Ramos delivers leadoff blast, stays in spotlight all night

SAN DIEGO -- Heliot Ramos found himself in the middle of the action in Monday night’s series opener at Petco Park.

Ramos kicked off a three-homer first inning with a booming shot off left-hander Nestor Cortes and then experienced an eventful night in left field, where he was involved in a controversial fan interference call that proved to be the difference in the Giants’ 4-3 win over the Padres.

His exploits didn’t make him too popular among Padres fans, who ended up booing him every time he stepped up to the plate for the rest of the game.

“I was surprised,” Ramos said, referring to the chorus of boos. “It’s not my fault. I’m not the one who overturned the call. Why are you mad at me? I’m just here playing. Some of them were laughing, smiling. Some of them were talking a lot of trash. I’m like, ‘All right, I’m here for it.’”

The Giants entered Monday only 12-21 against left-handed starters, who had held them to an MLB-worst .607 OPS this season, but they came out swinging early against Cortes.

Ramos and Rafael Devers opened the top of the first with back-to-back jacks off Cortes, marking only the fifth time since at least 1900 that the Giants have started a game with successive homers. Wilmer Flores then bashed another 89.4 mph fastball out to left field for a two-run shot, giving the Giants a 4-0 lead before All-Star left-hander Robbie Ray even stepped on the mound.

“I feel like we haven’t done that in a minute,” Ramos said. “Getting going and giving our pitchers support and all that. It feels really good to do that from the beginning.”

Ray took over from there, holding the Padres scoreless until they managed to push across a run with the help of a two-error sequence from third baseman Casey Schmitt in the bottom of the seventh. Schmitt’s miscue loomed even larger after Ray surrendered a two-out, two-run homer to pinch-hitter Ryan O’Hearn on his 105th and final pitch of the night, resulting in a trio of unearned runs that brought San Diego within a run.

The Padres nearly got on the board in the bottom of the second, when Xander Bogaerts was initially credited with a leadoff homer after his 370-foot drive seemingly popped out of Ramos’ glove and went over the left-field fence. Still, San Francisco issued a challenge after Ramos argued that a fan reached out over the field and prevented him from making the catch. While there was minimal contact on the play, Ramos said one of the fans above him was leaning over and blocking his view of the ball.

“I did think I had it easier than that, but whenever I was about to catch it, I saw that his arm was over me kind of,” Ramos said. “I saw the replay. It only shows the guy on the bottom. It doesn’t show the guy on the top. He was over me, literally over me. And his whole body was across the wall.”

The ruling was eventually overturned following a lengthy replay review, which drew the ire of Padres manager Mike Shildt, who was subsequently ejected by home-plate umpire James Hoye.

“You don’t see that call often, but I think it was the right one,” Giants manager Bob Melvin said.

Ramos’ action-packed night happened to come on the same day that the 2024 All-Star took some heat on social media for some comments that he made to the San Francisco Chronicle over the weekend. Ramos was asked about recent criticism of Melvin and offered a defense of the Giants’ skipper, who has managed to stay even-keeled even throughout the club’s second-half slide.

“Outside people don’t know anything,” Ramos told the Chronicle. “That’s the type of person he is. That doesn’t mean that he’s not a great manager. When we were winning, everybody was on our side; now it’s like all the fans are against us and all that.”

Some took Ramos’s remarks as a slight to the Giants’ fan base, but he clarified that he didn’t intend his words to come off that way.

“I love the fans,” Ramos said. “I’m just defending my manager. I think he’s a great person. … Like I said, what we have here in the inner circle, nobody knows about it. Nobody really knows what’s going on here. All I'm trying to say is just keep supporting us like you always do and don’t take things out of context because I’m not that type of person. I would never talk trash about nobody, and I feel really good about our fans.”