After Snell was nearly perfect, Little League walk-off for Giants

SAN FRANCISCO -- On the final day of the first half, the real Blake Snell finally showed up for the Giants.

The two-time Cy Young Award winner struck out eight and allowed only one hit over seven shutout innings as the Giants rallied for a wild 3-2 walk-off win over the Twins on Sunday afternoon at Oracle Park.

A dominant Snell retired the first 18 batters he faced, but his perfect-game bid came to an end when he gave up a leadoff single to Manuel Margot in the seventh. Still, Snell quickly erased Margot from the basepaths by inducing a 6-4-3 double play from Willi Castro and then struck out Brooks Lee swinging on a curveball in the dirt to cap his 80-pitch gem.

“That’s what you get when you get a Blake Snell that’s healthy, especially towards the second half of the season,” manager Bob Melvin said. “That’s when he’s really, really good.”

The Giants decided to turn a 2-0 lead over to Tyler Rogers in the eighth, as Snell was still on an 80-85 pitch count in his second start since returning from a left groin strain. Rogers worked a clean inning, but the Twins came back to tie the game on Margot’s two-run double off closer Camilo Doval in the ninth.

Still, the game ended in unusual fashion in the bottom of the ninth. Mike Yastrzemski opened the inning with a leadoff triple that got past a diving Margot in center field, but he was awarded home when Lee’s relay throw to third baseman Diego A. Castillo sailed into the Giants’ dugout, giving San Francisco its ninth walk-off win of the year.

“I just kind of turned and looked and saw it go in,” Yastrzemski said. “I was very thrilled that we could end it right there. It’s not the way you expect it to end, but it doesn’t matter how you get it done, as long as we’re on the winning side of it.”

After taking two of three from the Twins, the Giants will head into the All-Star break three games under .500 (47-50) but only three games behind the Mets for the final National League Wild Card spot. The Giants had higher expectations after spending heavily to upgrade their roster over the offseason, but they’re hoping Sunday’s dramatic win could be a sign of better things to come in the second half.

Snell, who joined the Giants on a two-year, $62 million deal in March, is looking like one of the biggest causes for optimism. The reigning National League Cy Young winner went 0-3 with a 9.51 ERA over his first six starts while struggling to overcome a truncated Spring Training and a groin issue that resulted in two stints on the injured list, but he appears to be back to his elite self now that he’s healthy.

“This year was weird,” Snell said. “I felt coming into the year I was going to be very dominant early on with just the notes I had to finish the year. As I get older, I get better, I understand, I learn quicker. The groin injuries were pretty annoying, and then signing late, that wasn’t fun. So there’s a lot there that made it a slow start, but I feel good. I’m just going to continue getting better.”

After working five scoreless innings in his return from the IL last week, Snell took an even bigger step forward on Sunday. He walked none and faced the minimum in his longest outing of the year -- no small feat against a Twins lineup that entered Sunday with an MLB-high .804 OPS against left-handed pitchers this year. The 31-year-old veteran topped out at 97.7 mph and generated 21 swinging strikes, with five of his eight punchouts coming on his curveball.

Before Margot broke up the perfect game in the seventh, the closest the Twins came to recording a hit was when Christian Vázquez hit a grounder up the middle that required a diving play by shortstop Brett Wisely, who threw to first in time for the second out of the sixth.

“There wasn’t even any hard contact, really,” Melvin said. “Even the base hit was soft. But you could see it from the very beginning. His mechanics were perfect. He was throwing his breaking ball whenever he wanted to. He was throwing his changeup. All of his pitches were working.”

San Francisco’s starters ranked 23rd in the Majors with a 4.49 ERA in the first half, but Snell’s turnaround and the impending return of veterans Robbie Ray and Alex Cobb should boost the staff significantly and give the club a chance to show that it can contend down the stretch.

“It makes us a lot scarier, dangerous,” Snell said. “Gives the bullpen rest for all the work they did in the first half. It just puts us in a really good position to have a chance to get to the playoffs and be dominant in the playoffs.”