SF Giants overcome four-run deficit against Reds, win with long ball early, small ball late

A struggling Giants offense finally gave its pitching staff support when it needed it the most.

SAN FRANCISCO — When analyzing the Giants’ offensive struggles this season on Tuesday afternoon, catcher Buster Posey said the team’s strong performance in 60 games last year was a better indicator of the lineup’s potential than the lackluster output fans saw through 10 games this season.

“Sometimes it only takes a game or two to really get everyone going,” Posey said. “Maybe tonight’s that night.”

Tuesday was indeed that night.

After scoring four runs or fewer in eight straight games, the Giants overcame a 4-0 first inning deficit and powered their way to a 7-6 victory over the Reds at Oracle Park.

On a night when the Giants (7-4) hit three big home runs, it was a small-ball approach in the late innings that helped them take control of Tuesday’s game and even their three-game series against Cincinnati.

After leadoff man Tommy La Stella opened the game 3-for-3, manager Gabe Kapler replaced him with pinch-hitter Donovan Solano to lead off the eighth inning against left-hander Cionel Pérez. The Giants wanted a right-hander at the plate to open the inning and the decision paid off as Solano drew a walk before moving around the base paths on a walk, a fielder’s choice and a sacrifice fly from first baseman Wilmer Flores.

With the temperature at first pitch hovering around 54 degrees and a pair of hard-throwing frontline starters, Kevin Gausman and Luis Castillo, on the mound, no one expected Tuesday’s matchup to turn into a slugfest.

But by the end of the first inning, bettors were already cashing tickets as the teams combined to surpass the over/under of 7.5 runs thanks to four two-run homers. After Reds first baseman Joey Votto and third baseman Mike Moustakas took Gausman deep in the top of the first, Mike Yastrzemski and Brandon Crawford answered in the bottom of the inning.

“There’s a lot of confidence up and down our lineup and I don’t think we’ve lost any of that from the way we’ve started,” Kapler said. “We haven’t scored a lot of runs and the surface numbers aren’t what we’d like them to be, but what tonight represented is that we are resilient.”

Prior to Tuesday, there had never been four home runs hit in the first inning of a game at Oracle Park.

Yastrzemski’s 109.4 mile per hour blast into the right field arcade seats was not only the hardest-hit ball of Yastrzemski’s career, but also the hardest-hit ball by a Giants player this season, topping the 108.7 mile per hour homer Brandon Belt pulled into nearly the same location in Sunday’s game.

“Even if we get down early, we have a lot of confidence to come back and keep producing really good at-bats throughout the game,” Yastrzemski said.

Crawford didn’t hit his two-run shot to the opposite field with the same force, but it temporarily pulled him into a tie with Evan Longoria for the team lead with three homers on the year.

The Reds added on with a pair of two-out hits in the second, but neither team scored again until Longoria drilled the first pitch he saw from Reds lefty Sean Doolittle into the left center field bleachers in the bottom of the sixth. Later in the inning, Kapler sent Austin Slater to pinch-hit for lefty LaMonte Wade and Reds manager David Bell countered by bringing in righty Carson Fulmer.

The matchup favored the Giants anyway.

Slater crushed a line drive into Triples Alley that traveled far enough to score Buster Posey from first base and give the Giants a 6-5 lead, their first of the night.

“With Slater’s big triple to right center field, it was really impressive to come off the bench cold and put a swing like that on the ball,” Kapler said.

The Giants’ rally against the Reds bullpen set Gausman up with a chance to earn his first win of the season after the team’s Opening Night starter received a pair of no-decisions despite giving up just one run in each of his first two games. After allowing four in the first and a fifth run in the second inning, Gausman retired the final 13 Reds hitters he faced and likely would have returned to the mound for the seventh inning if his spot in the batting order didn’t come up in the sixth.

“Early in the game, I wasn’t able to execute, left some pitches up to two good home run hitting hitters and they did some damage with guys on base,” Gausman said. “It was a struggle tonight. I struggled trying to get the ball up and that’s something I always try to do.”

The opportunity to move to 1-0 was squandered when lefty Wandy Peralta allowed the Reds to tie the game in the seventh on an infield single, a balk, a wild pitch and a blooper, but the Giants moved to 2-1 in Gausman’s starts anyway with a victory that was capped off by Jake McGee’s MLB-best fifth save of the season.