Pinch hitter Pavin Smith on Monday night connected for a two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning to lift the Arizona Diamondbacks over the San Francisco Giants 4-2.
Jake McCarthy got the winning rally started with a looping, one-out double down the left-field line. Smith — hitting for Eugenio Suarez — smashed a pitch from Randy Rodriguez (1-1) that barely cleared the yellow line above the wall in center.
“It’s pretty crazy, the stuff you sort of dream about,” Smith said. “You play it in your mind almost every day.”
Photo: AFP
The Diamondbacks have won three straight, while the Giants have dropped a season-high five in a row.
Lourdes Gurriel Jr gave Arizona a 1-0 lead in the second with a homer off Spencer Howard, which marked the 100th longball of his career. Blaze Alexander’s RBI single up the middle later in the inning scored Suarez — who reached on a triple off the wall in right-center — for a 2-0 advantage.
San Francisco’s Matt Chapman hit a double in the fourth that drove in Brett Wisely, cutting it to 2-1. Heliot Ramos tied it at 2 in the seventh with a solo shot to the deepest part of the park in right-center.
The Giants threatened in the ninth, putting runners on first and third with two outs. Jorge Soler hit a bouncing ball down the third base line to Suarez, who fired high to first, but Christian Walker was able to leap into the air and grab the throw before tagging Soler just before he crossed the base.
“It’s a game of inches, right?” Giants manager Bob Melvin said.
The stellar defensive play by Walker set the stage for Smith, who hit just his second homer of the season and his first career walk-off.
In Arlington, Texas, Jake Rogers homered twice, including a tiebreaking drive in the eighth inning, to lead the Detroit Tigers to a 2-1 victory over the Texas Rangers to get back to .500.
A West Texas native who lives in the Dallas suburb of Frisco, Rogers hit a two-out homer in the third against Nathan Eovaldi and a 1-1 cut fastball from Jose Leclerc (3-4) just inside the left-field foul pole with two outs in the eighth.
The 29-year-old Rogers had the third two-homer game of his big league career and doubled his season home run total.
His four career homers at Globe Life Field match his career high at an opposing park, along with Angel Stadium.
“I don’t know if my family would let me back if I didn’t leave Texas [with] a homer,” said Rogers, the Tigers’ No. 9 batter.
His first home run ended a 20-inning scoreless streak by Texas pitching.
Elsewhere, the Philadelphia Phillies outplayed the Milwaukee Brewers 3-1, the Baltimore Orioles beat the Toronto Blue Jays 7-2 and the New York Mets pipped the Washington Nationals 8-7.
The Cincinnati Reds blew past the Colorado Rockies 13-3, the Houston Astros downed the St Louis Cardinals 7-4 and the Los Angeles Angels survived the San Diego Padres 2-1.
Additional reporting by staff writer
The qualifying round of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) is to be held at the Taipei Dome between Feb. 21 and 25, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced today. Taiwan’s group also includes Spain, Nicaragua and South Africa, with two of the four teams advancing onto the 2026 WBC. Taiwan, currently ranked second in the world in the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, are favorites to come out of the group, the MLB said in an article announcing the matchups. Last year, Taiwan finished in a five-way tie in their group with two wins and two losses, but finished last on tiebreakers after giving
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
A debate over the soul of soccer is raging in FIFA World Cup holders Argentina, pitting defenders of the social role of the beautiful game against the government of libertarian Argentine President Javier Milei, who wants to turn clubs into for-profit companies. Argentina, which gave the world Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi, is home to some of the world’s most devoted soccer fans — a fact attributed by supporters like Gabriel Nicosia to the clubs’ community outreach. Nicosia is a lifelong supporter of San Lorenzo, a more than 100-year-old first division club based in the working-class Buenos Aires neighborhood of Boedo where
RSS