Casey Schmitt contributes as Giants' win streak reaches seven games

New York Times

2 days ago

DENVER — Tristan Beck received the most thankless assignment you can give to a major-league reliever: enter a game at Coors Field trailing by a run and try to keep it close.
Three batters in, Beck was already pitching from his heels. He had allowed one run and only recorded a second out because the Colorado Rockies ran their way into it. When he threw a breaking ball that actually moved according to its designs, the Rockies' Keston Hiura snuck his barrel to it and hit a hard grounder that hugged the third-base line. Beck whirled around, saw the ball skipping over the bag and assumed his inning was becoming a war of attrition.
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That's when third baseman Casey Schmitt made a lunging grab while staying on his feet. As his momentum carried him into foul territory, he flung a throw across his body that arrived true, in time and without so much as a hop to first baseman Jerar Encarnacion.
'I gotta admit it,' Beck said. 'I had to double-check who that was back there.'
It will be no easy feat for the Giants to replace any element of Matt Chapman's game while he recovers from a sprained right hand. He's one of the league's smartest and tidiest baserunners. He is their leading home run hitter. And, of course, he's a five-time Gold Glove winner whose defensive skills annually account for a significant portion of his Wins Above Replacement.
Chapman's defense should be the most irreplaceable aspect of his game. Instead, it might be the area where the Giants have the most coverage.
Schmitt, a gifted defender, turned heads with his sparkling play in the fifth inning. Then he made contributions to a pair of late rallies as the Giants scored four runs in the eighth inning and three more in the ninth while storming to a 10-7 victory over the Rockies Wednesday night. It was the Giants' 20th come-from-behind win of the season.
'notha comeback in Colorado! pic.twitter.com/hvlcgG9G8m
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) June 12, 2025
Schmitt drew an eight-pitch walk in the eighth that set up Mike Yastrzemski's tying, two-run double. Then Schmitt scored the tiebreaking run following a replay reversal when he sprinted home on Tyler Fitzgerald's safety squeeze and slid a hand across the plate barely ahead of the tag.
At that point, the Giants were set up to win their seventh consecutive game by a one-run margin, which would have matched the 1927 Chicago Cubs for the longest streak in major-league history. But it's a good thing they didn't stop there. They scored three more in the ninth and Schmitt knocked in one of them with a single up the middle.
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Camilo Doval needed the extra cushion in the bottom of the ninth. He served up a solo home run to Hunter Goodman and the Rockies brought the tying run to the plate before Orlando Arcia tapped to the mound to end it.
The streak of one-run victories might be over, but the winning habit continues. The Giants are a season-best 12 games over .500, just a half-game behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West, and they will have a theoretical chance to dislodge their archrivals when they arrive at Chavez Ravine this weekend to begin a three-game series.
The three-run victory didn't release much pressure, though.
'Well, it still came down to the last pitch,' Giants manager Bob Melvin said. 'So I won't necessarily say this was a laugher.'
Every pitch seems to matter more at Coors Field, where attrition is a way of life. Schmitt's defensive play had the underrated impact of saving Beck from throwing more pitches in the fifth inning, which otherwise might have prevented him from completing the sixth and seventh. The Giants dealt with the opposite effect earlier in the game when a missed-catch error on Encarnacion compounded a labor-intensive third inning for Robbie Ray, in which the left-hander was charged with four runs (two earned) and threw 34 pitches.
'It just drains you,' said Ray, who was lifted after throwing 93 pitches in four innings. 'More than at normal altitude. Any time you have to throw that many pitches in an inning, regardless of where you are, it's tough. But when you're here, it just takes more out of you.'
So when a defensive gem like Schmitt's ends an inning here and allows everyone to get back to the dugout?
'Oh, a hundred percent, it's huge,' Beck said. 'Any pitcher will tell you what it's like here. Any chance you get to have a ball fielded and make a play like that, it's so important. That's one of the better plays I've seen behind me in my career. We all knew Casey could do that. Obviously, we're a little used to it with Chappy over there on the regular. But we know Casey can, too.'
What a play by Casey Schmitt 🤯 pic.twitter.com/DbK56KYuDu
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) June 12, 2025
Schmitt became the best defensive infielder in the Giants' farm system from the moment the club took him in the second round of the 2020 draft out of San Diego State. But every avenue to playing time on the left side of the infield appeared impassable at the end of last year when the Giants agreed to a six-year, $151 million extension with Chapman and then signed shortstop Willy Adames to a seven-year, $182 million free-agent contract. Both Chapman and Adames pride themselves on playing 150-plus games and have to be cajoled into taking a day off. When spring training began, it was unclear what future Schmitt might have in the organization.
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Schmitt made the opening day roster anyway, in a utility role. Then he added to his value when he turned himself into an above-average first baseman seemingly overnight. Now he's expected to receive an extended run of playing time while Chapman recovers — a process that is likely to extend into July.
Even though Schmitt acknowledged that he is merely holding down the fort at third base, there's plenty more at stake for him. It's not impossible to envision Schmitt parlaying this opportunity into unseating Fitzgerald, who is in the midst of an inconsistent season at the plate and ran into another out on the basepaths on Wednesday. While Fitzgerald has played a credible second base, he cannot match Schmitt's arm strength or tagging skills, either.
If Schmitt can combine better situational at-bats with his defense, then the Giants will be tempted to find a way to keep him in the lineup even after Chapman returns.
'That was huge, (fouling off) breaking ball after breaking ball and taking a fastball on the last pitch,' said Melvin, describing Schmitt's walk against right-hander Tyler Kinley in the eighth. 'It's a great opportunity for him. He's got a real opportunity to do some good things while Chappy is out. We're lucky to have him.'
Does it help Schmitt to relax knowing he'll be in the lineup virtually every day for at least a couple weeks?
'I guess so, but I know my role,' he said. 'We all can't wait for (Chapman) to come back to doing his thing here. We're counting down the days.'
The Giants also have been counting the days until Adames began to make an impact at the plate following two slow and challenging months. Perhaps these first two games in Denver will be the start of something. Adames hit a home run for the second consecutive game and finished a triple short of the cycle, singling to ignite the four-run rally in the eighth and doubling to help set up the three-run ninth.
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His two-run home run gave the Giants a quick lead in the first inning. He also contributed a sacrifice fly. Arcia took away a potential fourth hit at third base in the fifth.
Whether the margin of victory was one run or three, the Giants continued to do just enough to cover up their mistakes. Encarnacion's error in the third might have been the most glaring, but the coaching staff also blundered when Melvin failed to signal in time for a replay challenge on a blown call that ended the seventh inning. It was the second mea culpa of the series for Melvin, who acknowledged on Tuesday that he shouldn't have sent reliever Spencer Bivens out for a third inning.
Maybe it didn't feel like the Giants had breathing room when Doval recorded the final out, but the three-run margin meant that the Giants would not equal the all-time one-run margin of victory record.
The Cubs set that mark in a season in which they added a new upper deck above the third base stands at Wrigley Field (one year after the name had been changed from Cubs Park) and became the first National League team to draw 1 million fans. The seventh of those one-run triumphs came June 12, 1927, against the New York Giants when Charlie Root retired Rogers Hornsby to seal a 7-6 victory and delight an overflow crowd that spilled onto the grass and required the use of a boundary rope in the outfield.
How long ago did the Cubs fashion that streak? The headline in the New York Times the next morning was: 'New York in Holiday Mood Greets Lindbergh Today'
It astounded the nation when Charles Lindbergh climbed into the cockpit of the Spirit of St. Louis and crossed the Atlantic. Bet he couldn't throw a scoreless relief inning at Coors Field, though.