SAN DIEGO — The Giants piled on the Padres late Saturday afternoon, with Jung Hoo Lee’s first career home run and a grand slam from Michael Conforto powering a six-run eighth inning, padding their lead just enough to survive a chaotic ninth and prevail, 9-6.
Called on to record the final two outs in his first appearance of the season, closer Camilo Doval was nicked for two pitch clock violations and allowed a three-run home run off the right-field foul pole that cut the Giants’ advantage from eight to three, but the offensive explosion the inning prior allowed them to survive.
Even before the offensive spigot was flowing, they could take some measure of satisfaction in their offseason mantra paying off only three games into the season.
It was all about defense, and the Giants’ glovework — and the contrast to their opponents’ lack thereof — was on display for much of the afternoon.
Making his Giants debut and first start since 2022, Jordan Hicks slapped his glove, screamed and pointed to the visitors’ dugout after recording the final out of the fourth inning. Backed into a bases-loaded jam, Hicks escaped unscathed thanks to his Gold Glove-winning shortstop, Nick Ahmed, who nabbed a hard-hit line drive for the third out.
Hicks had plenty of occasions to be fired up by the play behind him while going five shutout innings, matching his previous career-high and earning his first career win as a starting pitcher.
Third baseman Matt Chapman backhanded a grounder from Fernando Tatis Jr., twirled and threw to first in time to end the third inning, and it was Ahmed again who made Tatis the victim to end the fifth, charging a softly hit grounder, barehanding the ball and making the throw to first just in time.
“We saw it pretty early in spring training; it’s been pretty seamless between those two,” manager Bob Melvin said of the Giants’ remade left side of the infield. “You’re seeing a lot of really good plays made.”
On the flip side, the Giants built their advantage on defensive mishaps from Padres outfielders, including an egregious error from Tatis, a Platinum Glove-winner. A line drive to right field off the bat of Ahmed should have been the second out of the fifth inning but instead set up a sac fly from Jung Hoo Lee when Tatis completely whiffed on his attempt to catch the routine fly ball, allowing Ahmed to reach second and Tom Murphy, who reached on a one-out walk, to third.
Taking a 2-0 lead in the second inning, the Giants capitalized on a bloop double down the left field line from Michael Conforto that also put runners at second and third after a walk to Wilmer Flores. The shallow pop fly fell to the ground as left fielder Jurickson Profar and third baseman Tyler Wade converged but failed to make the play.
There was nothing cheap about the double that drove home Conforto, though, a 109 mph rocket down the left field line from Murphy.
The same could be said about the 406 foot, 104 mph home run off the bat of Lee for the first of six runs in the eighth inning. Turning on a 1-1 sweeper from Tom Cosgrove — a lefty, to boot — Lee lifted a towering home run into the right field seats that would have been gone in all 30 ballparks, according to Statcast.
“That’s a pretty tough lefty to hit his first home run off of,” Melvin said. “It’s been impressive across the board at this point.”
After crossing home plate, Lee gestured to his family in the stands behind the third base dugout, then was greeted by a tunnel of high fives. The true indoctrination came afterward, trading three autographed baseballs and a hat to a family of three Bay Area natives who caught the baseball, then making his way back into the clubhouse, where he was doused in Bud Light by his teammates.
In a video posted to his interpreter Justin Han’s Instagram, Lee is asked if he would like to say anything to his teammates before they crack open their cans.
“I love you!” he responds, in English.
Lee’s homer was only the start of the celebration, though, as the Giants would load the bases only for Conforto to unload them with one swing of the bat — on the ninth pitch of his at-bat.
“I almost fell over I swung so hard the first two (pitches),” Conforto said, eventually running the count full. “The plan was to get him middle-in. He throws a nasty sinker, so it looks like it’s going middle in, but it ends up in off the plate. So, 0-2, it was just time to fight, see it deep and shorten up the swing a little bit. I kind of knew in the back of my mind at some point he was going to come back to the sinker. On that ninth pitch, he came back to it and I put a much better swing on it.”
The grand slam was Conforto’s second home run in three games, raising his early season OPS to 1.539, the fifth-best mark through early action in the National League.
“I’m feeling like everything’s coming together at the right time, at the beginning of the season,” he said. “It was a cool at-bat to have, bases loaded against that guy. He’s a good lefty. To battle and fight and kind of change my approach by the end of it, that felt really good.”
With a pair of power pitchers in Hicks and Dylan Cease on the mound, there wasn’t much quality contact to speak of through the first five frames. The two doubles amounted to the Giants’ only hits until the floodgates opened against Cosgrove in the eighth, while the Padres mustered just five until their ninth-inning rally.
Only four Padres reached base in Hicks’ five innings of work, and it took until Jake Cronenworth’s single to lead off the fourth for them to record their first hit.
Hicks needed 15 pitches to record the first two outs of the game, pumping a 97 mph sinker past Xander Bogaerts on the seventh pitch of his leadoff at-bat, but recovered and required only 80 to complete five innings. At that point, he told Melvin that was all he had.
“He was tired,” Melvin said. “That was going to be it. He goes from a late-inning reliever to his first start giving us five innings and 80 pitches? That’s enough.”
Hicks struck out six, leaning on his splitter to finish off the final five of his victims. Only incorporating the pitch late into spring, he threw it 14 times and generated four of his seven swings and misses from Padres batters. In the bases-loaded jam in the fourth inning, Hicks got the second out of the inning himself, getting Tyler Wade to swing through a perfectly located split at the bottom of the strike zone.
“It’s a complete surprise, I think, right now,” said Murphy, who also made his first start. “Nobody’s really planning for that pitch. Nobody’s really seen it. It’s got great action. The action’s incredible. Straight down when it’s good. … In my opinion, that’s how he’s going to get really good hitters out.”
The splitter might be Hicks’ most important pitch, but his blazing fastball was what he built his reputation on. While there were no triple-digit readings, Hicks topped out at 99.4, and reached 98 mph 17 times, something only Tim Lincecum and Carlos Rodón have done as Giants starting pitchers in the pitch-tracking era.
“He did a really good job of turning it on when he needed to,” Murphy said. “You saw some runners get on base, second and third, and he starts popping 98s. When you have that in your back pocket for when you need it, that’s going to be huge. And that’s the kind of tempering that he needs to do throughout the season.”
Taylor Rogers relieved Hicks, also making his first appearance of the year, and like Doval, also ran into trouble, allowing San Diego to scratch back one run when Profar doubled home Cronenworth on a sweeper that caught too much of the plate.
Doval was called on to protect a six-run lead after Erik Miller served up a two-run homer to Eguy Rosario that made it 9-3. His struggles mirrored those of his first appearance of last season, when he nearly blew a 7-5 win with the rain falling at Yankee Stadium, even down to the pitch clock violations and PitchCom malfunction.
It didn’t help that Doval was working with a new catcher in Murphy, and the Giants no longer employ the field coach who would translate during mound visits, Nick Ortiz. But after huddling with Murphy and Wilmer Flores — and getting called for his second automatic ball — he was out of it in no time, getting Manny Machado to bounce a slider to Flores at third for the final out.
“It’s not an ideal situation for a closer,” Melvin said. “I’ll talk to him later.”
Up next
The Giants will call up Daulton Jefferies to start the series finale — first pitch 1:10 p.m. — with Kai-Wei Teng a strong possibility to take down multiple innings in relief. It could spell the end of Joey Bart’s tenure in San Francisco, as the Giants will need to create space for Jefferies on the 26- and 40-man rosters.
On the mound for the Padres will be Michael King, one of the five players acquired from the Yankees for Juan Soto. Another one, Jhony Brito, kept San Diego in the game Saturday with 2⅓ scoreless innings of relief.
