When LaMonte Wade Jr. struck out on a high cutter from Seattle’s Carlos Vargas, I dropped my head into my hands and groaned. A necessary release of stale, anxious air that had built up over the past four hours. Bottom of the 11th, down a run — and another San Francisco Giants hitter couldn’t muster a deep enough fly ball or a well-placed grounder to advance the runner the final 90 feet home.
It was the Giants’ eight blown opportunity to knock in a run with an out, and this latest failure felt like the decisive blow. You only get so many chances in this life, and San Francisco had more than their fair share in this tilt: 16 hits, 6 walks, 27 at-bats with runners in scoring position — and only 8 runs??
How the game would appear to end felt impossible considering how it began. Riding the high energy of a packed crowd for their 2025 season home opener, along with the celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the opening of their stadium, the Giants looked primed to score early and often.
Leadoff man Wade doubled on the first pitch he saw in the 1st and later scored on a Matt Chapman infield single to erase the Mariners’ early lead. In the 2nd, Wade Jr. plated two with another double of the game, setting up runners at second and third with nobody out.
But the heart of San Francisco’s order couldn’t find a way to add on. They made contact, just the wrong kind. Willy Adames flew out to shallow center. Jung Hoo Lee’s hard grounder went right to first baseman Rowdy Tellez. Chapman walked, and Heliot Ramos worked the count full but ultimately grounded out to third.
The 3-1 lead handed to Justin Verlander quickly slipped through his fingers. Yes, Verlander, once upon a time, did pitch in this game, but he managed just 2.1 innings, allowing 3 runs on 5 hits, 2 walks, and 2 strikeouts.
The main culprit of his early exit: Cal Raleigh’s 13-pitch walk in the 3rd. An inning in an at-bat. After working the count full, Seattle’s catcher fouled off seven straight pitches (5 sliders, 2 fastballs) before spitting on a low and in curveball. The walk pushed the bases loaded and broke Verlander’s spirit. Tired, ticked-off — but now more efficient! — the righty needed just five more pitches to walk in Seattle’s second run. More count trouble necessitated a center cut fastball to Jorge Polanco who lined it into center to tie the game.
From there, advantage and momentum continued to teeter and totter between the two sides. San Francisco’s two-runs in the 4th were answered by Seattle’s two in the 5th. The Giant lead regained in the bottom of that frame was lost with three runs in the 6th scraped together by hard-hit one-hoppers that caromed off Adames at short, by base thieves running rampant on the slow motion motion of Camilo Doval and San Francisco’s first defensive error of the 2025 season. Seattle’s hard-fought two run advantage disappeared within the inning after a solo shot by Matt Chapman and a defensive alignment SNAFU which prevented their second baseman Ryan Bliss from turning a potential double play ball off the bat of Patrick Bailey.
By the 7th inning, so many leads had been won and lost, scoring opportunities capitalized on as well as squandered, that nothing felt tenable. For the Giants, everything came close, but nothing was enough. Mike Yastrzemski pulled a drive down the right field line that missed the foul pole by a couple of feet — the next pitch, he struck out. Adames lined a 2-out RBI double in one inning but failed to advance runners with situational contact the next. He plucked a line-drive from the air, but got bruised by grounders on the ground. Verlander became the first Giant starter pulled mid-inning. Other than an immaculate Randy Rodríguez (1.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 2 K), the shiny clean sheets of San Francisco relievers had been thoroughly scuffed with Lou Trivino giving up a two-run homer to Jorge Polanco, and Doval, though technically all unearned, forfeiting three runs. Erik Miller teased disaster in the 7th after another feisty Cal Raleigh at-bat with the bases loaded that ended with Jung Hoo Lee blindly reeling in a line drive on the warning track.
The Giants again botched a runner-on third-no-out opportunity in the bottom of the 9th after Bailey doubled off the wall in deep right center and pinch runner Christian Koss advanced to third on a wild pitch. The winning run just 90 feet away — yet neither Tyler Fitzgerald, Adames, or Lee could knock him in, forcing them into extra innings for the first time in 2025.
It was about minute 240 of play — when Wade K’ed and my head dropped into my palms — that my wife returned to our apartment and exclaimed: “You’re still watching this game?” In her arms she bore the fruit of her labors at the ceramics studio: hand-built vases and spun bowls from clay that were then dried and bisque fired, glazed and fired again and unloaded from the kiln — all done, seemingly, in the same amount of time it took the Giants and Mariners to labor through 20 back-and-forth frames. Meanwhile all I had accrued was a sore rear end and a bad attitude. I was cranky, my eyes bloodshot. I wanted out, nor could I accept this. I pulled at my cheeks in disbelief that this wild and wildly frustrating game would be decided by a wild pitch from Spencer Bivens. For all the tight-rope walking Bivens did in the 10th and 11th innings up until that point: Five outs recorded, all with runners in scoring position — then to just dive-bomb a fastball like that…
I bemoaned the end as Willy Adames stepped into the box. In retrospect, it was ridiculous. The Giants’s big off-season signing, the new face of the franchise had the bat in his hands with the team’s back against the wall. Man and Moment were meeting, and I grumbled under my breath. He had a couple knocks on the day, a stolen base, but he had also spent the day unleashing some unwieldy upper-cut swings. Opening up too much, falling behind in the count, chasing out of the zone — in my worn down and sour state, Adames was the last person I had faith in to choke-up, adjust his swing, poke a pitch to the opposite field, or just make contact of any kind. I mean, there was a reason Vargas, with a base to work with, elected to go after him rather than Lee. They would nibble on the outside of the zone, not give him anything to substantial to hit, just tempt his worst tendencies and see if he bites
That was, I imagine, the brief. And to a certain degree, Vargas did exactly what he set out to do: a cutter outside, barely scratching the zone — the only problem is Adames did the thing he set out to do. He adjusted. He knew they’d pitch him away, so he just needed to keep his shoulder closed and look for a pitch out there. Lo’ and behold, he got it, and he got it — the prettiest and most surprising little, end-of-the-bat bloop to shallow right I’ve seen for some time.
The sacrifice fly in the 2nd sure would’ve saved us a lot of grief — this is more fun though.
