It’s hard to imagine a worse way to lose than on a walkoff, and in the past week, the San Francisco Giants have watched their opponents’ sprint onto the field to celebrate game-winning hits on three separate occasions.
For the 2017 Giants, though, there are worse ways to lose, and sure enough, they found one on Thursday evening.
With a five-hour flight from Atlanta back to San Francisco looming, the Giants played a night game on getaway day, waited out an 86-minute rain delay before the first pitch was thrown, and gave up 12 runs in the first five innings in a 12-11 defeat at the hands of the Braves.
The only words that can possibly describe that loss contain four letters, and aren’t fit for print.
San Francisco has now lost seven consecutive series, 18 of its last 23 games, and now sits 20.5 games back of the first-place Colorado Rockies in the National League West.
After falling behind 12-6 in the fifth inning, a home run from Brandon Belt and late RBIs from Joe Panik, Hunter Pence and Kelby Tomlinson pushed the Giants to the brink against Braves’ closer Jim Johnson. Nevertheless, a night after Pence forced Johnson to blow his fifth save of the season with a ninth inning home run, a late groundout brought an early end to a Giants’ comeback bid.
Less than a month after Braves left-hander Jaime Garcia and Giants righty Matt Cain squared off at AT&T Park in a 2-0 Braves win, neither starting pitcher came remotely close to capturing the form they held in their May duel in Thursday’s series finale.
Garcia lasted 4 and 1/3 innings, allowed seven hits and six earned runs as catcher Buster Posey, left fielder Austin Slater and the rest of the Giants roughed him up. Still, Cain was worse.
The Giants’ 13th-year veteran entered his 15th start of the season with a 6.56 earned run average in his last nine starts and a 7.46 earned run average in seven road starts this season. Against a Braves team that began the series five games under .500, Cain regressed.
After allowing a two-run home run to right fielder Nick Markakis in the bottom of the first inning, Cain nearly gave up a two-run shot to the Braves other corner outfielder, Matt Kemp, in the bottom of the third inning. However, Giants center fielder Gorkys Hernandez made a leaping catch and smashed in the wall to keep Kemp off the base paths, and preserve an early 5-2 San Francisco lead.
San Francisco jumped out to that advantage on the strength of a Posey home run, his 10th of the season, and a two-run double off the bat of Cain, who sought revenge against Garcia after the Braves’ lefty was responsible for driving in the only two runs in Atlanta’s victory back on May 26.
However, in Atlanta’s new hitter-friendly SunTrust Park, no lead is safe, especially with the way Cain has thrown the ball of late.
In the fourth inning, the Braves cut into San Francisco’s lead with a solo home run from first baseman Matt Adams, and in the fifth inning, the Giants imploded faster than plastic in a microwave.
Cain faced the first three Atlanta hitters in the bottom of the fifth, allowing a leadoff home run to second baseman Brandon Phillips, who clobbered a ball into the second deck in the left field bleachers, and then singles to Markakis and Kemp.
When Bruce Bochy finally decided to give Cain the hook, he fed reliever Bryan Morris to the sharks, and Atlanta’s hitters ate him alive.
Morris lasted just 2/3 of an inning, allowing five hits, one walk and five earned runs to a Braves lineup that turned a hotly contested ballgame into a laugher. The defining blow came off the bat of pinch hitter Lane Adams, who clubbed a three-run home run for his first round-tripper of the season to put the Braves ahead 11-6.
Morris’ meltdown continued, and eventually, Bochy turned to reliever Kyle Crick to make his Major League debut against the Braves on Thursday night.
The 49th overall pick in the 2011 MLB Draft, Crick was called up on Tuesday after Giants’ reliever Derek Law gave up four runs without recording an out in a Giants’ loss. Pitching in front of his parents, Crick tossed 2 and 1/3 innings of one-hit ball, keeping the Braves off the scoreboard in the sixth and seventh innings while making an excellent impression on his new teammates and coaches.
Though Crick gave the Giants’ offense a chance to stage a comeback, a Pence groundout with the tying and go-ahead runs on base in the top half of the ninth ended the Giants’ late rally.
Cain and Morris’ struggles cancelled out impressive nights from Posey, who collected three extra base hits in his first three at-bats, and Slater, who singled, doubled and walked in his first three plate appearances. Thursday marked just the fourth time this season Posey has driven in at least two runs in the same game, and all four of those contests have come in the Giants’ last 15 contests.
With the loss, the Giants fall to 27-48 and a season-high 21 games below .500 before its upcoming six-game homestand, which will begin roughly 14 hours after the team lands back at San Francisco International Airport in the wee hours of the morning.