SAN FRANCISCO — The weeknight crowd was still trickling into their seats at Oracle Park when Robbie Ray took the mound Tuesday evening, so the grunts that accompany each of his pitches were eminently audible. So were the groans that followed when he ran three-ball counts to each of the first three batters he faced.
It appeared Ray might be in for a repeat of his last start, when he wasn’t able to find the strike zone or make it out of the first inning.
But those groans gave way to a standing ovation from the 28,766 on hand by the time Bob Melvin came to get him in a 4-1 win over the White Sox.
The former Cy Young award winner locked in and retired the side in order, freezing Luis Robert Jr. with an inside fastball and fooling Andrew Benintendi with a slider that started in on his hands and finished off the plate outside to end the inning. They were the first two of nine eventual strikeout victims of Ray, who allowed only four base runners the rest of the way — three hits, a hit batsman and no walks — while coming one out shy of completing seven innings.
After matching the shortest start of his career the last time he took the mound, allowing five runs while recording two outs in a 13-2 loss to Atlanta last week, Ray’s 6⅔ innings represented his longest start — his first time pitching into the seventh — since returning from his May 2023 Tommy John operation.
His counterpart, Davis Martin, had his elbow surgically repaired exactly two weeks after Ray but didn’t fare as well in his fifth start back.
For the second straight night, Ray’s batterymate, Curt Casali, played a central role in their offensive attack from the bottom spot of the batting order.
The veteran catcher received his second straight start after Patrick Bailey (right oblique strain) was placed on the 10-day injured list prior to first pitch and reached base three times, scoring a pair of runs after driving in a run and scoring one while recording a pair of hits in Monday’s 5-3 win.
Leading off the third, Casali reached first when third baseman Miguel Vargas bobbled his ground ball and went station-to-station before being forced home from third on the second straight walk issued by Martin. He also lined a leadoff single to start the fifth and came around to score when Heliot Ramos’ lined a fastball up the middle, growing the Giants’ lead to 3-1.
Casali’s first run broke a 1-1 tie and provided an immediate answer to the only run the White Sox were able to muster off Ray, which was only made possible by replay review.
Home plate umpire Mike Muchlinski initially ruled that Casali had applied the tag before Dominic Fletcher reached home plate from first base on Lenyn Sosa’s line drive into the left-center field gap. Ramos fielded the ball, made a quick throw to Chapman and his throw arrived home at about the same time as Fletcher.
The White Sox challenged the ruling on the field, though, and replay showed Fletcher’s foot sneaking across the plate before he was touched by Casali.
It tied the score at 1 after the Giants manufactured the first run of the game in the bottom of the second, when Thairo Estrada beat out a potential inning-ending double play that allowed Matt Chapman to score from third after advancing first-to-third on Mike Yastrzemski’s single off the second baseman Sosa’s glove.
In their first game since losing Austin Riley to a fractured hand, the Atlanta Braves (67-58) beat the Zack Wheeler, 3-1, to start their series against the Phillies and maintain their grasp on the third and final wild card position.
Holding down the top two spots, the Arizona Diamondbacks (71-56) continued their hot play, 3-1, against the Miami Marlins, while the San Diego Padres (71-55) were still in progress against the Minnesota Twins.
On the outside looking in, the New York Mets (65-61) fell, 9-5, to the Baltimore Orioles, and the St. Louis Cardinals (61-64), who released Brandon Crawford earlier in the day, lost for the eighth time in their past 10 games, 3-2, to the Milwaukee Brewers.
It only gets more difficult from here on out as RHP Logan Webb (11-8, 3.17) faces White Sox ace LHP Garrett Crochet (6-9 3.61) in the series finale, and after that all but three of the Giants’ 33 remaining games come against teams at or above .500. First pitch is scheduled for 12:45 p.m.
