SAN FRANCISCO — The first one, apparently, wasn’t sweet enough. Juan Soto needed a do-over.
There was no topping his second bat flip, which hung in the air and twirled for seemingly however many rotations it took for the baseball sent rocketing off of it to find the sea of fans on top of the brick wall in right field. The Yankees’ flamboyant superstar’s second home run of the afternoon sent shockwaves through the sold-out crowd at a sun-drenched Oracle Park, which had been under the reasonable impression until Soto’s ninth-inning blast that they would be heading home happy.
The Bronx Bombers are inevitable, even against Camilo Doval.
The Giants’ closer was tagged for four runs — Soto providing the first two — and was handed his second blown save of the season in a 7-5 loss that the Giants led by two entering the ninth inning. After taking two of three from the best team in the National League, the Philadelphia Phillies, to begin the homestand, the Giants were swept over three games by the team with the best record in baseball and finished the six-game stretch at 2-4.
Called on to protect a 5-3 advantage, Doval was uncharacteristically hittable, allowing a leadoff single to the Yankees’ No. 8 hitter, Gleyber Torres, to begin the inning and four total hits — to go with two walks, a more typical sign something was off — before he was replaced by Taylor Rogers, who needed one pitch to record the final out.
The four hits, the final coming on a ground-rule double from Giancarlo Stanton that scored Judge, were more than Doval had allowed in any of his 189 previous career appearances, negating the Giants’ best offensive performance since the first game of the homestand.
Every member of the Giants’ starting lineup reached base at least once — including three hits from Jorge Soler and two from Casey Schmitt, who added a homer for the second consecutive game — and the well-rounded offensive effort helped them withstand another short outing from Blake Snell, who exited after 4⅔ innings with tightness in his left groin.
The five runs were the most the Giants had scored in a game since their eight spot Monday in the first game of the homestand. They had mustered seven total runs in the four games since, representing a brief step back from the progress their bats had made over the past month.
Batting leadoff for the first time in his major-league career, Heliot Ramos drove in three of the Giants’ five runs with a pair of hits that each broke a tied score in favor of the home team.
In his second at-bat, Ramos slugged a solo shot to left field that opened a 2-1 advantage. And coming up for the fourth time with two outs in the sixth inning, after the Yankees had evened the score at 3, Ramos lined a single into left field that drove home Soler and Luis Matos to make it 5-3.
The severity of Snell’s ailment was not immediately known, though it occurred in the same area where another strained muscle just forced Snell to miss the past month. Manager Bob Melvin, pitching coach Bryan Price and trainer Dave Groeschner all made their way to the mound after Snell winced and his 99th and final pitch sailed high and wide of the strike zone, putting Stanton on to load the bases with two outs in the fourth inning.
Prior to his exit, Snell had limited the Yankees to one run — a no-doubter from Soto beyond Triples Alley in the first inning — and struck out seven while keeping opposing batters off balance with a mid-90s fastball and a big breaking curveball. Those two pitches accounted for 10 of the 14 swings and misses recorded by the left-hander.
Melvin called on fellow lefty Erik Miller, who surrendered a double to the first batter he faced, Alex Verdugo, that allowed two more runs to score, both credited to Snell, who still lowered his ERA to 9.51 from 10.42.
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Notable
The three runs driven in by Ramos were a career-high.
Up next
The Giants’ charter flight was scheduled to depart shortly after the final out for Phoenix, where they will begin a two-city trek through the southwest with three games against the defending National League-champion Diamondbacks, before three more against Bruce Bochy’s Texas Rangers, the defending World Series champs.
The loss of Snell only further complicates their pitching plans, which were hazy to begin with. Their relievers threw 128 innings in May, 13 more than the next-closest team, and the Giants plan to employ a bullpen game of some sort in their first game in Arizona, with Spencer Howard expected to take down bulk innings.
