Giants Keep Rolling; Slater's 2-Run Homer Lifts Team To 52nd Win Of Season
PHOENIX (AP) — San Francisco manager Gabe Kapler opted to have Austin Slater to pinch hit for Alex Dickerson to lead off the fifth inning.
Slater ended up grounding out, but he made up for it with a big blast at a crucial moment.
Slater hit a two-run homer in the eighth inning, Mike Yastrzemski also had a two-run shot and the Giants rallied to beat the struggling Arizona Diamondbacks 6-5 on Saturday night.
"We depend on Slater and I thought that was an important enough at-bat to get him into the game," Kapler said. "Obviously, he got the biggest hit of the night for us."
The Giants hit three homers to end a season-long four-game losing streak in an 11-4 win Friday and again took the Diamondbacks down with the long ball.
Arizona went up 5-4 on David Peralta's bloop single in the fifth inning, but Slater fouled off a couple of good pitches from Ryan Buchter (0-2) before hitting a 463-foot homer to center.
San Francisco has scored 214 of its 405 runs (52.8%) of its runs this season on homers.
Dominic Leone (2-0) struck out two in the seventh inning and Jake McGee worked a perfect ninth for his 16th save in 18 chances, improving the Giants to a majors-best 52-30. San Francisco overcame a season-high three errors and Thairo Estrada getting picked off first in the eighth.
"I don't think we played our crisp brand of baseball defensively or on the bases," Kapler said. "We weren't at our best and are going to need to be better than that."
Nick Ahmed hit a two-run homer to help Arizona rally from an early four-run deficit, but the bullpen had another letdown. The last-place Diamondbacks have lost six of seven.
"We fell down four runs, fought back and tied it, and took the lead," Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said. "We just got clipped. We just have to do a better job on the mound."
Diamondbacks starter Jake Faria allowed a run in four innings against St. Louis on June 28 in his first big league start since 2018. The right-hander escaped a jam in the first inning against the Giants, but couldn't wriggle out of trouble in the third.
San Francisco wore red caps as part of Major League Baseball's Fourth of July promotion, a glaring change from the Giants' usual black.
Yastrzemski hit his 12th homer, a two-run shot, followed by Brandon Crawford's run-scoring triple and Donovan Solano's RBI single.
"He was OK," Lovullo said of Faria. "I think the line score was little worse than what it was. He attacked the zone, had real good spin on his secondary pitches and he competed.
Giants starter Sammy Long couldn't hold the lead.
Asdrubal Cabrera and Christian Walker each had run-scoring singles in the third inning, and Ahmed tied it at 4 with a two-run homer just over the wall in right in the fourth.
"I was just trying to stay through the middle of the field and got just enough of the barrel on it," Ahmed said.
