CINCINNATI — There had never been a regular-season San Francisco Giants game on Buster Posey’s birthday. Not before he was born and not during his career. Thursday’s Opening Day was the earliest start to a season in franchise history, which means there had never been an opportunity to get him the gift of a Giants victory. In his first Opening Day as president of baseball operations, he got the birthday present he never knew he wanted.
After spending the first eight innings looking helpless against Reds starter Hunter Greene and the three relievers that followed, the Giants came back in the ninth inning to win the opener, 6-4. It took one of the best at-bats of Heliot Ramos’ career to get them back in the game, and it took a variety of disciplined ninth-inning at-bats to keep them alive. But if you’re looking for a reason to believe that this Opening Day win was somehow more meaningful than a typical regular-season game, consider it was Wilmer Flores who hit the game-winning, three-run homer in the top of the ninth.
Check that. It was a healthy Wilmer Flores with the game-winning homer, and that’s an important distinction to make. After being so forgotten that he didn’t even make a list of forgotten players from this spring, a healthy Flores has the chance to have an outsized effect on what the Giants do this season.
After eight consecutive seasons of being an above-average major league hitter — and after the best offensive season of his career in 2023 — Flores wasn’t even close to the same hitter last season. No hitter wants to make excuses, but it’s hard to hit well without a functioning right knee, and Flores had surgery last August with the hopes of returning at full strength this season. It’s hard to return at fuller strength than this:
Flores was initially pegged to be the short side of a first base platoon and veteran bat off the bench, but the injury to Jerar Encarnación means that he’ll get a lot more at-bats than expected at the start of the season, especially at designated hitter. If he can give the Giants the same production he gave teams from 2016 to 2022, he’ll lengthen the lineup and give opposing pitchers more to think about. If he can give them the same production from 2023, he’d give the lineup a chance to blow past preseason projections, but even if he’s just the regular ol’ Flores from 2016 to 2022, he’ll give the Giants something they desperately missed last year.
Ninth-inning homers will always get the attention, but it took the proverbial village to make it a game-winning home run. Greene was pitching like the platonic ideal of an opening-day starter, with a triple-digit fastball that he was locating well. Jung Hoo Lee had never seen a 100-mph fastball in the majors, and he probably didn’t see that many in the KBO. If he saw any, they probably weren’t perfectly located in on his hands. Greene was throwing about as well as a pitcher can.
“The way (Greene) was throwing, it felt like we were lucky to get a hit, let alone a run off him,” manager Bob Melvin said. “He was throwing his fastball by everybody, and his slider was just enough to get you off a 100-mph fastball.”
Considering how well Greene mixed velocity and location, Heliot Ramos’ 11-pitch at-bat against him in the fourth inning with the Giants trailing 3-0 may be the best at-bat of the season from anyone on the team. It’s far too early to give him the award now, but it’ll be a major shock if he isn’t at least nominated for the Best At-Bat Awards (the BABAs) at the end of the year. After quickly falling behind in a 1-2 count, Ramos worked the count full and fouled off five consecutive 99-mph fastballs before hitting one over the right-field wall for a two-run shot. It didn’t land in the Ohio River, but it was a swing that called to mind a wet baseball from the past.
“I’m confident that I can hit the ball out the other way,” Ramos said. “I’m not even going to lie, the splash hit gave me a lot of confidence last year, too.”
First homer of the 2025 season belongs to Heliot Ramos 💥
— SFGiants (@sfgiants.com) March 27, 2025 at 2:31 PM
A healthy Flores has a chance to be an important contributor to the Giants, but a well-rounded, righty-thumping Ramos would be one of the most valuable players on the team, if not the league.
“I’ve been working hard all offseason (on hitting right-handers),” Ramos said. “I’ve been working the whole spring. I’ve been wanting to face the righties.”
If you’re looking for reasons to read too much into a single game, Flores’ healthy knee and Ramos starting the season off with a brilliant at-bat against one of the better right-handers in the league will do just fine.
It wasn’t all good news for the Giants’ offense, though. They struck out 17 times, which was tied for the second-most in a nine-inning game in franchise history. The only time they struck out more in a nine-inning game, it happened against Sandy Koufax, which doesn’t really count. The inability to hit Greene was understandable, but the Reds’ bullpen was even more effective for the next three innings, striking out six of the nine Giants they faced and not allowing a baserunner in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings.
If Patrick Bailey had been the 17th strikeout victim with two outs in the ninth inning instead of singling in the game-tying run ahead of Flores’ at-bat, all of the extra Opening Day attention would have been directed somewhere much more unpleasant.
The Giants went from being on pace for the worst regular-season record in major-league history to being on pace for the best. The last time the Giants won a game where they struck out as many times as they did on Thursday? It was in 2021, and Posey drew the walk that started a ninth-inning rally in a come-from-behind win on the road. The last time they hit a go-ahead ninth-inning home run on Opening Day? That was in 2014, and Posey hit the home run. Those turned out to be pretty good seasons, and it’s still legal to dream big about this season.
It’s only one game, and you’ll forget about it as soon as something fun or dumb happens Saturday. Until then, have fun appreciating the gift the Giants gave Posey on his birthday. It was a bit of a surprise, alright, but it definitely wasn’t gift-wrapped.
(Photo of Flores hitting his home run: Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press)
