Brett Wisely, Matt Chapman and Luis Matos all homered in the Giants' 5-3 win to open their series against the Dodgers.
SAN FRANCISCO — Brett Wisely had been part of a couple walkoff wins for Triple-A Sacramento this season.
Those paled in comparison to the mob that met Wisely at home plate Friday evening, after his left-handed swing deposited a two-strike slider from Blake Treinen onto the concourse in right field to walk off the Dodgers, 5-3, for a rare win over the Giants’ divisional foes.
“That was an unbelievable moment,” Wisely afterward.
“That’s one in his career that he’s never going to forget,” added manager Bob Melvin, who understood the significance of the rivalry for the 40,052 on hand. “From pitch one, the place was rocking. It (had) all the ingredients to be an emotional type of game.”
Wisely’s walkoff blast — the Giants’ third home run of the game — carried only more meaning after the team learned in the middle of the game that another one of its Hall of Famers, Orlando Cepeda, had died. An announcement of Cepeda’s death at age 86 came over the loudspeakers before the start of the sixth inning and was followed by a moment of silence for the “Baby Bull,” who joined Willie Mays in Giants legends to pass away recently.
“He’s probably there with us again, just like Willie,” Melvin said.
“It’s been a tough month for Giants baseball, losing special guys like that,” added Logan Webb, who was taking the mound when the news was announced both times. “I took my hat off and (saw) the clock was running, so was I like, ‘I think you need to stop the clock.'”
Beating the Dodgers for only the third time in their past 14 meetings at Oracle Park, Webb gave the Giants seven innings for a major-league-best 10th time this season and departed holding a 3-2 lead, thanks to a pair of home runs from Luis Matos and Matt Chapman that preceded Wisely’s.
The ninth-inning rally was necessary after Camilo Doval was unable to close out the 3-2 lead he was handed to begin the top half of the inning, allowing the first batter he faced, Andy Pages, to line a triple off the glove of center fielder Heliot Ramos and score on a sacrifice fly.
“(Ramos) is running full-tilt, really, really hard,” Melvin said. “If he catches it, it’s going to be an incredible play. At first, I thought he did catch it. But I think it just hit in his pocket and popped out.”
After allowing the first two batters of the inning to reach base and score, the fifth had a big inning written all over it for the Dodgers, who had one run in and one man on with nobody out when the lineup turned over to Shohei Ohtani.
Just two batters later, Webb was emphatically stomping back to the dugout.
Melvin opted to intentionally put the Dodgers’ dangerous leadoff man on base, only for the next batter, Will Smith, to rip an RBI single up the middle, anyway. That was all the Dodgers managed, though, after Webb coaxed a soft comebacker from Freddie Freeman, which he spun and fired to second to start the second of his 1-6-3 double plays.
“I’ve never seen him field ground balls like that,” Wisely said.
“I was more mad at myself,” Webb said of his emotions. “I thought I made some pitches I shouldn’t have thrown. Just putting the team in the hole again, I feel like I’ve done that a lot lately, just giving up runs when I shouldn’t. That’s baseball, though, and the team had my back.”
The game was scoreless until the Dodgers opened a 2-0 lead with their fifth-inning rally, but Los Angeles wouldn’t hold a lead for long.
Homering for the second time since being called up Saturday, Matos jumped on the first pitch he saw in the bottom of the fifth and sent it on a line-drive trajectory into the seats above the 399′ sign in left-center field, pulling the Giants within a run.
Chapman flipped the score an inning later, launching a Daniel Hudson fastball 414 feet to left field — leaving the bat at 110.5 mph — to score Heliot Ramos, who reached when Freeman wasn’t able to corral his ground ball to begin the inning.
The walkoff win was the Giants’ seventh this season, second only to the Marlins (eight) for the most in the majors.
“We’ve lost some tough games; we’ve won some really emotional games,” Melvin said. “At some point in time, we’re going to sustain it.”
Webb reached back and hit 95.5 mph on a fastball in the first inning, the fastest pitch he has recorded since 2021.
“I finally got my 95, a true 95,” Webb beamed, chalking it up to the best his mechanics have felt all season.
With multiple vacancies in their rotation, the Giants are listing their starters for the final two games of the series as “TBA.” Playing in front of a national television audience on Saturday, they will be opposed by RHP Tyler Glasnow (8-5, 2.88), with first pitch scheduled for 4:15 p.m. on FOX.
