Kyle Harrison outpitches fellow Bay Area native as SF Giants defeat Twins
Harrison limited the Twins to one run over 5⅓ innings to earn his first win since a three-week absence with a sprained ankle.
SAN FRANCISCO — With Twins on second and third, Kyle Harrison craned his neck toward the Giants dugout after recording the first out of the sixth inning and let out a sigh. He directed his gaze toward the sky when he saw manager Bob Melvin making his way toward the mound.
Harrison had escaped one jam an inning earlier, but the Giants’ skipper wouldn’t give him the leeway to navigate another high-wire act.
Rebounding from difficult first start back from a sprained ankle, the young left-hander did more than enough over five-plus innings Friday night to put the Giants in position to start their final series before the All-Star break on a positive note, with a 7-1 win over the Minnesota Twins.
Reliever Ryan Walker allowed one of the two inherited runners to score in the sixth, but otherwise Harrison held the American League playoff hopefuls scoreless through the game’s first five innings, striking out only three but exhausting just 83 pitches when Melvin emerged from the dugout with one out in the sixth.
“Anytime you get out of those jams, it’s huge. Got the adrenaline going a little,” Harrison said. “Really wanted to get out of that sixth, but trusted the guys behind me. Walker did a great job coming in and only allowing one. We’ll take that. Anytime you’re up four runs, you’ll take that.”
It was a far more efficient and effective effort than Harrison’s first foray back into the starting rotation after he sprained his ankle in the weight room last month, when the Guardians jumped on him for four runs over 3⅓ innings in a 5-4 loss. It sends the rookie left-hander into his first All-Star break sporting a 4.08 ERA with a 5-4 record in 16 starts and 73 strikeouts to 27 walks over 86 innings.
“I felt great,” Harrison said, compared to his last start. “I was able to slow down and really settle in. I was happy with my offspeed for the most part. Changeups still getting there, but I was really happy with the slider. Didn’t do too well on first-pitch strikes, but I was able to battle my way back.”
Harrison, a graduate of De La Salle, got the best of San Anselmo’s Joe Ryan in a matchup of Bay Area high school products.
Ryan, among the American League leaders in ERA and strikeouts, had a large cheering section behind the first-base dugout, who watched the Sir Francis Drake graduate put his team in an early hole and eventually lose his command, allowing five runs on six hits while walking three over 5⅓ innings.
While Harrison said he never crossed paths with Ryan on the prep circuit, “I’ve always watched him. I know he’s got good stuff. I know he loves to pitch with that heater, too.”
The seven total runs scored by the Giants were their most in a game this month, and they came one hit shy of reaching double-digits for the first time in July. Having lost four of their past five games, the Giants had just six hits in their past 35 chances with runners in scoring position but went 4-for-9 in those situations Friday night.
Ryan put the first two batters of the sixth inning on base via free passes, and after manager Rocco Baldelli called on left-hander Caleb Thielbar, Brett Wisely doubled home Matt Chapman to extend the Giants’ lead to 5-0.
Tripling and scoring in his previous at-bat, Wisely matched his season-high with three hits and finished a home run shy of the cycle. Coming up against another lefty, Kody Funderburk, with a chance at the record books in the ninth inning, Wisely worked a leadoff walk to reach base for his fourth time.
“Not only has he done pretty well since he’s been here, he’s also hit left-handed pitching really well, so it’s one of the reasons why we leave him in,” Melvin said. “Playing the position, he made some nice plays again today. But you always pull for that last one.”
The terrific play from the 25-year-old shortstop helped blunt any lingering resentment in Carlos Correa’s first game in San Francisco since his free-agent megadeal fell apart two winters ago. Downplaying the stakes beforehand, Correa went 1-for-4 and scored the Twins’ only run.
“That guy’s an unbelievable talent,” Wisely said. “If he was here, I would gladly play a different spot.”
The boos from the first time he stepped to the plate had dissipated by the time he came up to lead off the sixth inning. Correa laced a single, and Carlos Santana followed with a well-struck double into the left-center field alleyway, putting runners at second and third with nobody out.
Harrison worked his way out of a similarly sticky situation in the fifth, allowing the first two runners to reach base but inducing an infield fly and generating a pair of swinging strikeouts to leave them stranded, and got the first out of the inning when Wisely left his feet to snag a line drive off the bat of Byron Buxton.
But with Willi Castro, a first-time All-Star with better numbers against lefties than righties, due up for a third time, Melvin decided Harrison had given them enough. He called on Walker, who got Castro to roll over and coaxed a soft fly ball to get out of the inning.
“Walk was up and loose and they were starting to square him up a little bit,” Melvin said. “That team against left-handed pitching, especially the third time through the middle of the order, it just felt like it was time.”
Notable
The Giants recorded multiple triples for the first time since June 9, 2022.
In addition to Wisely’s, Jorge Soler led off the bottom of the first with his first three-bagger since 2019 — only the fourth of his career — when Matt Walner misplayed his line drive to right field, allowing the ball to sneak past his glove and all the way to the wall as the designated hitter lumbered into third base.
Soler scored, opening a 1-0 lead, when the next batter, LaMonte Wade Jr., lifted a sacrifice fly to left field.
Up next
RHP Hayden Birdsong (1-0, 4.40) vs. RHP Simeon Woods Richardson (3-1, 3.48) in the second game of the series. First pitch is scheduled for 4:15 p.m. on FOX.