Giants other rookie saves the day

The San Francisco Giants, feckless and fully on life support after one of the worst road trips in franchise history, were in desperation mode after Sunday’s defeat. As we’ve been told since birth, desperate times call for desperate measures, and in baseball parlance, desperate measures means desperate transactions. And so it wasn’t surprising that the team that flew out of Tampa Bay on Sunday was not the same as the one that arrived to Oracle Park on Monday to face the San Diego Padres to kick off a six-game homestand. The reports trickled in on Sunday night while the plane was likely still on the tarmac in Florida. They were confirmed by the beat reporters later in the evening. They were announced by the team on Monday afternoon. Exactly a month ahead of the schedule set by last year’s “it’s time to go” quote, Buster Posey was pulling the trigger on the biggest in-house moves he could make. Bryce Eldridge, the team’s top hitting prospect since Posey himself, was coming up. Jesús Rodríguez, one of the top contact hitters in all of the Minors, was accompanying him. The third move was almost an afterthought, both in the announcement and in the literal sense. After opting to use two starters during Thursday’s excruciating doubleheader, the Giants needed to add a starter for Monday. With a shrug, a sigh, and perhaps even a blindfold, they waved their collective finger around and landed on Trevor McDonald. If you could inject truth serum into a press release, here’s what the one from the Giants would have said: Giants call up top prospect Bryce Eldridge, oh my god that’s exciting and they also call up Jesús Rodríguez, and my goodness that’s going to be so much fun, all of this is for Monday’s game and oh yeah, if you’re curious, not that you care, Trevor McDonald is also up to start that game, don’t get used to him, he’ll be gone tomorrow. That was the sentiment, and I don’t say that negatively. It’s just the reality of the situation, and it was entirely justified. But that chasm in excitability was forgetting two of the foundational tenets of baseball. The first tenet: inexperienced hitters tend to take quite a lot of time getting their feet wet and their gears spinning and their numbers numbering. They’re usually pretty bad for a while, making it a little bit of a paradox that Posey was calling on two such players to fix a broken offense. And so it was that neither of the young electric hitters did much in the batter’s box. Eldridge, making his season debut, hit a weak pop up that carried into left field in his first at-bat, and struck out in his final one, and while he sandwiched those two negative outcomes around a walk, it’s hard to give him much credit there when it was a four-pitch bases on balls in which Randy Vásquez couldn’t find the strike zone if you built a new mega strike zone out of four normal-sized strike zones. Rodríguez, making his Major League debut, used his three at-bats to make four outs, hitting a line out and two ground outs, the first of which erased Eldridge’s walk with a double play. The second tenet: no player in the history of baseball has as large of a gap between their ability to be bad in AAA and their ability to be good in the Majors as McDonald. And so it was that McDonald, who entered the game with a 5.40 ERA in five AAA games this year, and with 15 walks in 15 innings, made the Padres look feeble and foolish from start to finish, pitching seven of the most efficient innings the Giants have seen all year, allowing just two hits and one run, walking nobody, and striking out eight. It truly defies explanation. McDonald now has pitched 205 innings in AAA and has a 5.18 ERA, with 192 strikeouts and 91 walks. He’s pitched 25 MLB innings and has a 1.44 ERA, with 23 strikeouts and just three walks. I don’t know what kind of bizarre magic that is, but if the Giants are going to take at-bats away from Matt Chapman to facilitate time for Eldridge, one would have to imagine they’ll be compelled to siphon some of Adrian Houser’s innings in the direction of McDonald. McDonald stated his case immediately, striking out Ramón Laureano on three pitches to open the game. It was a statement for McDonald, for McDonald’s sinker (which he threw all three times), and for Rodríguez, who suited up behind the dish and saw his first taste of MLB action calling and receiving a strikeout. For as impressive as the punchout was, it arguably wasn’t the best thing that McDonald did in the inning. After retiring Fernando Tatis Jr., he faced his first bit of adversity: following five straight sinkers to open the game, McDonald finally deviated on the first pitch he threw to Jackson Merrill. Instead of his best pitch, McDonald went to a changeup, which not only hung, but floated into the worst spot of the plate. Merrill responded the way All-Stars do, by taking on center field with absolute ease, clearing the fence with room to spare, and earning a slow jog around the bases while admiring a 436-foot blast. A lot of things have plagued the Giants over the last five seasons of relentless mediocrity. A whole lot of things. That’s a can of worms for another day. I recommend following our own Bryan Murphy’s writing if you really want to get into it. But the defining characteristic of the Giants during this half-decade of futility has been an inability to right the ship once the bad times commence. Miniature obstacles turn to small slumps turn to large swaths of failure. The inability to get the team to stand up after falling over ultimately cost Bob Melvin his job, and plenty of players have exited the stage for the same reason. So it was a breath of fresh air — and an injection of something sorely needed (no, not steroids) — that McDonald galumphed about on the mound as he watched Merrill run his 360 feet, then rubbed up a new baseball, dug in, and attacked Manny Machado, earning a two-pitch out. And then he needed just 10 pitches to cruise through the second inning, while striking out a pair of batters. To that point, McDonald had thrown 18 pitches, and 17 of them had been strikes. If there’s a way to Posey’s heart, it just might be that (if there’s a way to mine, however, it is food; I am not beating that stereotype). From that point on, McDonald would only allow two more baserunners: one in the third, when he hit Jake Cronenworth, and one in the fourth, when he gave up a single to Merrill. And this time he was once again prepared to bounce back from the baserunner: after Merrill reached second on a fielder’s choice, McDonald provided one of the highlights of the game, and one that showed his deft theatrics, as well. Right as Kruk and Kuip were alerting fans to the fact that McDonald can field his position well, he stabbed a comebacker from Xander Bogaerts, whipped to third, and fired a strike to Casey Schmitt to get the lead runner out. It was a gutsy play, and one that required a tremendous amount of skill. Thankfully, neither guts nor skill seem to be in short supply for McDonald. The offense, meanwhile, may not have been jumpstarted by the arrivals of Eldridge and Rodríguez, but it wasted no time giving McDonald a lead to play with. It took only until the second batter in the first inning for the Giants to have one of their best at-bats of the season, and it’s not hard to guess who provided it: Schmitt. Starting at third base while Chapman rested (it appears Schmitt will be roving around the field now that Eldridge has arrived), the breakout star of the team continued his torrid start on Monday. After falling behind in the count 0-2, Schmitt took three consecutive brilliant pitches, all off the plate by merely an inch or two. The fish weren’t biting, and with the count now full, Vásquez was forced to find the strike zone. He opted for the pitch he (and most people) can most reliably accomplish that with, and Schmitt was waiting for it all the way. The four-seam fastball entered batter’s box at 95.6 mph and exited it at 102.5 mph, finding a home comfortably up the left field bleachers as Schmitt rounded the bases. That was the equalizer, but the Giants were hungry for more. Luis Arráez followed Schmitt by smacking a double in an 0-2 count, and then the Padres reminded you that they, too, are capable of a little bit of ineptitude. With one out, Heliot Ramos grounded a ball to the shortstop Bogaerts, while Arráez broke for third. Bogaerts attempted to take out the lead runner but was unable to do so, and suddenly Giants had runners at the corners thanks to the no-out fielder’s choice. Two pitches later, they would cash in one of those runs on a Rafael Devers RBI single. They added a critical insurance run in the sixth inning in remarkably similar fashion: Arráez doubled for the second time and Ramos (who would later triple as he continues to come to life) once again grounded the ball to Bogaerts, who this time did the smart thing and got the easy out, allowing Arráez to take third, where he would score on a Devers sacrifice fly. That run proved necessary, as the the bullpen took a bend-don’t-break approach. Tony Vitello opted to not risk ruining a good thing, and didn’t let McDonald go out for the eighth inning, despite the righty having thrown a mere 81 pitches (60 of which were strikes). Instead, it was Keaton Winn, who appears to be settling into the setup man role, especially with Erik Miller currently injured. Winn played that role excellently, needing just eight pitches to retire the side in order. The ninth was a little less smooth, but reminiscent of the first inning. Vitello continues to search for the right bullpen buttons to press, and on Monday opted for a very sensible one, as he gave Caleb Kilian a chance to close. And the very first batter he faced, Laureano, hit a 447-foot moonshot — as no-doubter as a no-doubter can be at Oracle Park. Suddenly it was just a one-run game, and the heart of the order was showing up. But if McDonald provided the first example of a Giants player proving that you can stop negative momentum in its tracks, Kilian brought the closing blow. He responded by completely breaking down Tatis, getting him to strike out with all three strikes coming via ugly swings-and-misses. Then he got Merrill to weakly ground a ball to second base ... so weakly, in fact, that it almost wasn’t an out, save for the brilliance of Arráez, who had a truly sensational game with the glove, making highlight play after highlight play. And finally, with the Giants faithful rising to their feet, Kilian struck out Machado swinging as the crowd erupted. Eldridge and Rodríguez will have their time in the sun. Hell, it might be as early as tomorrow. But it’s a team sport, and sometimes it’s the less heralded call ups that stop the bleeding, and lead you to a 3-2 victory.