What we learned as Giants bounce back with blowout vs. Brewers

What we learned as Giants bounce back with blowout vs. Brewers originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

BOX SCORE

SAN FRANCISCO — It has been a while since anyone around the Giants has talked about the MLB playoff race, and for good reason. They entered Wednesday’s game with a 15-game deficit in the NL West and an 8 1/2 game gap in the wild card standings.

But there’s another column on all of those standings pages, and the Giants spent a couple of hours redecorating it against a team that’s headed for the postseason.

They scored four runs in the first and four more in the second, blowing out the Milwaukee Brewers 13-2 at Oracle Park. They had a run differential of negative-23 when they took the field, but when Sean Hjelle recorded the final out, they were a whole lot closer to being even for the season.

Does that ultimately matter? Not really. But after weeks of one-run losses — eight since Aug. 19 alone — the Giants were thrilled to be on the right side of a laugher.

Blake Snell hung around long enough to qualify for the win, his third as a Giant, but the rest of the night was about offensive fireworks …

Arcade Blast

Jerar Encarnación got the blowout started early with a soaring two-run homer in the first that landed in the arcade section in right field. It was just the 75th time in the 25-year history of the ballpark that a right-handed hitter landed a ball in that section, and the first since a J.D. Davis oppo homer last May (also against Milwaukee, coincidentally).

When the Giants signed Jorge Soler, some wondered if he could become the first right-handed hitter to ever reach McCovey Cove on the fly. Marco Luciano certainly has the power to do it, along with the opposite-field approach. But Encarnación would be a sneaky candidate if he was brought back next year.

It’s much more common for right-handers to find that short porch during day games, but Encarnación did it on a somewhat chilly night, and he managed to supply that power on an 83-mph slider from Colin Rea. There’s a ton of pop in that bat, which has hit 33 homers in 82 games this year across Mexico, Triple-A and the big leagues.

60 Club

With a solo shot in the fourth, Matt Chapman became the first Giant since Kevin Pillar to reach 60 extra-base hits in a season. The last Giants third baseman to do it was Pablo Sandoval, who had 74 in an eye-popping 2009 season.

The homer was Chapman’s 24th and continued a scorching hot stretch since he signed a six-year, $151 million contract extension. Chapman has a 10-game hitting streak overall and has two homers and two doubles since putting pen to paper.

Yaz Hands

One reason the Giants might think it’s a no-brainer to bring Mike Yastrzemski back in his final year of arbitration: He’s one of the rare hitters who truly seems to excel at their ballpark. Yastrzemski entered the night with a .829 OPS at home and .657 mark on the road. He padded the former number Wednesday with a homer, double and four RBI.

Yastrzemski is second in the NL in triples to the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Corbin Carroll, and he nearly reached double-digits when he put a ball in the left-center gap in the fourth. He was going for three all the way but he slid past the bag and was tagged out.

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