The Giants didn’t just beat the Mets on Saturday - they pounded them with power.
San Francisco launched six home runs in a 9-5 win at Citi Field, with Rafael Devers doing what he’s been doing for two weeks now and Christian Koss delivering the kind of breakout night nobody saw coming. Devers homered twice, Koss went deep twice for the first multi-homer game of his career, and Osleivis Basabe and Grant McCray also joined the barrage.
Devers opened the scoring with a solo shot in the first inning, then came back with another blast in the fifth as the Giants pulled away. Koss, who had hit just one home run in 50 games this season before Saturday, added a 91 mph fastball from Mets left-hander Zac Thornton over the left-center field wall in the third inning before connecting again in the fifth, when he and Devers both went deep to give San Francisco a 6-2 lead.
That kind of night has become routine for Devers. He now has six home runs and seven walks in his last six games, a stretch matched only by Willie Mays in 1958 and Barry Bonds in 2004 in Giants history. He finished 2-for-4 with three RBI and two runs scored, and his recent surge keeps getting louder: nine home runs in his last 13 games and 35 for the season.
The last two nights have been especially ridiculous. After going 3-for-4 with five RBIs in Friday’s 10-6 loss, Devers entered Saturday hitting .413 (19-for-46) with a .518 on-base percentage and a .935 slugging percentage over his previous 12 games.
Anthony Molina gave the Giants another major lift on the mound. In just his second start and third appearance in a Giants uniform, the right-hander allowed only one hit over five innings, struck out six and retired 10 of the final 11 batters he faced. Since being acquired from the Braves on Aug. 2 for right-hander Tyler Mahle, Molina has made a strong first impression, and his work Saturday only added to that.
Manager Tony Vitello, meanwhile, was thrown out in the top of the second inning and missed most of the game from the dugout. The sequence started when Turner Hill led off and grimaced after a 91 mph curveball from Thornton appeared to hit his right hand. Home plate umpire Jeremie Rehak ruled that the ball had gone off Hill’s bat instead, calling it a foul ball.
Vitello challenged the call, but the ruling stood. Rehak warned him not to come onto the field, Vitello did anyway, and he was ejected for the sixth time this season, tying the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Don Kelly for the most among MLB managers this year.
It was also his third ejection in the last 11 games. Hill remained in the game and was OK.
The Giants have now won four of their last seven.
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The bigger issue for San Francisco is not just one argument, but the pattern that keeps following him. Vitello has already been ejected recently, and the Giants have also dealt with Ron Wotus getting run out of a game the next day in a separate dustup over the lineup card, which only adds to the sense that this team is spending too much time talking about officiating and not enough about baseball. With umpire conduct under scrutiny and the push toward more automated decision-making never far away, the Giants are finding themselves in the middle of a conversation that seems headed for a larger stage. [Read more 🡒]