By Morris Phillips

SAN FRANCISCO–Big moments against the best performers. If you’re a San Francisco Giant, this is your official welcome to September baseball.

Darin Ruf had his moment first. With the Giants in a tense, and speedy 1-1 tie in the eighth inning, Ruf delivered a two-run double off Devin Williams, a lights-out setup man for the Brewers, who hadn’t allowed a run of any kind since June 23.

Six pitches after that, Thairo Estrada joined Ruf in the baseball cauldron by delivering a three-run homer that iced a 5-1 win for the Giants. That blast was only the fifth allowed by Williams this season, and the first to a right-handed hitter.

“The boys came hot late,” starter Logan Webb said. “It was fun to watch.”

Fun to watch, and absolutely essential. The win broke a four-game slide for the Giants, and allows them to enter Friday’s showdown with the Dodgers in a dead heat atop the NL West at 85-49. 28 games remain in the season, and only the next three are between the two, hated rivals. That means a lot of scoreboard watching and divided attention to come for the rest of the month.

“It’s a good boost of confidence going into the next series, but obviously, all of our attention and focus was on today’s game,” manager Gabe Kapler said.

The Giants were locked into a pitcher’s duel through seven innings with Webb, arguably the NL’s hottest starting pitcher dueling with Milwaukee’s unheralded Eric Lauer. Lauer allowed three hits and struck out four, with Austin Slater’s first pitch of the outing home run as his only blemish. Webb had sliders darting in and out of the strike zone for seven innings like clockwork, striking out 10 in a dominant outing in which he only allowed Jace Peterson’s RBI single in the fourth.

But by the eighth, both starters were gone, and both teams were scratching for a win as hard as they could.

The Giants caught a break when Kris Bryant was initially called out trying to steal second base, but a replay that needed all the looks and angles possible, reversed the call. After Brandon Belt drew a walk, Ruf struck with his lead-providing double, and Estrada left his mark as the next batter. Milwaukee manager Craig Counsell sat through it all–the replay and the meltdown of his top reliever–but remained philosophical.

In the end, I think they got that call right,” Counsell said. “When a guy that’s 75 feet away from the call gets the call reversed, it’s just a little suspicious. So that was my argument, but they got it right.”

The Giants open the series with the Dodgers on Friday with Anthony DeSclafani facing David Price.