Going for their sixth win in a row, the Giants were positioned to retake the lead late Monday evening against the Cincinnati Reds when weather got in the way.
The opener of their three-game series in Cincinnati entered a rain delay in the top of the eighth with the score tied at 2. After a delay of approximately an hour, they decided to pick it up Tuesday where they left off. The game will resume at 2:40 p.m. PT before the regularly scheduled second game of the series at 4:10 p.m.
But San Francisco had runners at second and third and one out after a pinch-hit walk from Joc Pederson and Wilmer Flores’ second double of the game. The Reds had tied it in the bottom of the seventh on an opposite-field home run against Logan Webb.
All of the game’s four runs came on four solo home runs: opposite-field shots by the Reds’ Matt McClain in the first and Jonathan India in the seventh, and no-doubters from Austin Slater in the third and Flores in the sixth. Slater’s traveled 442 feet, the second-longest homer by a Giants player this season outside of Mexico City, while Flores was 3-for-4 with a homer and a pair of doubles when play paused.
Besides the home runs, Webb had allowed only two other Reds to reach base and had completed seven innings on only 86 pitches.
The delay is the second the Giants have experienced on this summer swing through the midwest. First pitch of their game Saturday in Pittsburgh was pushed back about 40 minutes, from 7:05 p.m. local time to 7:45, because of weather.
Even without play on the field, the always-entertaining Dave Flemming and Hunter Pence provided gold during the delay, delivering play-by-play of the Reds’ grounds crew’s struggles to get the tarp on the field. “Don’t get eaten by the tarp,” advised Pence moments before, wouldn’t you know, a worker bit it and had to crawl out from beneath the tarp covering the infield.
When play resumes, the Giants will have J.D. Davis stepping into the batter’s box against lefty Alex Young with the potential go-ahead runs on second and third.
