WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A generation of San Francisco Giants fans understood it to be true: When you attended a game at Candlestick Park, you would watch the home team battle a pair of adversaries.
There was the National League rival who happened to be in town that series. And there was the invisible yet undeniable influence that turned hot dog wrappers into urban tumbleweeds and fly balls into unstable particles. The winds might swirl more or less from one night to the next. They might be stronger or frostier. But they were guaranteed to be a constant and inhospitable presence in a sport that is supposed to be about sunshine and shirtsleeves.
Except, naturally, the one time the Giants marketing department held Kite Day. That afternoon turned out to be a dead calm disaster.
So many of those Giants teams became awfully good at playing in the wind. They were accustomed to getting pushed around by it.
The current Giants roster? These players are no more conditioned to the wind than any other team. The Giants played their last game at The Stick more than a quarter century ago. Manager Tony Vitello’s players wouldn’t recognize Stu Miller if he whooshed past them on a jet stream. So when the wind started blowing through the Sacramento Valley on Sunday morning — and promised to turn a series finale with the A’s at Sutter Health Park into nine innings of misdirection and microdermabrasion — the Giants appeared no better equipped to handle the gale-force gusts than their former Bay Area rivals.
Giants manager Tony Vitello suggested Oklahoma-raised Adrian Houser’s experience throwing in blustery conditions was an edge for San Francisco on Sunday. (D. Ross Cameron / Imagn Images)
Except for the Giants’ starting pitcher, maybe.
“Well, a ground-ball pitcher helps, but also, he grew up in Oklahoma,” Vitello said of right-hander Adrian Houser. “We had a clear unfair advantage today with Houser growing up in that state, because it’s like that all the time. In the old Big 12 days, with the south wind, it’s a pop-up to left field, and it’s a homer.”
Houser recalled “a few pitches where literally I raised my leg up, and my back foot and everything shifted forward from the wind. So it was pretty strong out there. Some changeups almost looked like they fluttered there and fell.” But the right-hander held steady and kept the A’s in the ballpark through six innings, which was some feat, since the Sacramento squatters had six left-handed hitters in the lineup and appeared better equipped to take advantage of the 40-mph cross-breeze that went out to right field. The Giants’ lineup was a little more right-handed to combat A’s left-hander Jeffrey Springs. But in the hours before the first pitch, Vitello made a prescient assessment.
“It can work the other way too with righties (who) backspin the ball,” Vitello said. “I used to call it the coffin corner. Sometimes it works in your favor, sometimes it doesn’t.”
Harrison Bader found the coffin corner and drove the nail. His grand slam in the eighth inning was an opposite-way drive that carried over the fence in the right-field corner and punctuated an eight-run rally as the Giants won 10-1 while taking two of three in the series.
Bader also maintained order in center field, sprinting back to catch one deep drive and later sliding in the grass to take away a potential hit the wind knocked down. Third baseman Matt Chapman allowed Houser to escape the sixth inning when he stayed with a foul pop that might have landed 30 rows deep if the wind hadn’t blown it back. The A’s scored their run on a pop-up that shortstop Willy Adames lost in the sun, but that moment aside, the Giants played a clean defensive game under difficult conditions while the A’s fumbled their way into yielding extra outs and bases.
“Nobody in the dugout was saying anything, no one making excuses,” Bader said. “We just made adjustments. We found a way to put together hits, play really, really good defense, and that’s just what this game’s about. Honestly, that’s what this season’s been about. Just chipping away and getting back to where we want to be.”
The Giants will play their next series under Arizona’s retractable roof, yet the headwinds will not abate. That’s what the Giants (20-27) must endure after sinking to the bottom of the National League standings and dropping as low as nine games under .500. The wind might come sweeping down the Oklahoma plains, but for the first six weeks of the season, everything most certainly was not going the Giants’ way.
Oh! Here’s one way to get a beautiful feeling: watching Luis Arraez continue to play like a deserving and obvious All-Star candidate. Arraez put the Giants on the board in the third inning when he took advantage of the breeze while hitting his second home run of the season. He also singled twice and walked to complete a three-game series in which he reached base 11 times. He became the first Giant to accomplish that feat since Heliot Ramos did it against Arizona June 3-5, 2024.
Arraez, a three-time batting champion, arrived in Sacramento with a .302 average. He headed out hitting .328. And his defense at second base, defying all gloomy predictions, continues to impress.
Chapman showed more signs of escaping his monthlong prison at the plate, hitting a pair of doubles. One of them was against a position player in the ninth, but the other was a 108 mph scorcher. When Chapman scored after an intentional walk in the eighth, it snapped a career-worst streak of 15 games without touching the plate. He hadn’t scored since April 30 and the first game of a doubleheader at Philadelphia.
Vitello didn’t start rookie Bryce Eldridge because he already had three lefties in the lineup against Springs. In addition to Arraez and Rafael Devers, Drew Gilbert started in right field to equip the Giants with the best possible outfield defense. With Jung Hoo Lee needing a day off, backup catcher Eric Haase was the choice to play left field. Perhaps to everyone’s relief, the closest he got to having a play was the sun ball that Adames couldn’t catch.
This wasn’t the day to critique Vitello’s lineup decisions. The wacky conditions made for some unique circumstances. But it’s hard to imagine Gilbert getting another start against a left-hander anytime soon. He’s 0-for-19 against them this season and even popped up in the ninth while facing lefty-throwing outfielder Carlos Cortes. When Gilbert batted with the bases loaded in the eighth inning and faced A’s lefty José Suárez, he took the extraordinary measure of attempting to bunt — even though Devers, with his 16th-percentile sprint speed, was standing at third base.
The Giants continue to have their share of roster challenges. The pieces don’t always fit as perfectly as they did in their 107-win season in 2021. But momentum is another invisible yet undeniable influence. Perhaps the Giants are finally getting their kite to flutter.
Vitello described his goal with the Giants this season, other than winning, was to foster “a brand name that’s noticeable, it’s fun, it can be explosive at times. More than anything, you get to the park, and you’re like, ‘Hell, yes, I can’t wait to be in this environment again.’ And we showed some more consistent signs of that the last three days, which is exciting for me.”
The Giants must continue to play clean games and win series to get back in the hunt. After taking a series from the A’s in tough conditions, they’re doin’ fine.
You might even say they’re feeling OK.