Landen Roupp pitched six sharp innings, Willy Adames and Jung Hoo Lee homered and the San Francisco Giants beat the Baltimore Orioles 6-3 Friday night for their season-high third straight victory. In a game built on the labor of pitchers and hitters alike, the Giants’ win came with the usual hierarchy of winners and losers, with Baltimore taking the hit as San Francisco extended its run. **Who Gets the Credit, Who Takes the Loss** Roupp gave up one run and five hits to earn his first win since July 22, improving to 2-1. The right-hander finished the 2025 season on the injured list with a bruised left knee, a reminder that even the bodies doing the work are treated as disposable parts in the machine. On the other side, Orioles starter Shane Baz fell to 0-1 after giving up three runs and seven hits in five innings. He has been winless in three games since signing a five-year contract extension on March 27. Adames hit a solo shot in the third inning, then doubled in a run to make it 3-0 in the fourth. Lee later hit a two-run drive to make it 6-1 in the seventh. The Giants, last place and carrying a major league-low five homers when they came in, still managed to put together enough offense to keep the Orioles at arm’s length. Their current streak has produced a 17-3 edge in runs, a tidy summary of how quickly momentum can shift when the bats finally show up. **The Bottom of the Order, the Bottom of the Table** Baltimore did not go quietly. Leody Taveras hit an RBI double in the bottom half of the fourth after being in the starting lineup because Tyler O’Neill was scratched with an illness. Gunnar Henderson hit a two-run homer for the Orioles, whose three-game winning streak ended. Baltimore cleanup hitter Pete Alonso stranded three runners and went hitless with two strikeouts, dropping his batting average to .176. The game also nearly produced another Giants homer, but Taylor Ward made a leaping grab at the left-field wall to rob Harrison Bader in the eighth. That kind of defensive intervention is what passes for order in the spectacle: a wall, a leap, and another chance denied. **A Roller-Coaster Season Under Rookie Management** It has been a roller-coaster season thus far for San Francisco, which has endured skids of three and four games under rookie manager Tony Vitello. The Giants’ season-high third straight victory suggests only that the grind keeps turning, with streaks and slumps deciding who gets celebrated and who gets buried in the standings. Roupp’s outing was the kind of controlled performance teams demand from the people on the mound: six innings, one run, five hits, and enough efficiency to hand the Giants another win. He earned his first win since July 22, while the Orioles were left to absorb the damage from a lineup that could not fully answer the early deficit. Giants right-hander Logan Webb, listed at 1-1 with a 5.00 ERA, is scheduled to face Baltimore lefty Cade Povich, listed at 0-0 with a 3.18 ERA, on Saturday night. The schedule rolls on, the contracts roll on, and the players keep being measured by the numbers the system assigns them.
