Giants' late-inning rally leads to a galvanizing win over Phillies

New York Times

08-07-2025

SAN FRANCISCO — The second half of June did not go well for the Giants. In 17 days, they tumbled from a tie atop the National League West to eight games back. They missed their team leader and stabilizing presence with Matt Chapman on the injured list. They dropped series to teams that were running run-differential deficits so large, Moody's could've downgraded their credit rating.
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It didn't feel so good to be beaten. It felt even worse to get bruised in the process. Giants batters have been hit by 40 pitches this season, which is just four more than average. But 15 of those plunkings have come in their last 21 games. One of them struck hot-hitting infielder Casey Schmitt on the hand and sent him to the injured list. Heliot Ramos, who has been hit 12 times, glared back at the mound a time or three. So did Chapman when he absorbed a pitch in his first plate appearance upon returning Friday in Sacramento.
Nobody exhibited more frustration than Wilmer Flores, whose emotional presets tend to land somewhere between adult contemporary and easy listening. Flores spiked his helmet when he got hit in the Cleveland series. He exchanged words with Boston Red Sox closer Aroldis Chapman. He appeared ready to take on the entire Miami Marlins dugout while sparking a benches-clearing squabble on June 26, when the Giants were headed toward a lopsided loss and three-game sweep, and a retaliatory strike from Giants right-hander Hayden Birdsong had backfired in a three-run first inning.
After Chapman, Flores might be the most respected leader in the Giants clubhouse. With the team wobbling in Chapman's absence, you couldn't blame Flores for trying to lead the best he could, for trying to demonstrate that the Giants will not tolerate getting sand kicked in their faces. Even if it meant playing against type.
'You get frustrated,' Flores said Monday night. 'It's part of the game and you know that. We've hit some people too. It's not always intentional. It happens. I just don't want to see anyone get hurt.'
The Giants pitching staff responded in keeping with the baseball code. Birdsong sent a message to the Marlins that resulted in warnings but also might have caused him to lose focus. Logan Webb, with microphones in his face, fired off a not-so-discreet admonition that 'the game finds a way to even itself out.' Then, after Ramos and Chapman got hit in Sacramento, Webb, one of the league's best control artists, threw a couple of curiously errant, shin-seeking pitches that A's hitters Brent Rooker and Jacob Wilson managed to avoid.
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Everything turned out OK. Nobody else got hurt. The Giants gathered a bit of momentum while winning the weekend series against the A's, propelling them into a final homestand with the Philadelphia Phillies and Los Angeles Dodgers prior to the All-Star break. Schmitt returned from his bone bruise on Monday as the second baseman, where he'll get some runway to establish himself. With their lineup fully assembled again, the Giants might look back on these past three weeks as a peculiar part of the schedule when they didn't play well and when all those hit batters were a weird coincidence. If any good came out of it, silly or not, the hitters understood that the pitchers had their backs.
All of that pretext leapt off the page when Monday night's series opener with the Phillies tilted in the eighth inning.
Willy Adames absorbed a glancing blow from right-hander Orion Kerkering. After Chapman grounded a two-strike single to right field, Flores was struck by a breaking ball to load the bases. Then Schmitt and Jung Hoo Lee drove in runs without a hit by finding the weak points in the Phillies' drawn-in infield. Schmitt's chopper up the middle resulted in an RBI and a forceout at second base. Lee roped one down the line where first baseman Bryce Harper fielded it and threw wide to the plate.
The pincushion-fueled, two-run rally put the Giants ahead and Camilo Doval recorded the save in a 3-1 victory on the shores of McCovey Cove.
Good to be back home 😎 pic.twitter.com/0pUIZ4yx7r
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) July 8, 2025
There are any number of ways to galvanize a group of people. Creating a common enemy is one of the easiest. But what's the simplest, most effective and most genuine way to invigorate a team?
Win the darn game.
'We just had great energy out there,' Giants manager Bob Melvin said. 'It just felt like it was early-in-the-season energy. Not … looking forward to the break.'
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Landen Roupp set the tone with five solid innings against a seasoned lineup. The only run he allowed was set up by Bryson Stott's double that appeared to be a routine grounder to Flores before it abruptly kicked left as if it struck an invisible sprinkler head. Roupp allowed the run to score on a wild pitch and needed a diving catch from Luis Matos in right field to avoid further damage in the fifth inning. Roupp lowered his ERA to 3.39; his 1.62 ERA in seven starts at 24 Willie Mays Plaza is the sixth-best home ERA among all major-league starting pitchers, and he's quickly gaining a reputation as a competitor who doesn't let one bad bounce or bad inning crack his façade.
'It's pretty gnarly,' Schmitt said of Roupp's competitive streak. 'He's got this look in his eye that's kind of scary. Just stay out of his way.'
The Giants will have a lot riding on the success of their young starters, Roupp and Birdsong, in the second half — especially after they sacrificed left-hander Kyle Harrison in the deal that brought Rafael Devers from Boston. The two right-handers couldn't be more different. Birdsong appeared to be in a fog after recent starts didn't go his way, innings spiraled and walks piled up. Although he's coming off a victory Sunday in Sacramento, he threw more balls than strikes in five innings.
Birdsong is lined up to pitch Saturday against the loaded Dodgers, but the Giants have a less flammable alternative. With a day off Thursday, they could move up Roupp to pitch Saturday. That's a choice they might have shied away from making a month ago while mapping out workloads and ensuring that none of their young pitchers ventured into the red. But the more the Giants see of Roupp, the more they believe he is built to handle a challenge.
'You get some innings under your belt and a lot of times you hit a little bit of a wall,' Melvin said. 'But man, it looked like it was early in the season for him. It's obviously a tough lineup to navigate. They made him throw some pitches and got him out after five. But the last three times out, he's been really good.'
The Giants roster might be healthier, but it has its weaknesses. They lack a reliable left-handed setup presence with Erik Miller on the IL with a sprained elbow ligament and likely out till mid-August at the earliest. But they made do with what they had Monday night. Former closer Ryan Walker, who hasn't been used in leveraged spots for a couple weeks, preserved a tie with a dominant sixth inning. Joey Lucchesi, a long reliever who usually pitches when the team is behind, was effectively wild while stranding a runner at third in a scoreless seventh inning. It wasn't optimal for right-hander Tyler Rogers to start the eighth when two left-handed hitters, Kyle Schwarber and Harper, led off the inning. (Schwarber was 2 for 4 with a homer against him.) But Rogers kept the Phillies off the board, too.
Doval has been inconsistent over his last handful of appearances but showed mettle in a 13-pitch confrontation with J.P. Realmuto that included eight two-strike fouls. Realmuto was retired when Schmitt made a leaping grab of an end-of-the-bat floater.
The at-bat of the game belonged to Chapman, who fouled off a full-count sweeper from Kerkering and didn't try to do too much with the 97.6-mph fastball that followed.
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'Chappy's back; he's swinging the bat good,' Flores said. 'Just having Chappy on the field, you can feel it. He keeps us all together. Even if he's not feeling 100 percent out there, he just makes you feel like, 'OK, we're good.' It's a good feeling having a player like that.'
The result was one of the Giants' better ensemble wins in recent weeks. Even the bruises weren't too bad.
'I mean, I got hit with a slider,' Flores said. 'I will take a slider any day.'
(Photo of Matt Chapman and Rafael Devers celebrating Monday's win: Ed Szczepanski / Imagn Images)