The Dbacks continued to take advantage of a slumping Giants team with a vintage Zac Gallen performance and a powerful offensive showing.
The phrase ‘Its not about who you play but when you play them’ I feel exemplifies the past couple of days best. A hot Miami Marlins team embarrasses us at home, while a fading San Francisco Giants team with a struggling offense gives us hope that Zac Gallen may have turned a corner again. Whatever you choose to believe, you should feel good about how the Dbacks played tonight.
As mentioned, the tone was set for this game by the former ace Zac Gallen who overcame a 2 run second inning to shut down this Giants offense for the subsequent 5 innings retiring the final 12 batters he faced. His final line was 7 innings of 1 earned run ball with 10 K’s. He really did look like the vintage Zac Gallen of old as he didn’t walk a single hitter and inducing 16 whiffs, a super encouraging sign for this team.
The offense flexed its power hitting 4 home runs in this one. Most notably the play of the game for me was fun old friend Jake McCarthy’s 3 run home run in the bottom of the 4th. Giants starting pitcher Hayden Birdsong had thrown 10 straight balls, and on the 11th pitch McCarthy took a healthy hack at a fastball at the top of the zone and hit it 422ft. You could hear Suarez in the dugout asking McCarthy if he knew the pitcher had just thrown 10 straight balls, and Jake said yes! McCarthy for me just brings that edge to this team as also evidenced in the post-game interview when asked what this team thought of the doubts that people may have. “They don’t know shi*!” I love it.
Gurriel, Mccann, and Grichuk also contributed home runs. With Grichuk and McCann coming back to back in the 6th inning. Grichuk wasn’t even scheduled to be in the lineup today hit a titanic blast 453 feet off a right-handed pitcher it should be noted. Torey said in the post game Naylor should be back in the lineup tomorrow, but its good to see that next man up mentality paying off for this team and guys like Grichuk rising to the occasion.
Whether or not you believe this was a good night for the Dbacks or a bad night for the Giants, its clear this team clearly prefers to play with a little bit of a chip on their shoulder and to be the underdogs. Hopefully they can continue that mentality and this run into the 4th of July weekend especially now that they are just 3 games out of the wild card. Giving this fanbase a shot of hope heading into the holiday is certainly welcome.