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Yesterday
Here are the top 5 July 28 moments in San Francisco Giants history.
Walk off 1985 home vs. Pittsburgh, we're 19.5 out, so the last two months are going to be a bit of a grind, in fact, we haven't been within 10 games since early June, Rick Reuschel on the mound for the Pirates in this one, he's out of the game by the bottom of the 10th, when, with the score 2-2, David Green singled home Chris Brown off of Cecilio Guante with the winning run. Reuschel's one of the more underrated pitchers in baseball history, with almost 70 career WAR I'd put him in the Hall of Fame. He was drafted by the Cubs in 1970, came up in '72 and went into the rotation. He spent 10 years in Chicago, then was sent to the Yankees for Doug Bird and Mike Griffin; he pitched only a dozen regular season games (and 3 in the postseason, Reuschel started a game in the '81 World Series against the Dodgers) for New York before having two shoulder operations in '82 and getting released. He signed with the Cubs again, left after two years for Pittsburgh, and that's where we are now, this is Reuschel's first year with the Pirates and, by ERA+, the best year of his career at 159. We get a 38 year old Reuschel for the stretch in '87 for Jeff Robinson. He works a lot, leads the league with 36 starts in '88 and throws over 200 innings as a 40 year old in '89. His career ends after 10 innings pitched in '91.
Walk off 1990 home vs. Reds, we're still in this, 7.5 games out of first, we've gained 3.5 games on the lead in 4 days, we walked off the Reds the night before, this is a huge, near 50,000 paid crowd at the Stick on a Saturday afternoon, it takes 11 innings but we get them again. Kevin Mitchell singles home Ernie Riles with 2 out in the 11th off of Randy Myers to win the game 3-2. The next day Scott Garrelts had a no hitter for 8 2/3 in front of 55,000 paid before giving up a base hit. We get to 3.5 games back but no closer. Mitch had a 150 OPS+ in '90 - what were the best offensive seasons for the Giants in the 90s? Let's say minimum 250 plate appearances and 125 OPS+.
'90 Mitch 150 OPS+, 589 PA, Clark 125 OPS+ 678 PA
'91 Clark 153 OPS+ 622 PA, Mitch 141 OPS+ 423 PA, Matt 129 OPS+ 635 PA, Robby 128 OPS+ 573 PA
'92 Clark 148 OPS+ 601 PA
'93 Bonds 206 OPS+ 674 PA, Matt 137 OPS+ 619 PA, Robby 136 OPS+ 559
'94 Bonds 183 OPS+ 474 PA, Matt 141 OPS+ 483 PA
'95 Matt 177 OPS+ 318 PA, Bonds 170 OPS+ 635 PA
'96 Bonds 188 OPS+ 675 PA, Matt 134 OPS+ 455 PA
'97 Bonds 170 OPS+ 690 PA, Snow 135 OPS+ 637 PA
'98 Bonds 178 OPS+ 697 PA, Kent 142 OPS+ 594 PA
'99 Bonds 156 OPS+ 434 PA, Burks 147 OPS+ 469 PA, Kent 125 OPS+ 585 PA
That's 23, shave 3 or add two and that's not a bad list of our best offensive seasons in the 90s.
Walk off 1992 home vs. Dodgers, at the time, it sure seemed like the last San Francisco Giants walk off homer against the Dodgers, 3-3 with 2 out in the bottom of the 9th, Roger McDowell has an 0-2 count on Will Clark, who hits a 2 run homer to right to win the game 5-3. It's Will's 157th career homer, his 6th career walk off (he only hits one more, he never hits a walk off homer for a team other than the Giants)
2000 at Chicago, it's game 100 and we are tied for first place, it's scoreless in the 9th inning in front of 40,000 on a Friday afternoon at Wrigley, we only got 5 hits, but the one that mattered came with one on and one out in the 9th, Rich Aurilia homering off of Tim Worell, we win the game 2-0. The two pitchers that Aurilia faced the most in his career were Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux; 59 plate appearances each.
Aurilia vs. Johnson: .333 BA, .908 OPS
Aurilia vs. Maddux: .172 BA, .483 OPS
Walk off 2007 home vs. Marlins, we're a dozen games out of first, 3-3 in the 9th, Ray Durham singles home Fred Lewis off of Kevin Gregg to send everyone home. We were trailing 3-2 coming into the inning, Mark Sweeney doubled home Dave Roberts to tie the score, setting up Durham. Sweeney played in a couple hundred games as a Giants pinch hitter/backup first baseman in '06 and '07, we sent him to the Dodgers for Travis Denker (he played in 24 big league games, all for us in '08, he had 9 career hits). As of this date we haven't made a subsequent trade with the Dodgers.
See you tomorrow. Go Giants!
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