Giants get walked off by Diamondbacks

After Monday’s feckless failure, the San Francisco Giants started their Tuesday night game against the Arizona Diamondbacks on a better foot. A much better foot.

The Giants heard your criticisms after their red-hot offense went ice-cold on Friday, Sunday, and Monday. They listened, and they didn’t judge. Four pitches into the game, Heliot Ramos had one of the hardest-hit balls of the year for the Giants, scorching an Eduardo Rodríguez heater 113.6 mph and accomplishing the seemingly impossible: hitting an in-the-park ball over Alek Thomas’ head. Three pitches later, Rafael Devers scorched a line drive single at 111.7 mph.

There were runners at the corners, there were no outs, and before most people had realized the game had started, there was hard contact galore. Things were looking good.

They got even better. After an undproductive out by Willy Adames, Matt Chapman popped a ball to right field for a sacrifice fly. Ramos scored, and Devers took second when the throw wasn’t cut off. It was a bit of situational hitting and savvy baserunning that tends to elude the Giants when the offense is having a bad day, so its presence seemed to portend a return to offensive normalcy.

That was emphasized one pitch later, when Wilmer Flores came up for his apparently controversial spot in the lineup. Rodríguez was the only lefty starter the Giants were scheduled to face on this road trip, and so young phenom Bryce Eldridge spent his second day in the pros watching from the bench, in a move that raised eyebrows on social media while being completely normal and, dare I say, warranted.

Perhaps Wilmer had read those comments and wanted to remind everyone that he’s a seasoned and savvy veteran hitter and the Giants are in the winning games business, not the development business, and so he jumped at the first pitch and lined it the other way for an RBI single.

A two-run inning! who are these guys??

And yet, they weren’t even done. Casey Schmitt followed with a single of his own, and then the big hit: Jerar Encarnación, also getting to start with a lefty on the mound, snapped one just inside the first base line, scoring both Flores and Schmitt, and giving the Giants their third consecutive two-out knock.

It was everything you look for in a functional offense which, with the exception of that three-game blip, the Giants have been over the last month. There were clutch hits and situational at-bats. Table-setting line-movers and two-out RBIs. Good baserunning, good eyes, and good bats. It was a 4-0 lead. It was all good.

Somehow it got even better in the bottom of the inning, when it really started to feel like the Giants day. Tristan Beck kicked off the bullpen game by striking out superstar Geraldo Perdomo, but his nasty back foot sweeper did, indeed, hit the back foot, ricocheting so far away that Perdomo as easily able to take first as baseball’s silliest rule got even sillier.

That may have felt ominous, and it may have given you pause, but all of that was forgotten when Beck turned around and got Ketel Marte to ground into a double play. It was at that point where it simply felt like it was going to be the Giants day. These things have a way of announcing themselves.

Sometimes they announce themselves incorrectly, though, and that was the case. It took just one inning for you to think it was the Giants day, and it took just one more inning for you to regret ever feeling that sensation.

Gabriel Moreno opened the bottom of the second with a double, instantly putting Beck in danger. Blaze Alexander, who may not yet have the power of his many All-Star teammates, but more than makes up for it with his name, knocked a double to get the D’backs on the board [sidebar: I only recently noticed that the Giants broadcast calls them the “D’backs” and not the “D-Backs” and I don’t know why this has ever not been the way].

Leaking oil and behind in the count 3-1, Beck threw a get-it-in sweeper to Adrian Del Castillo, who planted the ball well into the bleachers.

The Giants still led, but the feeling of superiority was gone. This was no longer a game they felt destined to win, or even a game that they should win; now it was a good old fashioned fight.

In the third inning the team dug deep and recouped some of their losses, and it was once again the likely/unlikely hero, as Flores took Rodríguez deep for a gorgeous solo home run to push the lead to 5-3.

Flores’ swing made you feel good again, but that’s only because you couldn’t see the future. If you could have, you would have gulped when you realized that no other Giant would cross home this game; you would have you would have grimaced when you realized no other Giant would make it to third; you would have gagged when you realized no other Giant would make it to second; and hell, you probably would have giggled when you realized that no other Giant would even get a hit again, because honestly, It Doesn’t Get More Giant.

The pitching, meanwhile, crumbled. Trevor McDonald, called up earlier in the day for his season debut and just the second big league game of his career, handled the fourth inning beautifully, but the fifth inning combined one of his strengths (throwing strikes) with one of his weaknesses (not missing bats) to create a horrifying monster. He only threw eight balls in the 26-pitch inning, but half of those were to one batter, which was plopped firmly in the middle of an ugly sequence: single, bunt, walk, single, single, tied game.

McDonald would get out of the inning, but the stage was set. Five innings were in the books, and five runs had been scored by each team. The Giants would need to score runs (which we’ve already established they proved incapable of doing), while preventing the Diamondbacks from doing the same (which was proving a nearly impossible task).

And so the Giants, with their patchwork quilt of relievers, employed an age-old tactic of teams running through mud uphill: the bend-but-don’t-break defense.

Joey Lucchesi pitched the sixth, and allowed a leadoff single and a one-out walk. But he calmly struck out the pinch-hitting Jorge Barrosa, before retiring Perdomo.

José Buttó was tasked with the seventh, and that’s when the real Houdini act occurred. It began with a leadoff knock by Marte, who brilliantly took second on what looked off the bat like a routine single. Young star Corbin Carroll followed with a single, and the D’backs had runners at the corners with no outs. If you’ve been watching baseball at … well … anytime in your life, you’re probably aware that having a runner on third with no outs is a situation where a run is virtually guaranteed, unless you are the 2025 Giants offense, which the Diamondbacks most certainly are not.

But Buttó got Moreno to harmlessly line the ball to third for out one. And then he got Alexander to chop a ball to first, where Flores, in a bout of veteran savvy, didn’t get greedy and step on the bag, and instead fired a strike home to nab the lead runner for out two.

And finally, he got Jordan Lawlar to ground a ball meekly to second, where Alexander ran into Casey Schmitt, ending the inning on a blatant case of runner’s interference, which Alexander still managed to vehemently contest despite A) said blatancy and B) the Giants still recording the out the traditional way before the call was made.

It was a brilliant escape job, but the Giants weren’t done. Buttó stayed on for the eighth to reprise his act, by gifting Thomas two bags when he threw the ball away following Thomas’ swinging bunt. An actual bunt moved Thomas to third, giving the D’backs yet another opportunity to score the go-ahead run with a productive out.

Instead, Barrosa hit a ball to very shallow left field, which Ramos easily got under and quickly got in, keeping Thomas from getting any funny ideas.

With that, Bob Melvin turned to Ryan Walker, and it was a bit of an ominous start. Walker’s very first pitch was wild enough that Andrew Knizner had no chance of catching it, which would have scored the run had it not left a welt on Perdomo’s backside instead. Walker’s very next pitch was chopped into the 3-4 hole by Marte, where third baseman turned shortstop turned second baseman Schmitt made a brilliant, balletic move on the ball, getting the out and squeaking the Giants away from danger yet again.

But the fatal flaw of the bend-but-don’t-break defense is that there’s only so long something can bend before it does, indeed, break, as any stick or society will happily illustrate. And in the ninth inning, after yet another one-two-three inning by the offense, the breaking occurred.

Walker took the mound and clearly didn’t have it. But the Giants bullpen was taxed and potentially gearing up for extra innings, and so Melvin’s hand was forced. Carroll led off the inning with a single, then Walker lived up to his name and walked Moreno on four pitches, putting one of the sport’s fastest players in scoring position, representing the walk-off run. An Alexander sacrifice bunt proved to be anything but, as Schmitt came off the bag making a catch at first base, with the error gifting the Diamondbacks the bases loaded, with no outs.

There would be no escaping this time. Fittingly, after the nice defensive plays and hard hit balls that found gloves and magic acts and shenanigans, the Giants were done in by the softest (non-bunt) swing of the day, a 44.7-mph bounced by Lawler that evaded Walker’s glove, allowing Carroll to easily score the walk-off run as Arizona celebrated a 6-5 victory.

The offense, held to just two hits the night prior, once again faltered. The pitching, held together by dreams and expired duct tape, did the same. And the Giants, after roaring back into the postseason race, lost their fourth straight game.

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