Giants hope Yaz's clutch hit vs. A's sparks offense

SAN FRANCISCO -- Timely hits proved maddeningly elusive for the Giants during their season-high six-game skid, but their slumping bats found a way to break through late against the last-place A’s on Tuesday night.

Mike Yastrzemski delivered a go-ahead RBI double in the eighth inning, and All-Star right-hander Alex Cobb struck out a season-high nine over six scoreless innings as the Giants rallied for a 2-1 win in the Bay Bridge Series opener at Oracle Park.

“Every win is great, but I think when you’re scuffling a little bit and you can claw out one that’s a close game, it feels nice to be able to kind of feel like the monkey’s off your back,” Yastrzemski said.

Yastrzemski entered Tuesday mired in an 0-for-21 funk that dropped his batting average to a paltry .085 (4-for-47) over his first 17 games in July, but he provided a huge lift in his lone plate appearance of the night. After coming in to pinch-run for Joc Pederson in the sixth, Yastrzemski remained in the game in right field and came up to the plate to face A’s left-hander Sam Moll with a pair of runners on and two outs in the eighth.

The Giants were hitless in their previous 28 at-bats with runners in scoring position, but Yastrzemski finally snapped that drought by yanking a 3-1 sinker from Moll down the right-field line to score Luis Matos from second base and put San Francisco ahead for good. It was Yastrzemski’s first hit off a lefty since June 20 against the Padres.

“He’s been having really quality at-bats,” manager Gabe Kapler said. “He hasn’t been rewarded when he’s hit the ball on the screws. … That was a really good example of when Yaz is locked in from the beginning of the at-bat how an at-bat can end like that against a tough lefty. Moll’s been really tough this year. He was throwing really hard. I thought it was an excellent at-bat and big for our club, obviously.”

The Giants hope that Yastrzemski’s clutch hit will help spark a larger offensive turnaround, as the club still mustered only four hits on Tuesday and is sporting an MLB-worst .611 OPS over 20 games in July.

“We won,” Yastrzemski said. “That’s the positive outcome. That can change everything. It can change your mindset. It can change a feeling. It can change anything. To scratch one out was nice. Hopefully we’ll try and keep things rolling.”

With Cobb on the mound, the Giants didn’t need much to get by as they returned home following a grueling 11-game, four-city road trip to open the second half. Cobb scattered a season-low three hits and struck out seven of the first eight batters he faced en route to lowering his ERA to 2.97 across 19 starts this year. That’s the third-best mark in the National League behind the Padres’ Blake Snell (2.61) and the Cubs’ Justin Steele (2.95).

The Giants have now won each of Cobb’s last six starts at Oracle Park, with the 35-year-old veteran going 4-0 with a 0.46 ERA over that span.

“I do like throwing here,” Cobb said. “I’m very comfortable with the backdrop. There’s always a nice, cool breeze here, so you’re not fighting much elements. After that road trip, you really appreciate coming here and putting a hoodie on and coming to the ballpark.”

While he generated 10 of his 14 swinging strikes with his splitter, Cobb said he wasn’t entirely happy with the movement profile on the pitch, as he felt he had to search for it early on, which prevented him from pitching deeper into the game.

“I think you saw Cobb at his best tonight with the split,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said. “The split was really effective. The fastball has enough velo on it to get you sped up a little bit, but the split was really his pitch tonight. He dominated with the split down in the zone, got a lot of swing-and-miss. We’ve seen him that way in the past, and tonight was a good night for him.”

Cobb departed with a 1-0 lead after Casey Schmitt opened the scoring with a sacrifice fly off Ken Waldichuk in the fifth inning, but the A’s tied it on JJ Bleday’s two-out RBI single off Tyler Rogers in the eighth. While Yastrzemski’s heroics helped them eke out a win Tuesday, the Giants know they’ll need more consistent production from their lineup to remain competitive moving forward.

“I still think we’re going to need to get more than a few hits here or there,” Kapler said. “For our team to be successful, we’re going to have to have some more consistently productive at-bats. We’re not where we want to be, but we came away with a win tonight, and that’s all that matters.”