Young players, Soler's return spark Giants to victory

May 18th, 2024

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Giants placed seven position players on the injured list in the first half of May, but they finally got their first big piece back on Friday night.

returned from the injured list after missing 10 games with a right shoulder strain, starting at designated hitter and slotting into the leadoff spot in place of center fielder Jung Hoo Lee, who is expected to undergo season-ending surgery on his left shoulder in the coming weeks.

“We’ve got to find somebody to lead off now that Jung Hoo is not with us,” manager Bob Melvin said before the game. “[Soler’s] done it before. He’s been successful doing it.”

Sure enough, Soler later helped set the table for the decisive rally in the Giants’ 10-5 comeback win over the Rockies at Oracle Park. Soler and LaMonte Wade Jr. led off the fifth inning with back-to-back singles to put a pair of runners on for Thairo Estrada, who hammered a go-ahead, three-run shot to chase starter Ryan Feltner and snap Colorado’s seven-game winning streak.

The Giants also got a boost from their recent infusion of youth, with center fielder going 3-for-5 with a career-high five RBIs and shortstop driving in his first run in the Majors with a seventh-inning single.

“At some point in time you have to put a crooked number up like we did in the fifth, which was huge,” Melvin said. “We took the lead and never gave it back after that and added on runs. We haven’t done a ton of that this year, so it was good to see. There were quality at-bats throughout the lineup today.”

The Rockies jumped out to a 4-1 lead after tagging right-hander Mason Black for four runs on six hits over three-plus innings in his third career MLB start, but the Giants got one run back on Matos’ RBI double in the fourth and then went ahead for good behind a four-run fifth that was highlighted by Estrada’s seventh home run of the year, tied with Michael Conforto for the most on the team.

Minutes before the blast, Estrada found himself waylaid by a pitch he fouled off his left shin, but he managed to step back into the box following a brief visit from head athletic trainer Dave Groeshner and Melvin. Estrada recovered in time to drive a misplaced fastball out to left field for a 370-foot blast that put the Giants ahead, 5-4. Matos kept the rally going with a swinging-bunt single that knocked in another run, lifting his batting average to .333 (7-for-21) with a .904 OPS and 11 RBIs through his first six games of the year.

“I think it was something we all thought was coming, especially because of the vibes and the attitude the team had,” Matos said in Spanish. “We never gave up. We were always fighting in every at-bat and trying to score runs.”

The Giants’ younger, healthier lineup finished with 14 hits, tacking on a pair of insurance runs in both the seventh and eighth innings to reach double-digits for the first time since April 13 at Tampa Bay. More reinforcements are on the way, with Patrick Bailey (concussion) and Conforto (right hamstring strain) not too far behind Soler.

“We’re sort of on the other side of this,” president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said of the Giants’ recent rash of injuries. “We’ve got guys coming back. … You almost start looking at the back end of this when we’ve got to start picking, ‘OK, who can stay on this roster and who can we continue to find at-bats for?’ For right now, it’s fun to get the chance to see these young guys.”

Chief among them has been Matos, who will get a chance to play every day in center field now that Lee is expected to be out until 2025. Like Lee, Matos is known for his supreme contact skills, which he put to good use when he came up with runners in scoring position on Friday. He added an RBI groundout in the seventh before going down to get an 0-2 changeup and lining it to left field for a two-run double in the eighth.

The 22-year-old Matos became the fourth-youngest Giant to record a five-RBI game in the San Francisco era. The others were Orlando Cepeda, who did it as both a 20-year-old and 21-year-old, and Pablo Sandoval, just 27 days past his 22nd birthday in 2008.

“It seems like he’s one of those guys that just absolutely loves runners on base,” Melvin said. “There are times you have to shrink the zone. He can get a little aggressive, but it’s working for him at this point in time. It’s not just fastballs. He’s hitting some breaking balls, too. Five-RBI night is a pretty good night. It seems like since he’s been here, he’s really embraced guys on base. That’s been a problem for us.”