 5 | 10 | 0 |
Rafael Devers hit his 27th home run into right center with Christian Koss and Gilbert on base, and that was the entire baseball game by 7:15 at night. Five runs in two innings off a pitcher who'd given up five earned runs total in his last month. The wind was blowing 15 out to center, which is the kind of night Oracle Park hands out about four times a summer, and for once it was us who used it instead of the visiting right hander.
Burns didn't get out of the fourth. Nine hits, five earned, three and two thirds innings, and he took his third loss of the year against fourteen wins. I'm not going to pretend that a 53-78 team beating up a Cy Young candidate on a Monday in August means anything about October. It means something about Monday. I'll take Monday.
| Pitcher | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carson Whisenhunt, SF | 2.2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| Jason Foley, SF (W, 1-1) | 1.1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Reiver Sanmartin, SF | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Ryan Walker, SF | 2.0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Carson Seymour, SF | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Dylan Smith, SF | 1.0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Six pitchers. Nobody went three innings. Five hits, eleven strikeouts, no runs, and the two guys I have spent most of this season complaining about, Whisenhunt with his 6.49 ERA and Ryan Walker with his 6.99, threw four and two thirds of it between them without letting anybody past second base. Foley struck out three in an inning and a third and picked up his first win as a Giant. Elly De La Cruz went up there four times and struck out three of them.
Nobody scored. All night.
Look, I know what a bullpen shutout means over a full season. It means the rotation is a rumor and we're running four arms a night through a September we already lost. I know that. I watched Walker blow two of these in a week earlier this month. Last night he came in with a lead and made it look boring, and boring is the rarest thing this team owns right now.
31,123 showed up on a Monday for a last place team, 62 degrees, partly cloudy, done in two hours and twenty one minutes. If you left at 9:15 you were home before the news. When was the last time a Giants game gave anybody their evening back?
53 and 78. Twenty five under, and the only thing that changed is that we're not getting swept in this one before it starts. Devers is at 27 with five weeks to go and he's the reason I'm still turning these on, him and whatever Bryce Eldridge does next. Christian Koss had two hits and Gilbert had two doubles and scored twice, and I couldn't have picked either of them out of a lineup in April.
The season is in the hub, the roster is on the depth chart page, and everything else is on the Giants page.
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