Harrison Bader turned a wind-aided fly ball into a grand slam Sunday and the San Francisco Giants rolled past the Athletics 10-1 in West Sacramento, California, using an eight-run eighth inning to break open a tight game. The blast capped a rally that started after Athletics reliever Luis Medina loaded the bases with nobody out.
Adrian Houser gave up one run in six innings and walked five, but the Giants did not need much early support because Luis Arraez handled that himself. Arraez homered in the third inning for a 1-0 lead against Jeffrey Springs, then finished with three hits as San Francisco took two of three in the first series this season between the Northern California rivals.
The Giants kept adding on in the middle innings when Willy Adames reached on a throwing error by Zack Gelof, moved up on a balk and scored on Matt Chapman’s two-out double in the fourth. The Athletics answered in the fifth on Carlos Cortes’s pop-fly RBI double to cut the lead to 2-1, but that was as close as they got.
The eighth inning belonged to San Francisco and to the wind. Bader reached on another error by Gelof before Rafael Devers drove in a run with a single, a run scoring on the play when Lawrence Butler made a fielding error. Daniel Susac followed with an RBI groundout, Jung Hoo Lee singled in another run, and Bader ended the rally with a 346-foot shot that the stiff breeze pushed 7 feet farther and 18 feet to the right, just enough to carry it over the wall. In conditions with 25-35 mph winds, it counted as a home run and turned a close game into a blowout.
Springs allowed two runs, one earned, and five hits in six innings, while Medina’s rough eighth sent the game away from Oakland's former Bay Area rival. Luis Arraez added the kind of steady production that has defined the Giants’ recent stretch, and the bullpen finished the job behind Sam Hentges, Keaton Winn and Joel Peguero.
For the Athletics, Nick Kurtz kept reaching base, walking three times and extending his streak to 40 games, tied for the third-longest in club history behind Mark McGwire’s 62 and Rickey Henderson’s 46. The Giants now head to Arizona, where Robbie Ray is scheduled to start Monday’s series opener against Zac Gallen. The Athletics stay on the road, with J.T. Ginn set to face Angels right-hander Walbert Ureña on Monday.
