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Scuffling Giants blown out at home by Royals

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Exactly five years to the day from Matt Cain throwing the 22nd perfect game in Major League Baseball history, the San Francisco Giants took the field behind an up-and-coming starter who has dominated at AT&T Park this season.

To expect left-hander Ty Blach to recapture some of the magic Cain conjured up on June 13, 2012 would have been asking for the moon, but with Blach on the hill, the Giants liked their chances.

It just so happens, the Kansas City Royals liked theirs too.

On the strength of a six-run top of the sixth inning and the left arm of starting pitcher Jason Vargas, Kansas City peppered the playing surface at AT&T Park with 15 base hits and kept the Giants’ offense at bay in a 8-1 romp.

A game after San Francisco set season-highs with 13 runs and 17 hits in a come-from-behind victory over the Minnesota Twins, Vargas put handcuffs around the wrists of Giants’ hitters, limiting them to five hits in 7.0 innings of work.

“This team is known for putting the ball in play, and sometimes when you put the ball in play, good things happen, and that’s what happened for them tonight,” Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy said.

Vargas out-dueled Blach, who had been spectacular at AT&T Park this season, entering Tuesday evening’s contest with a 1.75 earned run average in five home starts.

Runs have been hard to come by for visiting lineups, so it only figures that the Royals needed a stroke of good luck to take an early lead. Wins have been hard to come by for the Giants too, so it only figures the Royals didn’t need much help to break the game open.

With San Francisco ahead 1-0, Kansas City shortstop Alcides Escobar led off the top half of the third inning by poking a hard-hit single under the glove of the normally sure-handed Brandon Belt at first base.

Even though Escobar was rewarded with a base hit, it’s a play Belt normally makes, and one that would prove costly shortly thereafter.

Left fielder Alex Gordon followed Escobar with weaker contact, but he too reached on a single as a short fly ball in right field plopped in and out of the mitt of Giants’ second baseman Aaron Hill.

Had starting second baseman Joe Panik been in the game, perhaps Panik, who possesses superior range and softer hands, would have made the play, but again, that’s not the way the season has unfolded for the Giants.

With runners on first and second and no one out, Vargas pushed a bunt up the third base line that split the distance between Blach and third baseman Eduardo Nunez.

A ball under the glove of Belt, a ball off the glove of Hill and a ball past the glove of Blach and the Royals were in business.

Even though Blach was able to induce a foul popout from leadoff hitter Whit Merrifield –who coincidentally boasts one of the best names in baseball– the Royals turned soft contact into hard results.

Right fielder Jorge Bonifacio laced a one-out single back up the box to late Escobar and Gordon, and give the Royals a 2-1 lead.

Blach limited the damage by yielding a harmless flyout to center fielder Lorenzo Cain and punching out first baseman Eric Hosmer for the second time in two innings, but a six-run top of the sixth inning proved to be Blach’s –and the Giants’– undoing.

“The first two runs, you saw how that inning developed,” Bochy said. “Groundball, Belt couldn’t quite get to, then a little blooper off the tip of Aaron’s glove and the bunt, but the big inning is what killed us.”

Back-to-back singles from Cain and Hosmer turned into two more Royals’ runs on an Escobar double, and Merrifield broke the game open with a two-run triple that trickled past right fielder Hunter Pence later in the inning.

“That’s just baseball,” Blach said. “A couple of bad bounces and then you don’t make pitches when you have to, it’s going to humble you in a hurry.”

Five years ago, it was Giants’ right fielder Gregor Blanco traversing past Triples’ Alley to make a headlong dive in the top of the seventh inning that preserved Cain’s perfecto. On Monday, Pence attempted a full-length dive in an effort to simply keep San Francisco in the game, and his layout wound up costing the Giants a couple of more runs.

It wouldn’t matter, though, as San Francisco’s hitters never found their stride against Vargas, a 12th year veteran enjoying a renaissance year in Kansas City.

Four days after 13th-year Twins’ right-hander Ervin Santana tossed his third complete game shutout of the season against San Francisco, Vargas acted as if his left arm was a steak knife as he carved through the Giants’ lineup. Vargas entered the night with the second-best earned run average among American League starters, and he looked every bit the part of a pitcher enjoying a career year against Bochy’s ball club.

Offensive highlights were few and far between for a scuffling San Francisco club, which received multi-hit games from catcher Buster Posey and rookie left fielder Austin Slater and not much else.

The seven earned runs Blach allowed Tuesday evening belie how well he actually pitched, but Royals’ hitters made the most of the balls they put in play and a Giants’ defense that lacked range failed to help its pitcher out.

“It’s hard to believe he (Blach) gave up those runs,” Bochy said. “He had good stuff, you know they placed the ball just out of reach what three to four times there and it’s a shame because Ty threw the ball well tonight, he really did. The numbers are not indicative of how he threw and you know we just couldn’t make a couple of plays there.”

With the loss, San Francisco dropped to 26-40 on the season as the team now sits 14.0 games back of the Colorado Rockies and Los Angeles Dodgers, who are tied atop the National League West.