SAN FRANCISCO — The right-center-field corner is typically where fly balls go to die at Oracle Park. That wasn’t the case for the hot-hitting Willy Adames on Friday night.
Adames used a pair of mighty swings to inflict damage at the deepest part of the park, launching an opposite-field home run and a two-run triple to help carry the Giants to an 8-7 series-opening win over the rival Dodgers.
With the win, the Giants (52-43) pulled within four games of the first-place Dodgers (56-39), who have lost seven in a row for the first time since September 2017.
Adames (2-for-4) and Jung Hoo Lee (3-for-4) each drove in three runs to help pick up All-Star right-hander Logan Webb, who surrendered a season-high six earned runs over 5 1/3 innings in his final start of the first half.
Adames endured a slow start after joining the Giants on a seven-year, $182 million deal over the offseason, but he’s managed to turn it around and find his swing in recent weeks. Since receiving his first day off of the season on June 8, Adames is batting .304 with a .952 OPS, seven homers, four doubles, a triple and 22 RBIs over his last 29 games, flashing the star-level production he delivered during his career-best season with the Brewers last year.
“I think I would say maybe like a few weeks ago, I started feeling better at the plate,” Adames said. “Just taking better at-bats, putting myself in hitter’s counts and taking advantage of that. I feel like since then, I’ve been feeling really, really good at the plate. I’ve been executing my plan, and I think that’s the most important thing when we go in to play. Just trusting the plan that we have and just staying with it and giving it a shot.”
Adames got the sellout crowd buzzing early with a 416-foot bomb off right-hander Dustin May in the second inning, which marked the longest home run he’s hit at Oracle Park since joining the Giants.
“It’s tough to go out there,” manager Bob Melvin said. “It was a little warmer tonight. The ball was traveling a little bit better. But the way he hit it, the way he’s been swinging, you feel really good about him up there at any particular time.”
Adames spent the first seven seasons of his career with the Rays and Brewers, two teams that play the majority of their home games indoors, so it took awhile for him to get used to hitting at Oracle Park, which is not particularly friendly to hitters on most nights. The first four home runs he hit at home for the Giants were to the pull side, but he finally went oppo here for the first time this year after putting a charge into a low 1-1 sinker from May on Friday.
“I feel like I’ve been getting more comfortable here and just trusting my ability to go the other way and let the ball do whatever and not think about the result,” Adames said.
Los Angeles briefly went ahead behind Shohei Ohtani’s two-run shot into McCovey Cove in the third, but San Francisco regained the lead on Lee’s two-run triple, which got past the outstretched glove of Dodgers outfielder Teoscar Hernández and found the right-center-field gap in the fourth. The Giants then knocked May out of the game with a five-run outburst in the fifth.
Dominic Smith, a Los Angeles native, led off the inning with a solo shot to left field, becoming the first of 10 Giants batters to step up to the plate. Adames extended the Giants’ lead to 7-2 with a two-run triple to right-center field before Lee capped the big rally by beating out an RBI single to the right side.
Lee’s infield hit ended up being the difference in the game, as the Dodgers managed to pull within one after tagging Webb for four runs in the sixth and adding another off fellow All-Star right-hander Randy Rodríguez in the seventh.
Still, the Giants hung on after Tyler Rogers worked a scoreless eighth and closer Camilo Doval coaxed a game-ending double play from Will Smith to leave a pair of runners stranded in the ninth, providing a thrilling ending to an eventful night at the ballpark.
“Amazing,” Adames said. “I’m not gonna lie, I feel like we had too many Dodgers fans in here. Maybe tomorrow we’ll get more San Francisco fans. But the energy was intense. It felt like a playoff game, to be honest. That’s how high the energy was tonight. But like I said, I loved it. I love playing in games like that. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll show up again.”
