What we learned as Schmitt stars again with homer in Giants' win originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea
SAN FRANCISCO -- The Casey Schmitt Show goes on the road, too.
The rookie shortstop had four hits Thursday night, including a thundering homer, leading the Giants to a 6-2 win in their first meeting this season with a young Arizona Diamondbacks squad that looks ready to compete for an MLB playoff spot.
The Diamondbacks entered the night ranked third in the NL in scoring, but Alex Cobb took a shutout into the eighth and Schmitt did the rest.
Schmitt went 4-for-4, scored two runs and drove in three. He joined Hall of Famer Willie McCovey as the only Giants to record eight hits in their first three big league games. McCovey did it in 1959 and went on to win the Rookie of the Year Award. That didn't at all seem likely when Schmitt was called up Tuesday, but given the way he's going right now, how can anything be ruled out?
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Here are three more things to know from another night when the Giants had the Schmitts ...
Schmitt It Very, Very Far
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The rookie jumped on a 2-0 curveball from lefty Tommy Henry his first time up and smoked it into the second deck, an area that generally has been reserved for Madison Bumgarner BP homers when the Giants have visited Chase Field. At 443 feet, it was the fifth-longest homer of the year for the Giants, but the longest if you take out all of the bombs hit in Mexico City.
The ball left the bat at 111.6 mph, making it the third-hardest-hit ball of the season for the Giants, trailing only a couple of hits from designated hitter Joc Pederson.
Schmitt hit just one homer in 32 Triple-A games this year, but the blast gave him two in his first nine at-bats in the big leagues. That shouldn't be a huge surprise; Schmitt hit 21 homers last year in a breakout minor league season.
More Of That Schmitt
Schmitt had a clean single up the middle his second time up, then hit a grounder up the middle in the seventh that went for an infield single when infielder Geraldo Perdomo couldn't glove it. In the top of the ninth, Schmitt bounced a ball off the hard infield and ended up with an RBI double down the left field line.
Schmitt is 8-for-12 through his first three games and is the first shortstop in the modern era to begin his career with three straight multi-hit games and an extra-base hit in each game. The last big leaguer to do it at any position was Chicago Cubs outfielder Jorge Soler in 2014.
Cy Cobb
If you take out the Mexico City series -- and every Giants pitcher wishes you would -- Cobb hasn't allowed a run in his last three starts. He has yet to allow more than two runs in a start in the United States this season.
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Cobb threw a shutout a little more than two weeks ago and seven shutout innings on Saturday against the Brewers. The latest dominant outing lowered his ERA to 1.70, which leads the National League and is third in the Majors behind Minnesota's Sonny Gray (1.35) and Detroit's Eduardo Rodriguez (1.57).
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