Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
From explosion to implosion.
A night after the Giants’ bats went wild in a historic 23-run outburst, their bullpen melted down and turned a five-run bulge into a three-run deficit in a rough few innings of a 9-6 loss at Coors Field on Wednesday, just their fourth defeat in 14 games.
The Giants (18-20) could not climb back to .500 and fell right back behind the Rockies, who reclaimed third place in the NL West and have a tenuous grasp on a wild-card spot the Giants will be eyeing.
The Giants now come home for a four-game set with a Diamondbacks team that they were better than even before Arizona offloaded many of its pieces at the trade deadline.
The Giants, on the other hand, stood pat, expressing belief in a team that responded with an all-time laugher on Tuesday, though no one was laughing a day later. Farhan Zaidi & Co. decided against adding a lefty bat, which feels less urgent with the way Alex Dickerson has come around. They also did not bring in another righty arm to a bullpen that is lefty heavy, in part because Sam Coonrod has emerged as a serious weapon. In a one-game sample, that decision did not look as genius.
The Giants were up 6-1 entering the bottom of the fifth, when Logan Webb buckled and watched Trevor Story lift an RBI double. Webb allowed two base runners in the sixth before being pulled for Jarlin Garcia, who was not helped by Wilmer Flores allowing a Sam Hilliard hot-shot to go through him to drive in Kevin Pillar. A sacrifice fly closed the lead to 6-4, and the comeback was on.
Coonrod could not do anything right in the seventh, not with his best stuff and surrendering two hits and a walk without recording an out. Charlie Blackmon’s RBI double made it 6-5, which made Gabe Kapler trade Coonrod for Tyler Rogers. It backfired: Old pal Kevin Pillar tripled to grab the Rockies a 7-6 lead, and Hilliard’s two-run homer finished the Colorado scoring.
The San Francisco bullpen had been brilliant recently, posing a 1.38 ERA in its past 12 games entering play, a figure that now will rise.
It spoiled what started out as a fun continuation from Tuesday’s festivities, the Giants exploding for four runs in the first and jumping all over Kyle Freeland. The second batter of the game, Mike Yastrzemski, went yard, and five of six batters followed with singles, Dickerson’s, Joey Bart’s and newcomer Daniel Robertson’s resulting in runs.
But the Giants’ bats cooled against the Colorado bullpen and didn’t score a run past the fourth inning. Their gloves were not smooth either, Flores adding a second mistake in the eighth when he airmailed a throw to second that had Story picked off (though Flores bounced back by throwing a strike to home a better later that caught Story).
The Giants’ pitching and hitting have been sizzling for a few weeks. They will hope a few innings did not cool them off.