Wilmer Flores’ ninth career walk-off hit Sunday afternoon at Oracle Park, which gave the Giants a 5-4 win over the Mariners, was an opposite-field single.
Because of course it was.
As the streaking Giants continue to defy the odds and roll over opponents early in the 2025 season, they’ve mastered the art of using the whole field. Flipping pitches the other way. Finding holes with elite opposite-field hitting.
All the things associated back in the day with Buster Posey the hitter. Now that he’s Buster Posey the president of baseball operations, it’s no coincidence this approach has been stressed in hitters’ meetings, in the indoor cage, and in the batters’ box. Posey is aboard. Batting coach Pat Burrell is aboard. So, too, are the hitters.
Opposite-field hitting is among the many elements contributing to the Giants’ success as they’ve raced to an 8-1 start, their best since 2003, and impressively moved atop the sizzling Dodgers and Padres in the high-powered National League West.
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In certain high-leverage moments, it would be easy to get pull happy. To try to power up. To play hero ball. To attempt to crush the ball 20 rows over the outfield wall. That often spells failure, however.
On the flip side, it’s not always easy hitting to the opposite field — to right field for right-handed batters and to left field for left-handed batters — but the Giants pulled off a majestic string of clutch hitting during their three-game sweep of the Mariners, largely by going the other way.
It wasn’t a fluke. It’s a strategy that was highly emphasized in spring training and even the weeks prior, when hitters such as Willy Adames and Matt Chapman worked together on situational hitting so that once the exhibitions in spring training and real games in the regular season were underway, it wouldn’t be a foreign task. It would be expected.
“The intent is to go the other way,” manager Bob Melvin said, “and when you do that, you track the ball a little longer, and now all of a sudden you’re seeing the ball a little better. It’s something we’ve been on since Day 1.”
To review:
In Friday’s opener, in the 11th inning, with the game already dragging beyond the 4-hour mark, Adames hit Carlos Vargas’ low-and-away cutter off the end of his bat and lined it into right field. Two runners scored, and the Giants won their home opener 10-9.
Saturday, Matt Chapman doubled down the right-field line to score a sixth-inning run, and then Heliot Ramos turned in a productive at-bat that didn’t appear in the box score — he bounced the ball to the second baseman to move Chapman to third, and Chapman scored on a Flores single. The Giants won 4-1.
Sunday, during a four-run fourth inning, Jung Hoo Lee singled to the opposite field, and Ramos followed with another opposite-field hit, giving the Giants their first run. The lefty swinging Mike Yastrzemski, inspired by the Ramos at-bat, launched a three-run homer to … you guessed it, the opposite field.
In this particular case, the opposite-field approach might have been the only reasonable strategy because Seattle pitcher Brian Woo’s fastball and sinker, touching 97.6 mph and 98.3 mph, respectively, were tough for hitters to recognize and catch up with.
“Watching Ramos’ at-bat in front of me was huge,” Yastrzemski said. “Shooting the ball the other way is all you needed to do in that situation, and that’s all I tried to do. I just happened to square it up. As much as you like to take credit for the things you do, you’ve got to give a lot of credit for [Ramos] playing the game right and really having a professional at-bat and setting the stage. I tried to do the same thing.”
After the Mariners tied the game off Camilo Doval in the top of the ninth, Flores stepped up in the home half with Luis Matos at second and tried to slap the ball to the right side off Gregor Santos. The result was the second walk-off win of the series.
“I was thinking, ‘try not to pull that hard sinker that he throws,’ and I executed well,” Flores said. “You try not to be a hero, I guess. Just stay in the moment. Try not to think about, ‘I have to bring the runner in,’ just think about the process.”
On the season, when the Giants hit the ball to the opposite field with runners in scoring position, they have seven hits in 14 at-bats, a .500 average. The exit velocity generally isn’t impressive, but it doesn’t matter because there’s usually more open space to find a hole. Bloops and bleeders are perfectly fine and encouraged.
As it turns out, opposite-field hitting — whether it’s carried out by utilizing inside-out swings or letting the ball travel longer before committing to contact or any other manner — is among the many so-called little things the Giants have incorporated into their 2025 arsenal as they’ve broken away from their all-analytics-all-the-time habits from previous years. Posey has brought a different perspective and mind-set that better resembles traditional baseball, and it’s fully embraced in the clubhouse and by the fans, who flocked to the ballpark in droves in the season’s first home series, with all three games sold out.
There was plenty of aggressive baseball including bunting and stealing, two elements frowned upon by the analytic community because of the potential to stunt rallies. But for the Giants, it’s all about doing whatever’s necessary to win games — not just about hitting dingers. The Giants, 30th in the majors in steals two years ago and 29th last year, rank sixth in 2025 after swiping six bases in the series.
They’re fourth in hitting with runners in scoring position and second in hitting with two outs and runners in scoring position. Their pitching is keeping them in games. Their defense has been sharp. They scored 19 runs in the series and have won seven in a row.
Until further notice, with a three-game series against Cincinnati coming up, all is well with the Giants, and Flores’ opposite-field achievement on Sunday was the latest indication.