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What we learned when the Yankees sluggers crushed the Giants again originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO — In the offseason, the Giants tried to add players who could change a game with a single swing. His most notable additionJorge Soler spent Saturday afternoon working on his swing mechanics and was left out of the starting lineup due to a prolonged slump.
On the other hand, the New York Yankees came to town with a power-packed lineup, and that led them to a 7-3 victory Saturday at Oracle Park. Aaron Judge homered early and Giancarlo Stanton homered late, leaving the Giants back under .500 overall and 2-3 in their toughest home stretch of the season. They will send Blake Snell to the mound on Sunday in hopes of salvaging the final game of this series.
The start of Saturday’s game was simply a continuation of Friday’s game. After hitting two home runs in his first career game at Oracle Park, Judge hit one of the longest bombs in the park’s history in his first at-bat against Logan Webb, one of the Giants who tried to draft him two years ago.
The Yankees scored four times in the first three innings and had Webb on the ropes, but he plugged the leaks and hung around long enough for the lineup to inch back. Casey Schmitt got two runs back with a home run and Brett Wisely added an RBI single in the fifth.
The Giants got the tying run to second in the seventh, but were unable to score. Ryan Walker was one strike away from taking down the team in 10 pitches in the top of the eighth, but Judge reached for an infield single and the wheels came off from there. Alex Verdugo’s triple brought home a run and a two-run blast from Stanton (another former Giants offseason target) made it a four-run game.
Lord Durability
It has already become a kind of habit. There are nights when Webb shakes at first, and then Bob Melvin looks up in the seventh and his ace is somehow still there. That was the case Saturday, when Webb allowed four early runs but held his own for a season-high 108 pitches. He pitched into the seventh for the seventh time in 13 starts and returned to the top of the MLB innings rankings.
The biggest out came in the fifth and was against Judge. The Giants had intentionally walked him for the second time and Webb went 0-2 with a runner on third. But this time he was allowed to continue pitching to the game’s best hitter, and he launched a 93 mph fastball past him to end the inning.
putting on a show
What would Judge do for an encore? It didn’t take long to find out. With a runner on first, he killed Webb’s changeup and nearly cleared the stands in left field. The home run traveled approximately 464 feet and reached 115.7 mph, making it one of the loudest non-Bonds blasts in Oracle Park history.
Since pitch tracking began in 2008, Judge is just the second player to hit an Oracle home run of more than 460 feet and more than 115 mph off the bat. The other came from Kennys Vargas, a curious fact that surprised this researcher as much as it surprises you right now. Vargas, then with the Minnesota Twins, drove Jeff Samardzija 471 feet to right-center field in 2017, but that came during a day game in more hitter-friendly conditions.
Judge’s home run was the seventh at Oracle Park in the era of tracking pitches (since 2008) of at least 460 feet. He was the most hit ball here since a Joc Pederson single last April.
Casey crushing
Because of the clever drop of the bat, you wouldn’t expect Schmitt’s home run to be his first of the year, but it was in fact his first in the major leagues since he hit two against the Los Angeles Dodgers during the final game of the 2023 season. Schmitt jumped on a sinker from backup starter Cody Poteet and hit a clean shot to left field, cutting the deficit in half and breathing some life back into a ballpark that threatened to become Yankee Stadium.
Schmitt has struggled at the plate this season, but there’s no doubt he’s a major leaguer defensively, and some on San Francisco’s staff were disheartened to see him sent away last month when the front office decided to take a look at him. Marco Luciano at shortstop.
Nick Ahmed, the Opening Day starter, began a rehab assignment with Triple-A Sacramento on Saturday and should return soon. Ahmed and Brett Wisely appear to be the ones to handle shortstop, but Schmitt certainly made a statement on Saturday.
