Yesterday
Here are the top 5 July 17 moments in San Francisco Giants history.
1969 home vs. Dodgers, we're two games out of first place in our 93rd game of the year and starting a 4 game series against LA. We trail 13-11 in the 7th, 2 out, Bob Burda hits a 3 run homer off Jim Brewer and we win it 14-13. Burda spent four seasons pinch hitting for the Giants, he hit 13 career homers in a seven year career, 6 of them as a Giant. This is his 3rd.
2000 home vs. Texas, it's game 90, we're 1.5 out of first, down 5-4 in the 7th, JT Snow hits a 3 run homer off Doug Davis. We win this one 10-8. It was his second homer of the day. Snow's in year 3 of his 9 season run as Giants first baseman. Will left after the '93 season, Snow arrived in '97. Between that:
'94-Benzinger
'95-Carreon/Phillips
'96-Carreon/McCarty
These were homers 144-145 in Snow's career.
2002 at St Louis, it's game 94, we open up a series in St Louis 2 games out of first place, We're up 5-4 in the 9th, but they've loaded the bases against Robb Nen with Tino Martinez at the plate. Nen gets him 6-4-3 to end the game. We fleeced Nen from the Marlins after the '97 season for Joe Fontenot, he kills it immediately, has a 266 ERA+ and 40 saves in '98. It's worth 5 and a half WAR, the second best season for a relief pitcher in franchise history. Nen remained the closer throughout his 5 year Giants career, which ends after this season, also a good year (all he had were good years) he had 43 saves and a 177 ERA+ in '02, which, through 2016, is the 12th best season a Giants reliever ever had. Robb Nen killed it is my point. Through 2016 Nen's the 26th best San Francisco Giant ever.
2005 at LA, we're 10 games out of first, finishing up a series at Dodger Stadium, 1-1 in the 9th, 2 out, Michael Tucker hits a 3 run homer off Yhency Brazoban, and that does it, we win 4-1. (Entirely by happenstance, I'm writing this on Tucker's 46th birthday). Tucker's two year Giants stint is just about over, we send him to Philly in a month and a half. This is his last Giants homer.
2015 at Arizona, it's our first game after the break, we're 4.5 off the lead, this one goes a dozen innings, we use 10 pitchers. The last one is Ryan Vogelsong, He's on the mound in the 12th, we're up 6-5, they have a man on - Yasmany Tomas at the plate, he grounds into a 4-3 double play and we're gonna win this game. It's his first relief win in almost a decade. Vogelsong was 20 when the Giants drafted him in '98, he pitched in 34 innings for us before getting moved to Pittsburgh in '01 as part of the Jason Schmidt trade. After being out of the league for 5 years, he came back to San Francisco in 2011 and had the best year of his career, with a 129 ERA+. By 2013 his productive career was over, he had an ERA+ of 60. He went back to Pittsburgh after the 2015 season and finished up his big league career as a Pirate.
See you tomorrow. Go Giants!
