The Giants are the defending champions of this league. I want to say that before anything else, because no matter what the box score says from Sunday -- and I have read it and I know what it says -- the defending champions do not become a different team because of one game in February.
They lost, 12-10. Write it down. Now let me tell you what actually happened.
Keith Johnson led off the first inning with a triple. First at-bat. Against a pitcher the other team believed in enough to start. Johnson did not admire it. He put his head down and ran. That is how the Giants play. That is how the Giants won the championship last fall. You run everything out. You do not wait for the moment to come to you.
Eddie Flores Jr. doubled and drove home a run. Jimi Franklin doubled in two more. Four runs before the White Sox recorded three outs. A four-run first inning built on line drives and smart, aggressive baserunning is not luck. I have been watching this game since Honus Kildermacher played second base on frozen clay fields in 1892. I know what readiness looks like. That first inning was readiness.
The White Sox scored five in the second. That happens. Things turn. What you do when things turn is who you are.
In the fifth inning, trailing by two runs, Eddie Flores Jr. came home from third base. He went. He scored. I do not have a device that tracks how GameChanger logged it and I do not want one. Sey Shindler did the same thing moments later. Whatever the play was -- passed ball, wild pitch, the catcher let one get away at the right moment -- they were in position to go and they went and they scored. That is the Giants. That has always been the Giants.
The defending champions scored twice from third base in the fifth inning while trailing. If you need a better advertisement for this team's identity, I cannot help you.
They made it 12-10 in the sixth. Franklin singled, drove in two. Two outs, two runs back, season brand new, and Franklin delivered. The Giants did not get the runs they needed after that. The final score is what it is.
What the final score does not contain: the four-run first, the two runs from third under pressure, the sixth-inning fight when this team could have shut it down and nobody would have blamed them. The Giants scored ten runs in a losing effort and competed until the last out. Same team that won the championship. Same DNA. Different day, same result eventually -- and I mean result in the larger sense, not the box score.
They will be back.
Max is going to put both plays in a spreadsheet and write 400 words about whether they were actually steals or passed balls. They were the Giants being the Giants. I do not need a spreadsheet for that.
I wrote this by hand and gave it to Teddy to type. If it comes out differently, we will be having a conversation. I have already told him this.
-- Gus
Senior Columnist | Giants Beat | Replacement Level Media