Adrian Houser left Tuesday’s game in the second inning with an injury, and the San Francisco Giants turned almost immediately to Anthony Molina, who was supposed to be elsewhere and instead ended up carrying them through the middle innings. Called up the day before, Molina worked the third through sixth and kept the game from unraveling.
That mattered because the Giants did not have much room for error. They beat the Cincinnati Reds 3-1, with Rafael Devers driving in their offense by hitting his sixth home run of the month in the fifth inning, and with Carson Seymour later getting the final three outs for his first career save. Molina was the name that held the night together after the starter went down.
His line was the kind a team leans on when the season starts chewing through pitchers: 4 2/3 scoreless innings, one hit, one walk, 52 pitches. For a reliever who had been stretched out in AAA, it was an emergency job done better than anyone could have reasonably expected. He was called into duty many innings ahead of schedule and gave the Giants the breathing room they needed.
The backdrop is what makes the outing more than just a good fill-in performance. The Giants had already lost a starting pitcher to injury the day before Tuesday’s game, and Carson Whisenhunt is headed for Tommy John surgery. That leaves less margin and more pressure on every healthy arm, especially when another starter goes down in the second inning and the replacement has to cover almost the rest of the game.
There was still a jolt at the end. Sal Stewart led off the ninth with a home run off Seymour, a reminder that even a comfortable score can tighten fast when the bullpen is exposed. Seymour answered by retiring the next three batters to finish it, but the larger truth around the Giants is harder to miss: the win was clean, the pitching picture is not, and Molina’s 52 pitches were as much a warning as they were a rescue.
For now, the Giants have a victory and another unexpected answer in Molina. What they do not have is any clarity yet on how serious Houser’s injury is, or how long the team can keep patching innings before the strain shows up somewhere else.
