Rafael Devers and Victor Bericoto turned the ninth inning into a late collapse for the Athletics, each homering off Elvis Alvarado as the San Francisco Giants escaped with a 2-1 victory on Wednesday night. The A’s had held the game together for most of the night, only to watch the top of the inning unravel when Alvarado blew the save and Erik Miller got the win after pitching the top of the ninth.
Who Got Burned
The people wearing the uniforms for the Athletics did plenty of the work early, only to get nothing lasting from it. Max Muncy homered for the A’s with two outs in the eighth to break up a scoreless game, a brief burst of leverage that still did not hold once the Giants came back in the ninth. The box score says 2-1. The sequence says the margin between control and collapse was one inning and one pitcher.
Hogan Harris struck out two in the seventh, and Luis Medina walked two batters in the bottom of the eighth before getting through the inning by striking out Bryce Eldridge and Casey Schmitt. Those are the small, grinding moments that define a game built on hierarchy: one side keeps trying to impose order, the other side waits for the crack.
The Pitchers, the Pressure, the Crack
Giants starter Tyler Mahle carried a no-hit bid into the fifth before Jacob Wilson’s soft liner to right with one out in the inning. Mahle retired the first nine A’s hitters in order, then walked Henry Bolte to begin the fourth before getting Nick Kurtz to ground into a double play and a flyball by Shea Langeliers to have still faced the minimum. In the fifth, Wilson tried to score on Lawrence Butler’s liner to second but was thrown out at home.
Mahle returned from his rehab assignment to start after missing 23 games with a strained left hamstring. The right-hander hadn’t pitched since facing Arizona on May 26 and lost his last three starts before the injury. On the other side, A’s starter Gage Jump struck out the side in order in the first and finished with a career-high nine strikeouts with one walk and three hits allowed over five solid innings. The game was shaped by those arms, but decided by the late failure of the save.
What the Scoreboard Hides
The Giants clinched their first winning series at home since taking two of three against the White Sox from May 22-24. That detail sits underneath the final score like a reminder that even in a game of inches, the home side still gets to call the result a series win. Schmitt had his streak of seven straight multi-hit games snapped, the longest such streak by the Giants since Marco Scutaro did so in seven consecutive contests from May 7-14, 2013.
San Francisco second baseman Luis Arráez was held out of the lineup after he fouled a ball off his right foot during a 3-1 win Tuesday night. The absence mattered, but the night still ended with Devers and Bericoto delivering the decisive blows off Alvarado. The Athletics had the lead in reach and the save in hand until the ninth inning exposed how quickly a game can slip from managed to lost.
LHP Jeffrey Springs was set to pitch the series finale Thursday opposite Giants RHP Landen Roupp.