We almost got a good brawl in Wednesday’s Giants game against the Philadelphia Phillies, but more importantly, the slow-starting Giants have now won 10 of their last 13 and are right in the Wild Card hunt.

Your San Francisco Giants were not expected to make much of a splash this year, following yet another winter of free agency strikeouts. And they were a consistently losing team in the first six weeks of manager Bob Melvin’s first season. But something clicked in mid-May, and don’t look now, but the Giants are now right in  the National League Wild Card race.

If the season ended today, these Giants would be in the playoffs! But “today” may be a sore topic for fans who were at Wednesday’s 6-1 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies (who happen to have the best record in baseball, though the Giants took this home series 2-1).  


We almost got a fight in the fourth inning when Giants pitcher Kyle Harrison very nearly beaned Phillies all-star Bryce Harper, and for the second time in the game at that. There was a modicum of shoving, but obviously, this was one of those MLB-style “no one really intends to fight” kind of fights.


Though as NBC Sports Bay Area pointed out later in the broadcast, it was on the seven-year anniversary of Harper’s hat-tossing, punch-throwing incident that made for a real baseball fight on this day in 2017 in the very same Oracle Park.


But back to this year's Giants and their hot streak. As seen above, they won Tuesday night on a rare walk-off sacrifice fly in extra innings courtesy Luis Matos, when the game was still 0-0 in the tenth inning.

Sacrifice flies did not become an official MLB statistic until 1954. And as Yahoo Sports points out, this was only the Giants' second walk-off sacrifice fly to win a game in those 70 years. The last time it happened was 1966, in a game where… the Giants defeated the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Giants are now 29-28, and are off until Friday night when they begin a three-game stand against the New York Yankees at Oracle Park.

Related: Giants Season Preview: The Melvins Hope to Rock Harder Than Their Mediocre Expectations [SFist]

Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - MAY 28: Luis Matos #29 of the San Francisco Giants celebrates with his team after their win over the Philadelphia Phillies in the 10th inning at Oracle Park on May 28, 2024 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Eakin Howard/Getty Images)