Spencer Strider and Logan Webb, third and fourth in National League Cy Young betting odds respectively, each toed the rubber at Oracle Park to begin a daunting three-game series for the Giants.
Strider became the first pitcher in MLB to reach 15 wins, as he dominated the Giants for the second time in a week.
Webb allowed five earned runs to the most potent offense in baseball, the most he’s surrendered in an Oracle Park start this year.
Joc Pederson, Wade Meckler and Luis Matos collected the only hits off Strider, as the Giants (66-62) had no answer for the mustachioed ace in a 5-1 defeat. Nearing the end of its most grueling stretch of schedule, San Francisco is now 8-13 in the month of August.
“This was an excellent outing for him,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler said of Strider. “Lot of carry on his fastball. our guys were on time to the fastball, we just weren’t full squaring it up. Couple deeper fly balls and some balls just off the barrel. But it’s not enough. When you’re facing the best pitchers in baseball, you’ve got to connect a couple times, or it’s going to be really hard to string hits together and scratch runs across as we saw today.”
Strider worked with a lead the entire game, as Michael Harris II crushed a solo home run on Webb’s sixth pitch of the night. Catcher Blake Sabol was set up on the outside corner, but Webb missed his target by about a foot, tugging it up and inside to the left-handed batter .
After Harris’ first-inning homer, the Braves jabbed at Webb. The team that leads MLB in OPS, home runs, runs and batting average typically doesn’t just stop at one run.
In the third, Atlanta tacked on two runs against Webb when Harris singled through the gap and Matt Olson drove him home. Olson cracked a perfectly executed 2-2 changeup below the zone into the right-center gap. Sometimes, great hitting beats great pitching.
Olson then scored on a single punched out to right field from Marcell Ozuna.
The inning before, Ronald Acuña Jr. saved two runs by snaring what was nearly a two-RBI double from Thairo Estrada out of midair.
Aside from that mini-rally, the Giants hardly touched Strider. The sturdy righty retired the first seven batters he faced, four of whom he discarded on three pitches. He fanned five Giants in his first four innings.
Like he did last week, when he tossed seven dominant, 10-strikeout innings against the Giants, Strider had his best stuff. His counterpart, Webb, had more misses over the plate.
But one thing that makes Webb so special is his ability to grind down lineups despite perhaps not being at his sharpest. That’s one of the reasons why he leads MLB in innings pitched. In the fifth, Webb retired the bottom of Atlanta’s lineup in order on 14 pitches.
Webb got into more trouble against the top of Atlanta’s order the next inning, though. Acuña led off with a lined single and Harris collected his third hit to score him. Harris flipped his bat and Acuña did the Griddy dance as he crossed home plate. Up 4-0, the Braves were having a whole lot of fun.
Harris, the other star of the game besides Strider, tagged up from third to score on a basket catch by J.D. Davis in foul territory. That gave Webb a fifth charged run after he’d ceded to reliever Alex Wood — which, against the vaunted Braves, is far from shameful.
“I just think they beat me today, it’s that simple,” Webb told reporters postgame.
Wood wound up saving the rest of SF’s bullpen with 3.2 scoreless innings in the down game.
Wilmer Flores nearly tagged Strider for a home run, but instead flew out to the warning track to end another scoreless inning. By then, Strider had racked up eight strikeouts, leaning heavily on the slider that has limited batters to a .142 average with its ludicrous vertical break.
Half of Strider’s 24 whiffs generated came on the slider. He only threw the pitch 30 times, mixing it masterfully off his fastball that maxed out at 99 mph.
It took the Giants 13 innings, but they finally scratched a run off Strider in the seventh. Joc Pederson smoked a triple nearly identical to Acuña’s before scoring on a groundout.
Strider’s performance was just a hair worse than his previous start against SF, when he struck out 10 and allowed two base runners in seven scoreless frames last Friday. He finished with a line of seven innings, three hits, one earned run, a walk and nine punchouts.
The Giants, losers of six straight series before this current set, won’t have to go up against Cy Young contenders every night. But they’ll need to maintain pace in the wild card race, a win or two before their schedule eases could go a long way.