Alex Cobb threw the second shutout of his 12-year career and the San Francisco Giants opened a four-game home series against the St. Louis Cardinals with a 4-0 victory on Monday.
J.D. Davis capped a four-run seventh inning with a three-run home run.
Activated off the injured list before the game to make his Giants debut, Mitch Haniger contributed a sacrifice fly to the seventh-inning uprising.
The big inning, combined with Cobb’s pitching, sent San Francisco to its third consecutive win. St. Louis lost for the third time in four games to continue its 10-game West Coast road trip.
Cobb (1-1) allowed six hits and one walk while striking out four in just the fifth complete game of his career. He threw 109 pitches.
His only other shutout came for the Tampa Bay Rays in August of 2012, a 5-0 victory over the Oakland Athletics.
Cardinals left-hander Jordan Montgomery had matched Cobb zero for zero through six innings before second baseman Tommy Edman misplayed Mike Yastrzemski’s routine grounder leading off the bottom of the seventh.
Drew VerHagen came on and served up a double to Joey Bart before walking pinch hitter Joc Pederson intentionally to load the bases with no outs.
VerHagen struck out Thairo Estrada, but Haniger then lifted a fly ball deep enough into right field to allow Yastrzemski to easily score the game’s first run.
Davis then crushed his fifth homer of the season.
Montgomery (2-3) took the loss because he was charged with the first of the four runs, which was unearned. He gave up five hits and one walk in his six-plus innings, striking out six.
St. Louis had a golden opportunity to put up the game’s first runs, loading the bases in the fifth on singles by Tyler O’Neill and Brendan Donovan and a walk by Edman. Cobb got Lars Nootbaar to ground out to third to end the threat.
Davis, Yastrzemski and Austin Slater, also activated from the injured list before the game, had two hits apiece for the Giants, whose three-game winning streak is their longest of the season.
Donovan collected two hits for the Cardinals, who began their trip by losing two of three in Seattle over the weekend.
–Field Level Media
