Yesterday, when the San Francisco Giants beat the Chicago Cubs 5-2, I tried to blend tempering expectations with celebrating success. It was a remarkably easy thing to do, given the circumstances: the Giants had won their third straight game in a row, looking exceedingly competent along the way against the NL's top two teams, yet still possessed a playoff odds number that began with a "0."
I directed you to not dream, though I can't say I entirely heeded my own call; when a team plays that well, you can't help but let your mind wander and your heart wonder.
It's when that happens that baseball -- and the Giants in particular -- humble you. Let yourself marinate with the concept of the Giants being a good baseball team that can go on a run and you'll quickly find out that the bag has a hole in the bottom and the marinade is all over the floor where your baby is crawling and your dog is playing.
And it seemed, through the first inning and a half of Wednesday's game, that the Giants were intent on doing exactly that. It started with the personnel: I mentioned after Tuesday's win that the Giants are making decisions based more on 2026 than on 2025, and starting Carson Whisenhunt is a data point in support of that. Whisenhunt is the team's top prospect and someone who figures to play a huge role next year, but his presence against one of the sport's most robust lineups is a reflection of how the team's season has gone, not the player's.
Indeed, Whisenhunt wasted little time getting into trouble, allowing Nico Hoerner to smack a leadoff single, and then issuing back-to-back one-out walks to Seiya Suzuki and old enemy Justin Turner, loading the bases in the process. But while free passes and dingeritis have been his Kryptonite this year, constitution never has been. He fell behind Carson Kelly 2-0 but, with nowhere to put him, came back in the zone three times in a row, inciting a double play to end the inning.
The concerns of being humbled were briefly alleviated in the bottom half of the inning, when Rafael Devers did some very bad things to a floating splitter from Colin Rea, clearling center field easily with what can only be described as a superstar swing.
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But the comfort was short lived. Whisenhunt immediately found himself swimming upstream in the second, ceding back-to-back singles to Pete Crow-Armstrong and Dansby Swanson to open the frame. A first flyout moved Crow-Armstrong to third, but it was the second flyout that signaled danger. It was shallow, and Heliot Ramos got under it with ease. It wasn't nearly deep enough for either runner to tag, so Ramos jogged the ball halfway in, before finally soft-tossing a throw to somewhere 15 feet above where the cutoff man was standing. It didn't allow Crow-Armstrong to score, but it did allow Swanson to take second, as yet another outfield blunder had place a runner in scoring position.
It didn't matter though, and not in the good way. After an interlude on the mound with his catcher and pitching coach, Whisenhunt fell behind 3-1 to Nico Hoerner, then tossed a meatball of a sinker that was tattooed into the bleachers.
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As Duane Kuiper lightened the mood by quipping, "I can't imagine that's what J.P. Martinez told him to do," Mike Krukow offered some insight into the sixth home run that Whisenhunt has allowed in his short career, pointing out that it's hard for young pitchers to nibble, after breezing through the minors with blow-it-by-him-no-matter-the-location stuff.
And that's why Whisenhunt starting is important, because while it's arguably a hindrance to winning games in 2025, it sure should help everyone come 2026. But as of the middle of the second inning, it certainly wasn't helping the current Giants, and we all felt the unmistakable signs of coming back to earth after dreaming a little too big.
Which made what happened for the rest of the game all the more encouraging. Whisenhunt immediately settled down, going three-up, three-down in both the third and fourth innings. And in the bottom of the third, a Giants team that had quality at-bats the first time through the order finally pounced, in ways that sure felt awfully encouraging.
It began with a leadoff walk from Andrew Knizner, then a single by Ramos. The big hit followed when Devers -- who raised his OPS by 25 points and his wRC+ by six in one game -- roped one towards triple's alley for a ground-rule double, scoring a run and giving the Giants a certified rally.
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The ball hopping the fence to sneak into the bleachers temporarily cost the Giants a run, leaving Ramos at third. Seeing as how there were no outs, that really shouldn't matter for a good team. But if your summer plans involved watching Giants baseball, you have serious doubts about the goodness of the Giants, and you've come to not only fear stranding runners at third, but expect it.
Except Willy Adames hit a sacrifice fly and it tied the game. And Dominic Smith hit a sacrifice fly and the Giants led.
Maybe we weren't to be humbled. Maybe we were to be inflated further with whatever various delightful feelings we're experiencing while watching the Giants rattle off four consecutive wins against elite teams. That was your hope, but you couldn't shake the feeling that the inevitable humbling was still right around the corner. It would just wait for a painful moment to jump out and scare you.
And then came the fifth inning, which flipped that notion on its head in the top half, and then dunked said head in the toilet in the bottom half.
It began with trouble once more for Whisenhunt, who retired the first batter he faced (his eighth consecutive batter retired since Hoerner's homer), and then got ahead of Hoerner 0-2. Then he plunked him. One pitch later, and Kyle Tucker had singled to put runners at the corners. Fearful of allowing the runner to score, Whisenhunt pitched with too much trepidation to Suzuki, and walked him. For the second time in the game, the Giants young lefty had loaded the bases with just one out.
Were the Giants solely focused on winning games this year, as Buster Posey and Bob Melvin so gently assure us they are, then the latter would have surely come out to take the ball from Whisenhunt. The Giants were clinging to a one-run lead, and the southpaw had allowed nine baserunners and thrown 78 pitches in 4.1 innings. In this hypothetical scenario where the Giants are all-in on winning right now, they probably also have Tyler Rogers and Camilo Doval, making it easier to deploy the bullpen in the fifth inning with a day game queued up for the next day.
Instead, Melvin left Whisenhunt in, giving his rookie a chance not just to earn a win, but to learn through experience how to work through jams and fight for wins. Which led to the first of two defining plays in the inning.
Whisenhunt went into attack mode against Turner, who countered with an attack of his own. The first pitch was a foul for strike one. The second pitch was a foul for strike two. The third pitch was a foul to stay 0-2.
On the fourth pitch, Turner finally put the ball in play, chopping a ball up the middle which Whisenhunt stabbed at. It caught just enough of the pitcher's glove to slow it down as it bounced over second base, where Adames fielded it like a receiver on a slant route, and pitched it sideways to Casey Schmitt, who managed to catch the ball in a foreign direction, spin balletically, and fire off a throw for an inning-ending double play.
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It was equal parts skill, fortune, and creativity -- three components that have been missing from the Giants equation. And it got them out of the inning.
As they did a night before, the Giants offense was ready to create some separation. They got to it in the bottom half of the inning, when Devers drew a one-out walk and Smith dropped in a single, putting runners at the corners with two outs.
Up came Matt Chapman, carrying with him the second defining moment of the inning and game. He took a 92-mph Rea sinker down the heart of the plate, and then Rea hit the replay button and tried it again. This time Chapman snapped at it, flopping it into right field to score a run. Tucker, playing in right field, snagged it cleanly and threw a strike to the cutoff man at first base.
There was just one problem: standing directly in between Tucker and the cutoff man's glove was Chapman's head. The ball hit him cleanly in the noggin, ricocheting away, and allowing a second run to score.
Chapman also took second on the play, a pivotal move that let him score four pitches later, when Schmitt smacked a single. It was, once more, the skill and fortune that has evaded the Giants all summer. The skill and fortune that their talented opponents always seem to have, but San Francisco rarely possesses.
It was a 7-3 lead, and while that isn't normally enough to feel comfortable against a team like the Cubs, these are the April and late-August Giants were talking about, not the May, June, July, early August, and mid August Giants. They're different. Different, I tell you (please don't bring this up when they lose 10-0 on Thursday).
The high-quality baseball just kept coming. Joel Peguero, making just the third appearance of his long-awaited MLB career, pitched two perfect innings, and in between, Devers stepped up with two on and one out, and had one of the most impressive swings of the season for the Giants, easily clearing the fence with a lefty-on-lefty opposite-field blast, his second homer and third extra-base hit of the day.
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And just like that, the route was on. Chapman added to it in the seventh with a solo bomb to open the inning, as he appears to be returning to form.
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And in the ninth, when the Cubs had brought in backup catcher Reese McGuire to handle mop-up duty, Ramos decided that 37-mph pitches deserved to be punished, and smacked the fourth home run of the game for the team.
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A 12-3 win against a very good team. Four straight wins against very good teams. A chance for a sweep tomorrow, with Logan Webb on the mound.
They're still looking the part. It still probably doesn't matter for this year. It still definitely matters for next year.