Devers Walks It Off in 10th, Giants Survive Grissom's Gut-Punch
Rafael Devers drove in four runs and delivered the walk-off blow in the 10th inning, lifting San Francisco past Los Angeles Angels 8-6 on July 25. The Giants needed every bit of it after Vaughn Grissom's two-run homer in the 8th swung the win probability from 88% to 60% and turned what looked like a comfortable night into a white-knuckle finish.
The Giants built their lead fast and seemingly built it to last. Devers put SF ahead for good early, homering to left (362 feet) in the 1st to plate Eldridge and flip a 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 lead. Casey Schmitt then did the heavy lifting in the 3rd, launching a 412-foot shot to left that scored both Eldridge and Devers and pushed the Giants out to a 5-1 cushion. At that point, Grayson Rodriguez had already been roughed up for 5 earned runs across just 4 innings, and the game looked like it was heading toward a tidy SF win.
The Angels had other ideas. In the 5th, Tyler Heineman tripled to right, scoring Adell and Guzman to make it 5-3, and Trout followed with a sacrifice fly to bring Heineman home and cut the deficit to one. SF answered with a Susac sacrifice fly in the 7th to push back to 6-4, but Grissom's 381-foot homer to left in the 8th — scoring Soler — was the gut-punch of the night. That single swing dragged SF's win probability from 88% all the way down to 60%, and suddenly a game that felt decided was very much alive at 6-6. Grissom finished 2-for-5 with 2 RBI, and the Angels had every reason to believe extra innings were their territory.
They weren't. In the 10th, Devers hit a ground rule double that scored J. Rodríguez and Arraez, pushing SF to 8-6 and ending it. Devers finished 2-for-4 with a homer, 4 RBI, and 2 runs scored — the story of the night was his bookending the game with the first big swing and the last. Luis Arraez went 3-for-5 and scored the decisive run, which looks like exactly the kind of professional at-bat production that makes him so difficult to game-plan around. Logan Webb gave SF 6 innings and allowed 4 earned runs — serviceable but not dominant — while Dylan Smith came on for a clean 1-inning, 3-strikeout performance to bridge to the finish. For the Angels, this one appears to sting: they clawed back from four down, tied it in the 8th, and still left empty-handed.