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This is the brand of baseball that was anticipated after the Giants traded for Rafael Devers in mid-June.
The same clean, crisp style of play that was on display in the season’s first 2 ½ months.
Plus, Devers’ big bat.
The lethal combination was to keep the Giants afloat in the playoff race all summer and into October, where they would be a legitimate force in the postseason bracket. A team with plenty of pitching and an offense featuring Devers, who was to be the Giants’ best hitter since Barry Bonds.
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Things went drastically wrong, however, and the Giants played themselves out of contention. Devers wasn’t as productive as he was in Boston, and the Giants weren’t as successful as they were in April and May and into June.
So forgive any of the 30,457 fans who were witnessing Wednesday night’s game at Oracle Park for thinking, “What could have been.” Or, “Where was this the past couple of months?”
Devers went 4-for-4. Homered twice. Doubled. Drove in five runs. Scored four times. Collected 11 total bases. And squeezed in a walk. His fingerprints were all over the Giants’ 12-3 clobbering of the Cubs on a warm night by the bay, the fourth straight win for San Francisco.
“I think this is the guy that everybody is accustomed to seeing,” teammate Matt Chapman said. “It’s not easy to get traded and come in and instantly just be yourself. For him, he’s getting more settled in, and you’re seeing him get more comfortable every day that he’s here, and when he’s comfortable, he’s capable of big things, like a night like tonight. When he feels good, he’s dangerous.”
Devers had his biggest game as a Giant, but Chapman experienced the most memorable moment of the night. In fact, if not for Devers’ breakout game, perhaps the biggest storyline was the play in which Chapman expertly used his head to ignite the offense.
Literally.
Chapman blooped a fifth-inning single down the right-field line, and as he was settling at the bag, Kyle Tucker’s throw toward the plate pelted him on the helmet. Miraculously, the ball ricocheted all the way to the backstop, more than 100 feet, enabling Dom Smith to score as well.
“I don’t know if you get an RBI for hitting one off your head but hopefully,” kidded Chapman.
No dice. He was credited with just one RBI as Devers scored from third, and Smith scored on the Tucker error. Nevertheless, Chapman had fun with the play and flashed a wide smile after advancing to second. Everyone in the Giants’ dugout was yucking it up, too.
Asked if he heard some good one-liners from teammates or opponents, he said, “Nothing I can remember. Maybe I’m concussed.”
The Giants hit four homers in the game as Chapman and Heliot Ramos also went deep, putting to rest for one night that the downtown ballpark is no homers haven. The Giants have homered in 10 straight games for the first time since September 2021 and have hit 20 homers over the stretch.
More importantly, it was another victory and first four-game win streak since early July. The Giants are playing clean, crisp baseball again, and good vibes are back along the shores of McCovey Cove.
“The main thing is, we’re competing,” Devers said via Spanish language translator Erwin Higueros.
Through Devers’ first 60 games as a Giant, he was hitting .226, which would be a career low, with a .742 OPS and a whopping 77 strikeouts in 221 at-bats. Tuesday’s performance improves his Giants average to .240, and his OPS to .796.
In the process, he became the third Giant with three hits showing exit velocities of at least 106 miles per hour since Statcast started measuring these things in 2015. A homer to center at 106.1 mph, a ground-rule double to right-center at 107.3 mph and a homer to left at 106.7 mph.
Devers’ lowest exit velo came on his eighth-inning single when the game was a blowout and a position player was throwing marshmallows. He hit a 34.9 mph pitch — you read that right — by backup catcher Reese McGuire, who might as well have been playing slow-pitch softball.
Hey, Devers will take it.
“He showed off what he could do in any ballpark,” manager Bob Melvin said.
Beyond the adjustment of changing teams, leagues and coasts, Devers has been playing through back and groin ailments, and he said Wednesday, “It’s there. It’s getting better, but it’s pain you don’t control.”
As for his high strikeout rate, Devers said, “We have to give credit to the pitchers. You’ve just to make adjustments. If you miss, you miss, you’ve got to continue moving forward.”
Other Wednesday highlights: Jung Hoo Lee became the fifth Giant in the team’s West Coast history with at least 30 doubles and 10 triples in a season along with Willie Mays, Bobby Bonds, Garry Maddox, and Angel Pagan. And Willy Adames and Casey Schmitt turned a double play reminiscent of Brandon Crawford and Joe Panik with Adames gloving a ball that deflected off pitcher Carson Whisenhunt and back-flipping to Schmitt, whose throw to first completed the nifty DP.
Overall, it was a game that made fans recall a better time in the 2025 season and might have had them asking, “Where was this in recent months?” And, “Can this be sustainable?”
The manager was presented with those questions.
“If I knew for sure, we would’ve tried to handle it a while ago,” Melvin said. “Baseball’s a funny game. It can bite you, and you can go through stretches where you can’t really explain things. Some of the weird bounces, stuff like that, we weren’t getting much luck. We weren’t playing great after playing a long stretch of playing very well. Hopefully this continues right now, and we get that feeling we had earlier in the season. Baseball’s a funny game sometimes.”