Davis, Crawford lead Giants' surge vs. D-backs

SAN FRANCISCO -- Not long after Tuesday’s Trade Deadline passed without any major additions to the Giants’ lineup, president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi was asked where he thought the club’s offensive improvement would come from over the final two months of the regular season.

Despite a woeful July in which the Giants ranked last in the Majors in virtually every offensive category, Zaidi expressed confidence that the team’s incumbent hitters would break out of their collective slumps and begin to produce at the levels seen earlier this year.

“Hard to believe because we were a very good offensive club for the first three months of the season,” Zaidi said. “I just don’t feel like we’re materially a different offense. We have the same group of guys we had the first three months of the season. I think we’ll get going here a little bit.

“Obviously we haven’t had our ‘A’ lineup out there very often this year. That’s been challenging. Nobody does. We just have to make the best of what we have. We need to score. We need to be better than 30th in the league in runs for us to do what we want to do.”

The Giants already appear to be showing more life in August, with the club’s bats once again overcoming an early deficit and rallying for a 4-2 win over the D-backs on Wednesday night at Oracle Park.

Brandon Crawford sparked the comeback with an RBI triple in the fifth inning, and J.D. Davis delivered a go-ahead, two-run double in the sixth to support a strong outing from Logan Webb, who fired seven innings of two-run ball in his 100th career start for San Francisco.

The Giants (60-49) also got three hits from a red-hot Wilmer Flores, who is now batting a team-high .305 with a .905 OPS over 79 games. San Francisco, which moved three games ahead of the third-place D-backs in the National League West standings and retained the top spot in the Wild Card race, improved to 51-13 when scoring at least four runs this season.

“Really well-played game,” manager Gabe Kapler said. “We came up with a few big hits tonight, which was nice. We needed it.”

Webb gave up two runs in the first inning, but he proceeded to retire 17 of the final 19 batters he faced and has now recorded a quality start in each of his 11 outings at Oracle Park this year. Wednesday marked only the sixth time he received at least four runs of support in 2023.

The Giants were blanked through the first four innings by Arizona right-hander Slade Cecconi, who was making his Major League debut, but they finally got on the board after Davis reached on a leadoff single in the fifth and scored on the 36-year-old Crawford’s RBI triple to right-center field. It was Crawford’s 28th career triple at Oracle Park, surpassing his good friend and former teammate Brandon Belt for the most in the ballpark’s history.

“That’s an old guy doing some young guy things,” Webb quipped.

Crawford, who is now 5-for-16 with a homer and four RBIs in four games since coming off the injured list, said he texted Belt after they both went deep on Tuesday and joked about teaming up for a “Brandon cycle.”

“I jokingly said, ‘Who’s getting the triple?’” Crawford said. “Funny that it happened the next day.”

Isan Díaz then tied the game with a milestone hit of his own, lining an RBI single to right field to snap his 0-for-15 start to his Giants career and record his first hit in the Majors since 2021.

San Francisco went ahead for good against left-hander Tyler Gilbert in the sixth, with Flores, Joc Pederson and Patrick Bailey opening the inning with three consecutive singles to load the bases with no outs for Davis.

Davis entered Wednesday only 8-for-52 (.154) in his first 15 games out of the All-Star break, but he came through with the decisive hit, pulling a first-pitch cutter from Gilbert down the left-field line to knock in two runs and give the Giants a 4-2 lead.

San Francisco still finished only 3-for-11 with runners in scoring position and squandered a few opportunities to break the game open, but the club hopes it’ll be able to build on its second consecutive win and continue to turn a corner offensively.

“We obviously still need to get better at getting guys in when they’re in scoring position, especially with less than two outs, myself included,” Crawford said. “But Logan pitched great. Other than the first inning, he pitched awesome. He definitely kept us in it and allowed us to come back and score a few runs.”