The San Francisco Giants hope to continue to take advantage of a soft stretch in their schedule when they go for a home-series sweep over the tail-spinning Detroit Tigers on Sunday.
Six games under .500 on July 25 and considered potential sellers at the trade deadline, the Giants have gone 12-3 against a run of teams with losing records — the Colorado Rockies, Oakland Athletics, Cincinnati Reds, Washington Nationals and Tigers.
The burst has lifted the Giants three games over .500 for the first time this season, with not only the Tigers awaiting Sunday but the struggling Atlanta Braves for four games before seeing the A’s again for two and Chicago White Sox for three.
Brett Wisely, who drove in two runs with a fifth-inning double in Saturday’s 3-1 win, credited the recent stereotypically cool San Francisco weather for having contributed to his team’s high energy.
“It’s unbelievable. This weather out here, you can’t beat it,” the Florida native said. “The day games out here are probably the best games we’ll play. It’s nice to be back in our home atmosphere.”
The Giants have pitched well at home over their surge, holding opponents to two runs or fewer in five of their past eight games.
Right-hander Hayden Birdsong (3-1, 4.73 ERA), the starting pitcher the last time the Giants lost before embarking on their current four-game winning streak, will get the ball Sunday.
Birdsong suffered through his worst outing of the season Tuesday at Washington, allowing seven runs in two innings. He had given up a total of just 10 earned runs in his first six big-league starts.
The 22-year-old has never faced the Tigers.
Birdsong will go head-to-head with fellow rookie Keider Montero (2-5, 5.62) in the series finale.
The Detroit right-hander is coming off one of his best outings of the year when he limited the Seattle Mariners to one run in six innings in a 4-2 road win on Tuesday.
The 24-year-old, making his first appearance against the Giants, is hoping to give the Tigers another lengthy outing. He’s gone at least five innings in each of his past seven starts.
Injuries and trades have opened the door for Montero to make eight consecutive starts after his second call-up of the season on June 26.
“One of the things I’ve been doing is to calm myself down and put the emotions down on the mound,” he said. “I like to impose my rhythm on the mound, so it’s one of the things we’ve been working on and we’ve been making progress with it, so I’m very proud of what we’ve been doing.”
In losing the first two games of the series 3-2 and 3-1, the Tigers have totaled just 10 hits. They haven’t hit a home run since Jake Rogers went deep against the Mariners in the fourth inning Wednesday.
They’ll take a 32-inning homer drought into Sunday’s game, with still the possibility of breaking even on a six-game trip. They took two of three in Seattle, two of the just three wins they have in their past 12 games.
-Field Level Media
