San Francisco Giants Bats Wake Up, Score Lots of Runs

This San Francisco Giants game wasn’t close from the get go, and it somewhat spoiled what was a promising pitching matchup. But nobody is complaining after that 9-1 route of the Mariners.

It was supposed to be a good old fashioned pitching duel between Johnny Cueto and Felix Hernandez. The San Francisco Giants said obliged.

It started early as Hernandez couldn’t really locate much. Pablo Sandoval came up to the plate, wit the bases loaded and took a four pitch walk to start off the scoring. The Giants got another on a Wild Pitch, and another on a sac fly. But that’s not really the most important thing from today (I don’t want to here about proper inverted pyramid form). The Giants hit four homers. That’s huge.

Gorkys Hernandez (I know, Gorkys of all people) got the party started when he took King Felix deep in the second inning. He blasted one to deep left center field for his first since 2016. Then, Brandon Belt got his first of the year with a powerful flip shot to left field in the fifth. McCutchen and Posey got on base for Pablo Sandoval, who turned back the clock and ripped a three run home-run into McCovey cove to make it 8-0.

The Mariners ended up pulling Felix, and three pitches later, James Pazos got rocked by Brandon Crawford for his first of the year.

The Mariners did tag Cueto for a run in the sixth, but that was all they got. Cueto moves to 2-0 with the Giants 10-1 win.

Three Things:

1. The Giants have outscored the Mariners 13-0 in the last 14 innings over the two game series. That offense was nice. They hit five homers in that span, and looked to be getting plenty of traction on the base-paths. We won’t see 9 runs from them every game, but this sure is nice to watch.
2. Pablo Sandoval is second all time now in Splash Hits. His home-run in the fifth inning was his eighth splash hit of his career. He is obviously second to Barry Bonds, who has 35. ONLY 27 MORE TO GO PABLO!
3. The Bullpen was good again. Josh Osich had one bad outing in L.A, and has looked to be his normal good self so far. His changed delivery and strong spring have certainly carried over into the regular season. He wasn’t the only one though as Watson was nails again in the eighth, and Strickland took care of business in the ninth, even though they didn’t need the save.

Next: Get to know the Giants' farm teams in 2018

The Giants have Thursday off, but are slated to start a three game set with the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday. That will be weather permitting as there is a major storm headed towards California on Friday.