Thairo Estrada celebrating his solo home run. (Photo from San Francisco Giants Instagram)

By Troy Ewers

SAN FRANCISCO–On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, the San Francisco Giants played the New York Mets to end the 4 game series in front of a crowd of 27,271 people. The Giants came away with a 2-2 split in the fourth game of the series in a 5-4 win at Oracle Park. With Alex Wood’s injury, Ross Stripling got the start and his 3.1 innings were where the Mets had the majority of their offense.

Three runs credited to Stripling’s innings and it was the Rogers brothers who had to stop the potential bleeding. The first four innings for San Francisco was what you like to see if you’re a fan of the Giants. Joc Pederson got an RBI in the first which brought in Lamonte Wade Jr., Thairo Estrada hit a solo bomb in the second, and Wilmer Flores (on a pinch hit) and Brett Wisely got big RBIs in the fourth.

By the top of the sixth it was 4-3 Giants after two big standing strikeouts for Tyler Rogers, Francisco Alvarez hit the equalizer for the Mets and New York put a muzzle on this Bay Area crowd in a 4-4 ballgame. Once Tyler Rogers got his fourth strike out and escaped the inning, the Giants knew they had to find some type of energy to put back in the ballpark and after a quiet seventh inning, the hero that stepped up was Mike Yastrzemski who after Pederson got on from a walk, Yastrzemski hit a huge RBI double, his 11th RBI of the season and a clutch moment to silence the critics.

Manager Gabe Kapler called in Camillo Doval to close out and get the save and was one strike away from striking out the side. Scott Alexander would walk away with the win (his second win of the season) for San Francisco and Doval secured his second save of the season. The theme of this game for SF was every time it felt like this game had a chance to get in the Mets favor, the big names on the Giants roster all stepped up.

Hopefully this is the start of a stretch of wins for the black and orange, because the next series is against the St. Louis Cardinals here at Oracle Park and beating NL central goliaths like the Cards is a big boost for the boys in the dugout. The Cardinals will start left hander Jordan Montgomery (2-2 ERA 4.84) the Giants will be going with right hander Alex Cobb (0-1 ERA 2.79) on Monday night with a 6:45pm first pitch.