Given second chance, Harrison Bader belts grand slam to help Giants beat White Sox

So little has gone the San Francisco Giants’ way this season that when the team’s initial three-run lead evaporated Saturday, it seemed par for the course, another loss incoming. Not so fast: The Giants busted out with a six-run fifth inning in which even the sun seemed to favor San Francisco, dazing White Sox fielders twice in big moments, including a little foul pop-up by Harrison Bader that was lost by third baseman Miguel Vargas and fell harmlessly with two outs and three on. Three pitches later, Bader jetted his second grand slam of the week over the wall in center to nail down the Giants’ 10-3 win, which snapped their four-game losing streak. Bader doesn’t just have a flair for the slam, he also cultivates weather breaks somehow. His grand slam to right at Sacramento last Sunday was wind-aided, making up for being denied a slam to left by the wind in the previous night’s game against the A’s. Casey Schmitt also whacked a two-run homer in the fifth inning Saturday after delivering a sacrifice fly the previous inning. With one out in the fifth, Matt Chapman contributed a sun-ball double, Vargas’ first adventure of the inning without sunglasses (he had a pair on the next inning). Erick Fedde walked the next two men to set up Bader’s blast off reliever Jordan Leasure. Willy Adames added a solo homer in the ninth, and every member of the lineup recorded at least one of the team’s 14 hits. The impatient Giants even walked three times, while limiting offensive opportunists Chicago to just one. Adrian Houser, who was terrific in a two-month stint with the White Sox last year before they spun him to Tampa Bay for prospects, got jumped by the bottom of Chicago’s dangerous lineup in the fifth, giving up a double and two singles to open the inning. After a groundout produced the second run, a two-out RBI double by Vargas tied the score. “If you watched BP (Friday), even some of the players were commenting it looked like he was hitting a golf ball, so it’s there,” manager Tony Vitello said. “He hasn’t quite connected the way he would like to, but the swings seem to be a lot more comfortable, the timing is better. … He’s certainly shown positive signs.”