San Francisco Giants’ Patrick Bailey, bottom, scores the winning run against Cleveland Guardians catcher Bo Naylor during the tenth inning at Oracle Park in San Francisco on Wed Sep 13, 2023 (AP News photo)

Wednesday, September 13th, 2023

By Troy Ewers

San Francisco, CA – The series finale to this three game series with the San Francisco Giants (75-71) and Cleveland Guardians (69-78) comes in the form of a 66 degree day game in Oracle Park overlooking a beautiful McCovey Cove.

On the mound today starters, Kyle Harrison for the Giants and Logan Allen for the Guardians. The Giants win after a review that showed runner Patrick Bailey was ruled safe scoring on a sacrifice fly. Bailey scoring from third base that was hit by LaMonte Wade Jr. in the 6-5 win in ten innings.

The game Tuesday night snapped a four game winning streak by a 3-1 Cleveland victory and today’s game started exactly where last night’s game picked up. After a lead off Steve Kwan walk, Jose Ramirez would smack a 1-1 pitch to the left field bleachers for a two run home run and with no outs, Guardians 2-0.

The first inning rally for Cleveland wasn’t done yet as an error for Casey Schmitt off a hit by Gabriel Arias would lead to scoring both Josh Naylor and Andres Gimenez, 4-0 Guardians. 

The Giants wouldn’t concede this early though as they jumped on Cleveland the same way Cleveland jumped on them. Luis Matos hits a single that scores Austin Slater and moves over Thairo Estrada. After Matos’s hit, Allen walked Patrick Bailey and loaded the bases, but that would be stopped and Guardians got out of the jam, but the score would be 4-1. 

In the second inning the Guardians would add another one to their onslaught as Josh Naylor hit a single that scored Steven Kwan, making it 5-1 Cleveland.

The Giants took Kyle Harrison out in the fifth and he walked away with three strikeouts, seven hits, and five runs which he’d probably want to forget for his first career day game. From the third inning on it was a scoreless pitching duel, with the score still in favor of Cleveland, but San Francisco broke that stalemate in the seventh inning with a Wilmer Flores scored Thairo Estrada who got on with a double, 5-2.

The Giants were coming down to their final chances and to give themselves better chances, the Giants had Joc Pederson pinch hit and he was hit by pitch so the eighth inning started with Joc on base, but that was just the set up. Patrick Bailey followed him up with a single and moved Joc to third.

Then J.D. Davis erupted the crowd with a home run that Steven Kwan couldn’t snag in left field. This three run home run would’ve blown the roof off this place if it had a roof and just like that, the score was tied 5-5 with no outs. After a DeJong grounded out to second, Lamonte Wade Jr. who was the hero in Monday’s game, hit a single making him the potential go ahead runner on first base.

Estrada almost electrified Oracle Park with a deep fly ball to left, but that was the inning and we headed into the ninth inning with a tie game. 

The Guardians scared the Giants fans with two hits on Tyler Rogers that put runners on second and third, but Camillo Doval came in and got the last out of the inning, now it was the orange and black’s turn in the ninth inning. Wilmer Flores started the inning at bat and singled to left.

Blake Sabol pinch ran for Flores and Mitch Haniger went to the box. Haniger would strike out, but Sabol would make it to second with a steal and Pederson next in the box. Joc would fly out to center and two outs Bailey was the one to possibly be the hero, but he would be struck out swinging and we have extra innings. 

Cleveland’s go at the 10th inning was three up, three down from Doval and now the pressure was on the Giants. A lead off walk for Davis made it a runner on first and the extra innings runner in second and pinch hitting was Brandon Crawford and the crowd was on their feet.

Crawford would flash bunt majority of the at bat and got on base on balls and now the bases loaded with no outs and Wade Jr. at the plate. Lamonte hit the ball to left field and it was caught, but Bailey would tag third and go home, at first sight it looked like Bailey beat out the throw, but after further review Bailey was safe and the game was over 6-5 Giants!!! 

The Giants walked away from this homestand 5-1 and won the series against Cleveland. The winning pitcher is Doval (6-4) and the losing pitcher is Xzavion Curry (3-4) who gave up the walk-off hit. No time to celebrate for SF as they play a brand new four game series against the Colorado Rockies in Colorado at Coors Field September 14th. It’s unknown who will start for the Giants in the first game of the series, but they know they will face Chase Anderson (0-5, 6.49) on the mound for the Rockies.