Monday, April 21

Oracle Park San Francisco

By Lewis Rubman

Milwaukee 12-11) 020 000 000 2 6 1

San Francisco (15-8) 010 011 11x 5 8 0

Time: 2:30

Attendance: 31,758

Although your San Francisco Giants started off on their recently completed grueling ten day tour of New York, Philadelphia, and beautiful downtown Anaheim like a house on fire, they cooled down when the weather got heated up in Orange County. The Giants started their homestand on Monday night with a 5-2 win over the Milwaukee Brewers on Monday night.

Sunday’s game, which began with Jason Verlander’s first satisfying start and ended with Ryan Walker’s sudden loss of control (with a little help from Lázaro Díaz behind the plate) to peter out with a 5-5 record for their paschal peregrination, this chilly Monday evening, in the first of a three game series against the Milwaukee Brewers, the Giants chose as their starter their current ace, Robbie Ray, who has a tendency to get into trouble early but right himself before the damage is irreparable.

Ray ran true to form, coughing up a couple of runs to fall behind, 2-0, but allowing the visitors only a single additional tally for the remainder of his five innings on the mound, leaving with the score knotted at two.

The runs he surrendered were earned, and they came on five hits, including ninth place batter Caleb Durbin’s two inning dinger that accounted for all of Milwaukee’s scoring. Ray threw 92 pitches in his abbreviated start; 37 of them were balls.

Ray struck out four and lowered his ERA from 4.19 to 4.07. Hayden Birdsong, originally a starter, but blossoming as a middle reliever, got the win, holding the brew crew to one hit and two walks in three frames. He, too, threw a lot of pitches, 49 (19 balls) while retiring four opponents on strikes.

He now owns a record of 1-0, 1.38). Wrapping up the victory and earning his third save on the season was Camilo Doval, trying to redeem his lost promise, and looking good, being credited with strikes on six of the seven pitches he threw in a hitless ninth.

Ray’s opposite number, the Brewers’ newly acquired Quinn Priester, Pittsburgh’s first round draft choice in 2019 and now with his third team since making his big league debut with the PIrates in 2023. From there he went to Boston in ’24 and then on to Milwaukee this March. He toed the rubber with a too good to be true mark of 1-0, 0.90 and left after four innings at a more down to earth but still outstanding 1-0, 1.93.

He, like Ray, allowed two runs, both earned. They came on four safeties and an equal number of walks. Priester was followed by a parade of five relievers over the game’s remaining four frames. They were Nick Mears, Grant Anderson, charged with the loss that dropped his numbers to 1-1,3.38.

The run came on Wilmer Flores’s 309 foot solo home run over the Hanwha Insurance sign in left center field. Jared Koenig (2/3 of an inning), Joel Payamps (1/3), and Craig Yoho (1), gave up a run apiece, except for Payams, who faced only one batter, Matt Chapman, who ended the Giants’ rally in the fifth with a fly to the warning track in dead center field.

Wilmer Flores and Tyler Fitzgerald were the only Giants to have multi-hit nights. The former hit the tie-breaking and ultimately game winning home run, and the latter managed to scratch out a pair of infield single. Matt Chapman did some nifty fielding, as did Patrick Bailey. Mike Yastrzemski, 이정후 (Jung Hoo Lee), whose seventh inning triple drove in one time Brewer Willy Adames, in the seventh, LaMonte Wade, Jr., and Bailey had one hit apiee.

The teams will go at it again Tuesday, evening at 6:45. Southpaw José Quintana (2-0, 0.71) will start against starboarder Jordan HIcks (1-2, 6.04)