In the fifth inning of the Giants-White Sox game on Sunday afternoon, Rafael Devers came to the plate with the score tied, the bases loaded and nobody out. There were all sorts of potential outcomes. A double play would have given the Giants the lead and quieted the crowd at the same time. A fly ball would have given them the lead, but it also would have meant they’d need an ol’-fashioned clutch hit to score more runs, and they’ve had a miserable time producing those kinds of hits this season. A strikeout would have ratcheted up the sense of impending doom.
Every single person paying attention, though, was thinking the same thing: You know, he could hit a grand slam. It was the bogeyman lurking in the mind of White Sox fans. It was a satisfying-if-implausible daydream for Giants fans. No matter how sophisticated a baseball fan you might be, you’re never more than a bases-loaded situation away from thinking, “What if a big home run scored four runs at the same time?”
Devers did the thing:
It was the Giants’ second grand slam in as many games and their third grand slam in the last eight days. All of this makes for a great excuse to look up the history of Giants’ grand slams. When you get the chance to gorge on fun facts, you gorge on fun facts. It’s one of the immutable laws of the universe.
For example, Devers’ grand slam was the Giants’ 244th since the club moved to San Francisco. Divide that by their 68 seasons here, including this one, and you get an average of roughly 3.5 grand slams per season. That means the Giants have hit almost a season’s worth of grand slams in the last eight days. The season hasn’t exactly been saved yet, but the road to enjoying baseball again runs through stretches just like this.
So let’s look for more fun facts about grand slams, with factlets and tidbits welcome. Almost all of these numbers come from Stathead searches, and if you subscribe, you can skip my stupid jokes entirely.
Keep in mind, though, they’ll never have a search that reminds you without prompting that Kelby Tomlinson’s three major-league home runs were a grand slam, an inside-the-park homer and a home run against Clayton Kershaw. This makes Dr. Tomlinson the John Cazale of home-run hitters, someone who offered nothing but perfect contributions to the form over his short career.
See? Fun facts. There should be at least a couple more out there. Let’s start with …
Harrison Bader hit more grand slams as a Giant last week than Pablo Sandoval ever did
Bader is also tied with Bob Brenly, Chili Davis and Darrell Evans, with one more to go before he ties Will Clark. He’s, let’s see, 14 grand slams behind Willie McCovey, but the season is young.
The Sandoval one gets me, and not because it says anything bad about him or his Giants career. It’s just a perfect way to explain the randomness and odd permutations that baseball spits out. Sandoval won three championships and made two All-Star teams in San Francisco, and he’ll always be tied for the lowest ERA in Giants history, but he’ll never have as many grand slams as a Giant as Bader hit in four plate appearances with the bases loaded.
Of course, this all applies to the grand slams that Madison Bumgarner hit in 2014, so there are levels of grand-slam appreciation to be had. Also, as long as we’re having fun with career grand-slam totals, Devers’ grand slam was the seventh of his career, tying him with Vladimir Guerrero Sr., Carl Yastrzemski and Pedro Feliz on the all-time list.
No pitcher has allowed more than two grand slams to a Giant … but Alex Vesia has a chance
In all the seasons of San Francisco Giants baseball, there hasn’t been a pitcher who stuck around long enough to allow three grand slams to them. There have been 13 pitchers who allowed a pair of them, including Hall of Famer Don Sutton, but never three.
Enter Alex Vesia, who has allowed grand slams to Darin Ruf (2022) and J.D. Davis (2023). Since then, the Giants have had just three chances against him, including one this year. Let’s all start paying a little more attention to these matchups. It’s not much, but we grab anything to root for these days.
My guess: Jhonny Level at PNC Park in 2031. I’ll set a reminder on my phone.
The season with the most grand slams
That would be the 2015 Giants. Who weren’t exactly a fount of fun facts. They’re one of the most forgettable teams of the last couple decades, having the misfortune of being sandwiched directly between the final championship and the collapse. This was the season of Casey McGehee, for example. He even hit one of the team’s nine grand slams that year.
Still, nine grand slams in a single season! McGehee was joined by Tomlinson, Brandon Crawford, Hunter Pence, Héctor Sánchez, Jarrett Parker, Marlon Byrd and Buster Posey (twice).
It’s hard to make this fun fact that fun, though. It was the first fun fact of them all, and it almost derailed the entire article. Had to bury it down here. Apparently, being good at grand slams isn’t always the same as being good at baseball, but you knew that already.
The seasons without any grand slams
Noting the seasons that were bereft of grand slam frivolity would seem to be the opposite of a fun fact, but doing so allows you to appreciate the Giants’ last few days even more. Sometimes, the seasons stink so much that you don’t even get to enjoy a single grand slam, and you can be grateful that at least you’re not watching one of those seasons.
Case in point: The 2018 Giants, who were the least rewarding team I’ve ever watched. They didn’t hit a single grand slam, possibly because they didn’t load the bases all season. I’ve never put my hand in the gom jabbar thingie from “Dune,” but I have done a post-postgame show on live TV for a team that specialized in 3:30 games and six-run losses, and I feel like it evens out.
There were two other Giants teams that never hit a grand slam: 1975 and 1979. Once the Willies left, the Giants spent the rest of the ’70s giving away young All-Star outfielders, so they didn’t have time to worry about things like “grand slams.”
Also note: The 103-win team from 1993 had just one, but so did the 100-loss team from 1985.
Random grand slam tidbits that are too good to ignore
• Darryl Strawberry hit a grand slam for the Giants against Pedro Martínez, which isn’t a sentence I expected to type when I started this.
• The San Francisco Giants once hit a grand slam in the Polo Grounds. If that sentence doesn’t seem odd to you, read it again. One of these years, I’ll remember that the New York Mets played at the Polo Grounds before construction had finished on Shea Stadium, but this is not that year.
• There have been five walk-off grand slams in San Francisco history, but the highest-leverage grand slam according to the math (leverage index and Win Probability Added) was this one from Ernie Riles in 1989.
• According to leverage index, the least important grand slam in franchise history was hit by Tomlinson. Which is why I’ve always said that you can’t trust math.
• Grand slams I’ve decided you can refer to by player alone, without any other context: the Mike Ivie grand slam; the Milt May grand slam; the Brandon Crawford grand slam; the Mat Latos grand slam. Other suggestions are welcome, but these four are definitely in there.
• The last time the Giants hit three grand slams in a month? Last May.
• The last time the Giants hit grand slams in consecutive games? Last June. Look, not all of these fun facts contain the same amount of fun. None of this stuff is regulated. Blame Orrin Hatch.
• “Ford Proctor hit a grand slam once” feels like the right way to end this.
If you’re looking for analysis about the 2026 Giants after a series win against the White Sox, it goes something like this: They were supposed to hit, and maybe they’ll start doing it now, even if it’s probably too late. Check back around the draft.
If you’re looking for hard-hitting journalism from someone who gets a little too excited about grand slams, here you go. It’s been a season with more downs than ups, but when it gets a little dark, just remember that sometimes baseball teams can hit a bunch of grand slams out of nowhere, for no good reason.