SAN FRANCISCO — It wasn’t that difficult for the Giants to tip their caps on Monday night. Hunter Greene is one of the most electric starting pitchers in baseball, and he was simply overpowering in the first game of the series.
It’s a bit harder to tip your cap a second straight night, though.
Nick Lodolo wasn’t quite as efficient as Greene, but he was nearly as good. The lefty pitched six shutout innings and the Giants did nothing against the Cincinnati Reds’ bullpen, falling 1-0 in their second straight shutout.
The 18 scoreless innings came on the heels of a seven-game winning streak and guaranteed the Giants’ first series loss of the 2025 MLB season.
“It was a tough night last night, and then the first few innings [tonight] don’t go well and they make some pretty good plays in the field. I don’t want to say you start pressing, but you probably start to do a little too much and end up getting shut out two nights in a row,” manager Bob Melvin said. “[Heliot] Ramos’ ball looks like it’s going over his head, and he makes a great play in right field. We just couldn’t do enough. Four hits is not going to do it.
“They only walked one guy, so we really didn’t have a lot of traffic on the bases to do too much with. I thought we had a pretty good approach. I think we knew what Lodolo was going to do based on last time — he pitched in a little bit more — but we just couldn’t get anything going.”
The best scoring chance came in the fifth, when Ramos hit a 353-foot fly ball to deep right with the tying run on third. Right fielder Jake Fraley made a tumbling catch on the warning track, and the Giants went down relatively quietly from there. There was so little offense that the game lasted just two hours and five minutes.
That’s a heckuva play, Jake‼ pic.twitter.com/mQKPsnrsYu
— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) April 9, 2025
That was nothing new for the Reds, who have played in four of MLB’s six 1-0 games this season. They lead the majors in starters’ ERA (2.52), but the Giants just about matched them the last two nights.
A night after Logan Webb’s spectacular outing, Landen Roupp went a career-high six innings and allowed just one run. Hayden Birdsong followed with three sharp relief innings that were punctuated by a pair of strikeouts with an insurance run on third. Birdsong has thrown seven shutout innings out of the bullpen thus far.
“He’s pitching his tail off,” Roupp said. “I’m super happy for him for taking over that role and learning it super quick.”
Roupp dealt with some odd travel before his first start of the year, but on Tuesday he looked like the pitcher who edged Birdsong for a rotation job in the spring. That was the silver lining for the Giants, along with two hits apiece from Casey Schmitt and Sam Huff, both of whom had been hitless entering the night.
The problem was that those were the only four hits for the Giants, who are still waiting for some regulars to get going. At the top of the list is Willy Adames, who struck out three times and saw his OPS drop to .489. Melvin said he isn’t worried about a shortstop with such a strong track record, and he noted that Adames still has found a way to drive in some runs early on.
There were none of them Tuesday, when the Giants wore their new City Connects for the first time. After going 30-16 in the previous version, it was a quiet debut for the black, purple and orange jerseys.
“It’s tough to waste two really good pitching performances in the last couple of nights,” Melvin said. “We’re back at it tomorrow and hopefully the offense is better.”
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