SAN FRANCISCO – After Thairo Estrada and Brett Wisely delivered two RBI doubles in the fourth inning for the San Francisco Giants on Sunday afternoon, everybody inside Oracle Park seemed to exhale.
The Giants had left dozens of runners on base throughout the first five games of their homestand this week, including 18 in two games to start their series against the Los Angeles Angels. Frustration was mounting.
But Estrada and Wisely’s extra-base hits alleviated all that pent-up pressure, opening the floodgates for a 13-6 win by the Giants over the Angels before a sold-out crowd of 41,008 on Father’s Day.
The Giants scored nine runs in the fourth, their most in any inning all season, as Jorge Soler drilled a three-run homer to left, and Matt Chapman and Austin Slater both drove in runs during the rally.
Spencer Bivens, who made his MLB debut Sunday, allowed one run in three innings to earn the win. Six Giants had multiple hits and Soler had four RBI on Sunday.
With the victory, San Francisco avoided a sweep by the Angels and finished its homestand with a 3-3 record.
Now, the trick for the Giants is to keep it up.
The Giants begin a six-game road trip on Monday with a three-game set against the Chicago Cubs, take part in the “Tribute to the Negro Leagues” game against the Cardinals at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama on Thursday, and have two more games in St. Louis next weekend.
Saturday, manager Bob Melvin lamented his team’s “terrible” situational hitting as the Giants went 1-for-13 with runners in scoring position. The Giants left five more runners on base for the first three innings Sunday, including two in the third after Wisely doubled and Heliot Ramos singled to start the inning.
Down 2-0 to start the fourth, Soler walked and Wilmer Flores doubled to put runners on second and third with no out. Melvin pinch-hit Austin Slater for Mike Yastrzemski, and Slater walked to load the bases.
Estrada then doubled down the left-field line to score Soler and Flores and Wisely doubled to center to score Slater and Estrada.
That relieved all of the tension inside the ballpark at China Basin as the Giants sent seven more batters to the plate to take control.
Before Sunda’s game, the Giants placed Kyle Harrison, the scheduled starter, on the 15-day injured list with a right ankle sprain, forcing them to start Erik Miller. The Giants, though, also selected the righty Bivens from Triple-A Sacramento, and he was solid in his MLB debut.
Bivens entered in the top of the second inning. He struck out both Zach Neto and Cole Tucker on 94 mph sinkers and got Jo Adell to ground out. But Bivens also gave up a 410-foot home run to center field to Nolan Schanuel as the Angels took a 2-0 lead.
But Bivens, who turns 30 on June 28, kept his team in the game as he retired six straight batters before he was replaced by Sean Hjelle ahead of the fifth inning.
The 6-foot-5 Bivens finished with five strikeouts, five years after he began his professional career in France. He was told the news about his promotion on Saturday night as the River Cats were playing in Reno.
“I was caught off guard, to say the least,” said Bivens, who was 4-0 this season with a 2.81 ERA in 41.2 innings with the River Cats. “It was in the middle of our game, during a time when I thought I’d be warming up. It was an awesome surprise.”
The undrafted Bivens, a Virginia Beach native, grew up in State College, Pennsylvania. According to a November 2022 profile in The Athletic, he dreamed of pitching for the Penn State Nittany Lions, and he made the team in his first year at the school. But a failed marijuana test got him kicked off the team. Bivens said he stopped smoking weed before he enrolled in school, but there were still remnants of the drug in his system.
After two more years, Bivens went to school at Rogers State in Oklahoma. He returned to North America in 2020 and bounced around various teams and leagues, but he has stayed in Sacramento since the start of the Triple-A season. In May, he was named Pacific Coast League pitcher of the month.
“There are great stories and you always feel good about someone making their Major League debut, but if you know the travails and everything that he’s been through, this is a real special one,” Melvin said before the game.
“Whether it was the coaching staff when he came in this morning to the players there, there’s some pretty cool days, Father’s Day, the whole bit. That he gets to finally make it to the big leagues, it really gives you goosebumps.”
Bivens said he expected his parents to be at Oracle Park on Sunday for his anticipated MLB debut. He himself said he got into San Francisco around 3:30 a.m.
“So I haven’t had much sleep,” Bivens said, “but I don’t see that being a problem today.”