Once again the Giants offense made things interesting against the San Diego Padres, and once again they came up short.
A late outburst of power from the unlikely sources of Drew Cavanaugh (his first career HR) and Drew Gilbert forced the Padres bullpen to rally their arms with Adrian Morejon and Mason Miller stopping the buck to serve the Giants their second loss in the series, and seventh of their last nine games against San Diego.
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The afternoon didn’t start with the Giants playing catch-up. Two batters into the bottom half of the 1st, Rafael Devers put San Francisco up by two with his 37th home run of the season.
The 2-run jog earned Devers his 61st and 62nd runs batted-in at the intimidating cavern that was/is Pac Bell/SBC/AT&T/Oracle Park, the second highest RBI total after Barry Bonds’ 71 in 2001. Devers’ 19 home runs at Oracle are the most by a player not named Barry Bonds and is tied with the ’02 Bonds model for fifth most HR in a season at 3rd and King. (Fun fact: Devers never hit more than 16 in a single season at Fenway.)
Unfortunately, the two-run lead in the hands of the rookie southpaw Cesar Perdomo didn’t last. Nor did the one-run lead regained on Shay Whitcomb’s solo shot in the 2nd. All in all, four home runs blasted by Giants bats weren’t enough in Saturday’s 7-6 loss, and that comes down to a major difference in starting pitching, as well as some key miscues on defense.
Perdomo had allowed just one run on six hits in his first 10 career innings (2 games). By the end of the 4th, both of those numbers had been surpassed by the relentless press of San Diego’s offense. Trouble boiled over in every inning. Perdomo toiled with little finesse. Offerings were elevated, out over the heart of the plate. The Padres didn’t miss much, and when they did, it proved to be the exception not the rule.
Jackson Merrill waving over an 0-2 change-up to end the 1st and strand two was not, as it turns out, a sign of good things to come. It was an aberration. That offspeed offering whistling down Main Street without a care in the world — a mistake. A mistake that was punished going forward. Dustin Harris was all over a fastball that stayed flat out over the zone and pushed it away from the defense, through the chasm on the left side of the infield, for a game-tying single in the 2nd.
Three-pitched by Perdomo in the 1st, Merrill returned the favor by one-pitching him in the 3rd. The sucker crushed 405 feet to center? Another change-up whistling down Main Street.
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The game went like this for some time. After Devers’ statement dinger in the 1st, it was pretty much all San Diego until the 8th. They scored in every frame from the 2nd through the 7th using a variety of methods and means at their disposal: The homer, the opposite field single, the safety squeeze, the walk, the stolen base, the sacrifice fly. Perdomo gave up 10 hits along with two walks before getting pulled in the 5th. All those runners clogged up the bases, pressure built up in the pipes behind Perdomo, and though they went just 2-for-13 with runners in scoring position, a steady drip helped their run total to pool.
San Diego’s starter Michael King turned off the tap in the 2nd and that was that. The offense stalled out at three runs on three hits as San Diego’s lead grew inch-by-inch. The right-hander retired 14 Giants hitters in a row between Whitcomb’s homer and Jonah Cox’s lead-off single in the 7th — a single promptly erased from the bases with a double play. No Padres pitcher issued a walk. No Giant hitter batted with a runner in scoring position.
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For how busy and hectic and productive their offense was at the plate, and how stifling King was on the mound, it surprised me how quickly the Giants closed the gap in score. Reliever Bradgley Rodriguez took over in the 8th and within seven pitches, San Francisco had doubled their hit and run total.
Rodriguez came into the game with a 1.90 ERA, having allowed just three homers over 66.1 innings. Then Cavanaugh, Koss, and Gilbert happened — our Murderer’s Row. Three batters, three swings, three runs in after six innings of the Padres peppering the baseball around the diamond was all it took to get back within one and make it feel like a ball game.
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More accurately: make it sting like a ballgame.
The 7-3 loss you’ve come to terms with in the 4th inning usually goes down easier than when a comeback doesn’t comeback all the way, but comes back enough to force you to linger with hope until the last pitch to accept the outcome you had already accepted before the whole comeback not-comeback started. Was it all just a gigante waste of time? I don’t think so — but a one-run loss does make the postgame autopsy a little more raw in its search for what went wrong.
Perdomo’s pitching was the dark cloud of ambiguous not-good that hangs over this outcome. But if you want to retroactively identify “the fatal play,” look at the defense.
A bunt single by Samad Taylor and a “swinging bunt” single by Tatis started the top of the 4th. Perdomo had to venture far off the mound to field the soft roller up the third base line. With Tatis’s speed, he should’ve known better to chase the out at first, but without a discerning glance towards Taylor rounding second, Perdomo sent the baseball chasing after Tatis. The throw arrived late and allowed Taylor to take third. A small swipe of 90 feet that immediately paid out. One pitch later, Taylor touched home on a sac fly for the Padres’ first lead of the afternoon.
There it is: the difference in the game.
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An inning later, Austin Hays stood on third with two outs and lefty Jake Cronenworth up to bat. Cronenworth took a fastball for a ball. Mike Krukow, savvy as ever, noted how deep Shay Whitcomb at third was playing, exposing them to a safety squeeze, just as Cronenworth squared around. Considering the defensive alignment, Hays’s speed from third, Perdomo’s lack of speed off the mound, Cronenworth’s ability as a bunter, conditions were already perfect to execute the squeeze play, but Perdomo made them even more perfect-er by delivering a 93 MPH fastball, straight, on the outer third of the plate and just above the belt.
There it is: the difference in the game.
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And in the 7th, there was just the obvious blunder. The actual error error when Whitcomb, fluctuating between GOAT and goat at third base, had what should’ve been an inning-ending, runners-stranding, no run scoring, routine groundball clang off his mitt and roll into left field. Xander Bogaerts scampered home for the Padres’ seventh and final run of the afternoon. At the time, based on how the game had been going, the misplay felt inconsequential, just some salt in the wound, a little extra blush on the cheeks of an already forgettable day — but in retrospect, after Gilbert’s homer ball skipped into the Cove with the score still coming in a run shy of tied, the error loomed.
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There it is: the difference in the game.
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