For the third consecutive series, the Giants have won the opener and lost the last two.
While quality pitching, along with some shoddy defense, couldn’t sustain itself over the entire game on Saturday, blame for Sunday’s extra inning 3-1 loss rests solely on the shoulders of San Francisco’s hitters.
After Willy Adames’s 5th inning solo shot on Friday night, the offense had laid nothing but eggs against Detroit pitchers. Jackson Jobe and Co. held them scoreless yesterday. A couple of fortunate breaks on balls in play and a throwing error helped the Giants complete their only circuit of the bases against a dominant Troy Melton (fun fact: he’s a former teammate with Casey Schmitt at SDSU). But when the game came down to the wire, the final 7 hitters from the 8th to the 10th innings did this: ground into a bases loaded double play, then strike out six times.
Over the last 21 innings of this series, the offense scored just one run.
A run that was nearly enough for Logan Webb, who stifled a hot Tigers team over 8 innings. The work was fast too. Webb pitched at a brutal pace and attacked the zone with 66% strike-percentage. From his main trio of offerings, the sweeper was Sunday’s star. He leaned on it heavily on his first trip down the order, and overall, nearly half (14 of 30) of his breaking balls went for called strikes. Clearly Detroit hitters were sitting on the change-up and sinker and Webb played coy with those main offerings, withholding them early in the count, feathering them in more and more the deeper he got into the game.
Webb’s outing was a masterclass in control and a middle finger to the present epoch of powerball throwing. He struck out only one batter, earned just 3 swings-and-misses. That miniscule whiff total doesn’t matter when you nab 24 called strikes. He’s throwing bricks anyway, they’ve got a larger surface area than a baseball so contact is easier, but boy does it suck to hit. Just ask Kevin McGonigle how his hands feel after putting this 2-2 sinker into play.
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While Webb arguably won the game within the game against Melton, he did flinch first. Or rather the defense behind him flinched first. Two ground balls off the bats of Zach McKinstry and McGonigle wriggled under gloves and found their way into the outfield to put runners on the corners for their first scoring opportunity of the game. They’d squeeze out a run when Gleyber Torres rolled into a double play, and the inning ended soon after with a weak bloop out in foul territory. While first blood came in the 6th — as it did with Roupp vs. Jobe — it’s tough to pin the damage on Webb considering he allowed three ground balls and a pop up in the frame. So it goes for a man who lives and dies by the ball in play.
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Webb would stick around for two more innings of work. He’d bag his lone strikeout of the day in the 7th, give up his lone extra basehit and then strand that runner at second in the 8th, keeping the game tied at one run apiece.
He, and Dylan Smith, who struck out the side in the 9th, did everything within their power to make this a winnable game for the Giants. The bats just couldn’t muster another run.
A large part of that was thanks to opposing arm, Troy Melton.
After making his season debut on May 24th, (right elbow inflammation made him miss the first couple months) right-hander Melton owns the lowest ERA among starters in the Majors. He had put together scoreless 7 IP performances in his past two starts, and going into Sunday, opponents were hitting .169 off of him with a .191 BABIP. Though he throws hard and leans on his four-seam fastball a lot, he doesn’t rely on the strikeout. He can rear back and gun it when he needs to, but similar to Webb, it’s weak contact and low walk rates that keep him out of trouble. Tunneling the cutter off his four-seamer has been a recipe for success — it also helps that he’s got a bunch of other stuff in his back pocket. He got Devers multiple times swinging over a splitter. He dropped a couple of curveballs into the zone just for fun.
Melton held the Giants scoreless for six frames. They weren’t all peaches and cream. Drew Gilbert ripped a two-out triple in the 2nd. Back-to-back lead-off singles by Adames and Devers had the Giants within shouting distance of home in the 4th. But Melton dug deep and dispatched Basabe on four pitches, buzzing him with a knee high 98 MPH four-seam for a strike three that so confused the second baseman that he challenged the call.
Gilbert, who had a solid game at the plate, scooped a 1-2 cutter out to right fielder Zach McKinstry who hosed Adames with a perfect throw.
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The Giants wouldn’t get another runner on base against Melton until Devers’s next AB in the 7th when he led off the frame by flipping a cutter into shallow left field.
Off the bat, Devers watched rather than ran, thinking it’d float foul, but not only did the wind push the ball back into play, it found safe pastures between two oncoming defenders.
The single could’ve been a double, but it really should’ve been an out. Tough beans for Melton who got pulled after the hit, and credit the Giants, specifically Basabe, for making it count.
Against reliever Kyle Finnegan, Basabe would make up for Devers lack of hustle by beating out a potential double play ball. He then swiped second base and advanced to third on an overthrow by back-up catcher Valencia, setting him up to tie the game on Gilbert’s soft grounder to third.
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That run was the team’s first in 18 scoreless innings, and while he wasn’t on the mound when it happened, the run snapped Melton’s streak of 19 scoreless innings pitched.
After Webb kept Detroit off the board in the 8th, the Giants appeared to have the momentum with a couple more lucky breaks on balls in play. Christian Koss’s line drive just eeked over the glove of Torres to lead off the 8th against lefty Drew Sommer. Bryce Eldridge then fought a hand-numbing fastball off his handle for an infield single. A crappy at-bat from Jung Hoo Lee, including two failed bunt attempts, was redeemed by Willy Adames working a walk to load the bases and force a runner over to third with less than two outs.
But the river of cheap hits ran dry, and Detroit’s big southpaw prevailed, getting Devers to ground into an inning-ending double play while keeping the go-ahead run off the board.
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There wouldn’t be another ball put in play for the Giants.
Not so for the Tigers.
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