What we learned as Flores, Lee deliver in Giants’ win vs. Brewers
What we learned as Flores, Lee deliver in Giants’ win vs. Brewers originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO — The reward for playing 10 games in three cities over 10 days and traveling from the East Coast to Anaheim without a day off, or even a 1 p.m. game on getaway day in Philadelphia? For the Giants, it was another night of baseball.
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They returned to San Francisco on Monday night and began a seven-game homestand against two teams — the Milwaukee Brewers and Texas Rangers — with postseason aspirations, and once again, they responded to the challenge. Wilmer Flores hit a go-ahead blast and Hayden Birdsong provided a huge boost to a tired bullpen as the Giants won 5-2 on their first night back at Oracle Park. They’re now 6-5 during this marathon stretch and 15-8 on the 2025 MLB season.
The Giants took the lead in the sixth when Flores crushed a middle-middle sinker from Grant Anderson. An inning later, their best player early on tacked on an insurance run. With Willy Adames on first, Jung Hoo Lee smoked a line drive into the gap in right-center and cruised into third for his second triple of the season.
The Giants trailed early but caught up in the fifth, with a little help from the Brewers. Tyler Fitzgerald reached on his second infield single and moved along to second on a walk of Mike Yastrzemski that ended Quinn Priester’s night. Right-hander Nick Mears entered to face Adames and got a potential double-play ball to third, but Adames beat out the throw to first, which clanked off Rhys Hoskins’ glove. That allowed Fitzgerald to walk home for the tying run.
With Ryan Walker unavailable after going back-to-back games in Anaheim, Giants manager Bob Melvin figured he would have to get creative if he had a lead late in the game. Birdsong ended up providing a relatively smooth path, throwing three dominant innings out of the bullpen to get the ball to Camilo Doval, who went 1-2-3 for his third save.
It’s been an odd month for Flores. His photo is constantly on graphics representing the league leaders in home runs and RBI, but he entered Monday’s game with an fWAR of 0.0 and a wRC+ that put him 10 points below league-average as a hitter. Flores isn’t drawing walks, is one of the slowest players in baseball, and doesn’t play defense — but the Giants don’t care about the advanced metrics at all right now.
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From a more traditional standpoint, Flores is off to a huge start. The only player in the NL with more homers is Fernando Tatis Jr., and Aaron Judge and Spencer Torkelson are the only other big leaguers with at least seven homers and 20 RBI. With the go-ahead homer, Flores moved into a tie with Pete Alonso for the league lead in runs driven in.
The Giants talked all spring of the importance of having more “RBI guys.” Nobody is doing it better than Flores right now, and that has made it pretty easy to push all the other numbers to the side.
Robbie Ray has had to grind through his starts this season, and this one was no exception. Ray was at 64 pitches through three innings and had only one clean inning on the night, but he allowed just two runs. They came on a pitch that was pretty predictable by that point of the second inning.
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Of Ray’s first 41 pitches, 37 were four-seamers, including an elevated fastball that No. 9 hitter Caleb Durbin smacked out to left for his first big league homer. Ray mixed in a lot more sliders and changeups the second and third times through the order, but he paid for being fastball-heavy in the first couple of innings.
Ray ended up getting charged with two earned on five hits and three walks. After throwing four innings in each of his starts on the road trip, he went five on the first night back home.
Nobody was busier before the game than Adames, who spent four seasons in Milwaukee before signing with the Giants in the offseason. Adames took about 30 minutes in the afternoon to catch up with Brewers reporters, and he made his rounds during BP to chat with old teammates, most notably right-hander Freddy Peralta, a close friend who will start Wednesday’s game.
The Giants are still waiting for Adames to break out at the plate, and it didn’t come against his old friends. He struck out the first time up and then grounded out three straight times. The night dropped his average to .194.
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