SAN FRANCISCO -- Over their first nine games of the season, the Giants have shown that their offense can beat you in multiple ways.
They can hit the ball out of the ballpark. They can get timely hits. They can play some small ball.
On Sunday, they showed that they¡¯re also comfortable going the other way.
The Giants flashed their opposite-field approach while rallying for a 5-4 walk-off win that completed a three-game sweep of the Mariners at Oracle Park and extended their winning streak to seven games.
At an MLB-best 8-1, the Giants are now off to their best start since 2003, moving them past the rival Dodgers for first place in the National League West for the first time this season.
San Francisco trailed 2-0, after Julio Rodr¨ªguez and Cal Raleigh each homered off Jordan Hicks, but the club erased the deficit with a four-run fourth that was capped by a three-run, opposite-field home run from Mike Yastrzemski.
Seattle came back to tie the game in the top of the ninth on Randy Arozarena¡¯s two-out, two-strike RBI double off Camilo Doval, but the Giants answered back on pinch-hitter Wilmer Flores¡¯ walk-off single to right field in the bottom half of the inning.
¡°Leave it up to Flo again,¡± manager Bob Melvin said. ¡°It¡¯s a guy you want in that situation. He knows what to expect. He knows how to handle it. He wasn¡¯t trying to do too much. There was a hole open between first and second. I don¡¯t want to say it¡¯s not a surprise, but he¡¯s done it so often.¡±
Flores¡¯ ninth career walk-off hit and 13th career walk-off RBI came after a scary scene unfolded in right field, where Mariners outfielder Victor Robles was injured after crashing into the netting while making an unbelievable catch on Patrick Bailey¡¯s foul ball down the line. Robles appeared to hurt his left arm and ended up being carted off the field, halting play for several minutes.
A replay review confirmed that Robles made the catch for the second out of the inning, though Luis Matos managed to advance from first to second on the play because Robles went out of play. That put Matos in scoring position for Flores, who then lined a first-pitch sinker from Gregory Santos through the right side to end the game.
¡°I was thinking, ¡®Try not to pull that hard sinker that he throws,¡¯¡± Flores said. ¡°I executed well. They were playing me up the middle, and it got through. I think you have to try not to be a hero. Just stay in the moment and think about the process, which was staying inside the ball.¡±
Using the opposite field has been a team-wide emphasis for the Giants this year, and they saw that work show up against Seattle right-hander and Oakland native Bryan Woo in the fourth.
Willy Adames reached on a leadoff single before Jung Hoo Lee singled to the opposite field to put runners on first and second with no outs. Heliot Ramos then went the other way to put the Giants on the board, smoking a 102.1 mph single to right field to score Adames from second.
Yastrzemski maintained the same game plan when he stepped up to the plate, driving a first-pitch fastball from Woo over the left-field fence for his first home run of the season to put the Giants ahead 4-2.
¡°We kind of had to,¡± Melvin said. ¡°That guy¡¯s fastball is just on you. If you try to pull him, you almost have to guess and try to time it up that way. He was throwing the ball by us at the top of the zone and then had a sinker. It¡¯s two completely different pitches. You were seeing some really weird swings. Ramos gets us going, but Yaz goes the other way and hits the home run -- it¡¯s just a huge fourth inning for us off a really, really good pitcher that we beat.¡±
The blast was a promising sign for Yastrzemski, who felt he had gotten too pull-happy in recent years and has been focusing on using the whole field this season.
"I think when I first came up, that was who I was," Yastrzemski said recently. "And I started to hit a lot of home runs and then I started to keep searching for that. And it just kind of made me a little bit more one-dimensional than I wanted to be.
"I think I focused on just being like a pure hitter this year. I worked on it all offseason and in Spring Training. I¡¯m just going to try and ride with that.¡±