PHILADELPHIA — Prior to Monday night’s game at Citizens Bank Park, Willy Adames spent several minutes chatting with president of baseball operations Buster Posey. They shared a couple laughs, then Adames headed off for batting practice.
The contents of that conversation appear to have paid dividends.
Adames hit his first home run with his new team as the Giants beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 10-4, clearing the right-center field fence to put the exclamation point on a six-run second inning that paved the way for the team’s third win in four games of this road trip.
It was a much-needed swing of the bat for Adames, who entered play with a .186 batting average and .506 OPS. Adames’ offensive output remains below average, but his two hits were a step toward him looking like the player the Giants hoped to get when they signed him to a franchise-record $182 million deal. Before that swing in the second, Adames had gone 135 plate appearances without homering (including the postseason), his last home run being on Sept. 14, 2024.
Tyler Fitzgerald broke a slump in his own right by finishing a single shy of the cycle, doubling, tripling and hitting a three-run homer. Mike Yastrzemski continued to stay hot by driving in three runs and hitting a two-run homer off left-hander Tanner Banks, his first homer off a lefty since June 19, 2023.
Landen Roupp didn’t have his finest outing as he allowed four earned runs over five innings, but the start was impressive in that Roupp was able to bounce back from a three-run first inning. Roupp needed 36 pitches to record his first three outs, forcing manager Bob Melvin to get Spencer Bivens warmed up when Roupp got to the bottom of Philadelphia’s lineup in the first.
Roupp’s bread and butter against the Phillies was his curveball, a pitch he went to early and often. The right-hander threw 56 curveballs, the most thrown in a single outing by a Giants pitcher in the pitch-tracking era (since 2008). Roupp also generated 15 whiffs with the curve, which is also the most with that pitch in a single game by a Giant in the pitch-tracking era.
The Phillies threatened to put together another big inning in the the fourth, putting runners on second and third with no outs. With the bullpen on red alert, Roupp pulled off a Houdini act by retiring three straight batters to escape without allowing a run. After getting Trea Turner to hit into an inning-ending groundout, Roupp emphatically slammed his hand into his glove as he walked back to the dugout.
Erik Miller benefitted from some luck in the bottom of the seventh inning. With two runners on base, the Phillies’ J.T. Realmuto sent a deep fly ball to left field with home run distance that veered foul. Three pitches later, Miller threw a backdoor slider that home plate umpire Tony Randazzo called strike three — a pitch that was several inches off the plate. Realmuto argued the call amidst a cacophony of boos, and Miller escaped the inning unscathed.
