Reporting from ORACLE PARK
Saturday brought another challenge for San Francisco Giants rookie manager Tony Vitello. Ejected by umpire Alan Porter on Friday night, Vitello had to turn the page with his 55-80 team as they faced the Arizona Diamondbacks in a doubleheader to close out a four-game series.
But Giants senior advisor to the president of baseball operations Ron Wotus felt something more needed to be said. Before the start of Saturday afternoon’s opener, Wotus was ejected by Porter while exchanging lineup cards at home plate.
Vitello said postgame the ejection took a second to process:
“He walked by and gave me the lineup card and said, ‘Sorry, I’m done for the day.’”
It all stemmed from a pair of calls that went against the Giants on Friday night, which also saw pitcher Logan Webb tossed. With the stage set, it looked to be a long, fiery day at a sun-drenched Oracle Park.
Matt “Tugboat” Wilkinson made his third start for the Giants and his Oracle Park debut in Game 1, a 7-1 Arizona win that stayed scoreless into the seventh. The Canadian southpaw had the boat rowing into the sixth inning, retiring 11 Arizona hitters in a row. Ryan Waldschmidt’s leadoff single ended the streak, but a 4-6-3 double play off the bat of speedy Corbin Carroll got Wilkinson through six innings — three hits, four strikeouts and, to that point, no runs.
Merrill Kelly, 37, matched zeros with Wilkinson. The right-hander got help from second baseman Ildemaro Vargas, who threw out Bryce Eldridge at home plate on Turner Hill’s fourth-inning grounder. For all his power, Eldridge’s lack of speed still costs him on the bases at times.
Despite walking the first two batters to start the seventh, Wilkinson walked off to a standing ovation from the crowd of 39,190 after being pulled by Vitello. A job well done, even if he fell to 0-2 despite trimming his ERA to 4.63.
Wilkinson said he hopes there is more to come:
“It was awesome, it was pretty cool. [I] love the ‘Tugboat’ stuff, so that’s cool. It’s cool to have the support from the fans.”
Inheriting both runners, Ryan Walker retired Nolan Arenado on a fielder’s choice but walked Tim Tawa to load the bases.
On a 2-2 pitch, pinch-hitter Lars Nootbaar greeted McCovey Cove and made it 4-0 Diamondbacks on his first career grand slam. It was another gut punch for Walker, who allowed his fifth home run of the season. Unlike Wilkinson, Walker was booed off the field at the end of the inning.
Kelly finished his day comfortably with a shutdown inning, adding two more strikeouts to reach seven for the afternoon. The win pushed him to 9-12 with a 5.08 ERA and gave him his 11th career victory against the Giants, most by any opposing pitcher since 2019, the year Kelly made his Major League debut. With seven scoreless innings, Kelly set up Arizona nicely for the nightcap, as the Diamondbacks needed only two more pitchers the rest of the game.
The Giants did avoid a shutout. On his bobblehead day, Jung Hoo Lee put San Francisco on the board with an RBI single in the eighth. Lee reached base three times, extending his on-base streak to five games.
In a surprise move, Yunior Marte started Game 2 for the Giants and made his Major League debut in a 7-2 win. The 23-year-old right-hander from the Dominican Republic joined outfielder Jonah Cox in skipping Triple-A entirely on the way to a big league debut this season.
Marte fared well. His night ended after 4 2/3 innings, allowing one run on three hits and two walks while striking out three. Like Wilkinson earlier in the day, Marte walked off to a standing ovation from the nightcap crowd of 29,272. Reiver Sanmartín, who needed just five pitches to strike out Nootbaar looking and finish the fifth, picked up the win to improve to 2-0 with a 4.91 ERA.
Marte said the ovation reflected all the work that got him there:
“I got the opportunity to start and I obviously took advantage of it.”
Before Saturday, Marte was pitching in the Eastern League for the Richmond Flying Squirrels, where he tossed at least five innings with three or fewer runs in each of his last six appearances, striking out 36. He was still a bit under the radar within the Giants organization — but not after this. With injuries this past week to Adrian Houser and Carson Whisenhunt, it might be Marte sticking around for more opportunities with the big league club.
Cox’s speed was on display early, with two steals in the first inning that helped the Giants score their first run. He added a third two innings later, continuing to spark a San Francisco running game that has been missing all season.
Even with that impact, Vitello lifted Cox for Drew Gilbert in the fifth with two runners on against starter Mitch Bratt, and Arizona countered with right-hander Gerardo Carrillo out of the bullpen. An aggressive move, especially after Gilbert went hitless in four plate appearances in the opener.
Vitello called it a very aggressive move at the time, one born of a lingering regret from the opener:
“[I] kinda went into this game not wanting to have any regrets.”
Vitello’s living-on-the-edge mentality paid off. Gilbert drew a walk, leading to back-to-back singles from Devers and Eldridge. A three-run barrage, and a 4-1 Giants lead. All three runs went on Bratt’s ledger, saddling the left-hander with the loss (1-3, 4.70 ERA).
Arizona chipped back in the seventh when Max Kepler reached on a slow roller to third that Shay Whitcomb couldn’t turn into an out, then came around to score to make it 4-2.
But credit Carson Seymour for striking out the most feared batter in all of San Francisco this entire weekend — Nootbaar — with the tying run standing at second base.
Seymour said he knew runners were at second and third, but tried not to think about them:
“I thought I was just super dialed on home plate and just try to get [the ball] over the [plate] and hope for the best.”
Seymour took the mound again in the eighth and stranded a runner at third with a strikeout of Kepler. He has looked the part lately — a 0.96 ERA with 10 strikeouts over his previous seven outings entering Saturday — and none of those strikeouts were bigger than the two in Game 2.
Devers and Eldridge again went back-to-back with RBI singles in the eighth, pushing the lead to five. Eldridge finished with his second career four-hit game and second career four-RBI game. Devers added two hits and two RBIs, extending his hit streak to seven games. If this season has shown anything, it’s that the power duo can coexist in this Giants lineup.
The Giants hit the road for seven games, starting with Monday’s 3:05 p.m. makeup game in Atlanta. Having won the first two games at Truist Park in June, a win Monday would complete San Francisco’s first three-game sweep of 2026.
Inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame last month, former Giants second baseman Jeff Kent was honored Saturday with the retirement of his No. 21. Kent spent six seasons in San Francisco, earning three All-Star selections and the 2000 National League Most Valuable Player award.
The last nine months have been a blur for Kent: selected to Cooperstown by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee in December, inducted in July, and now enshrined at Oracle Park. Kent never saw any of it coming, especially after the Giants handed out No. 21 to 21 different players and coaches after he played his final game in orange and black.
Kent pointed out that he was wearing his 1992 World Series ring from his rookie season with Toronto, and said he would give it up for a World Series ring with the Giants:
“We battled. We were there so many times that we went to war… we got to that finish line, couldn’t cross it, and I would have traded it in for that, and I wouldn’t have cared about anything else.”
The Giants made three postseason appearances and one World Series trip during Kent’s tenure (1997, 2000, 2002). He remains the only player in franchise history with a pair of multi-homer postseason games.
Lonsway debut strikeout
Seth Lonsway made his Major League debut in the eighth inning of Game 1. The 2021 sixth-round pick out of Ohio State struck out Vargas on three pitches, with Vargas losing his bat on the final swing, sending it into the protective netting near the Giants dugout. An unforgettable first out for the 27-year-old lefty from St. Marys, Ohio.
Houston 2, Giants 1
Giants 3, Detroit 1
