The Giants have a case of the blues, and it sure is showing.
A team that began the day 17.5 games out of first place in the National League West looked so downtrodden, it was only fitting the orange and black took the field with blue caps in a 5-1 loss to the Colorado Rockies, their fifth consecutive defeat.
Though teams around Major League Baseball are wearing blue on Father’s Day weekend for a great cause –to raise awareness for and increase early detection of prostate cancer– the blue hues the Giants donned at Coors Field looked symbolic of the way the team has played this season, and this week, in particular.
After mounting an eight-run comeback to lose on a walk-off single on Thursday night, San Francisco put eight runs on the scoreboard on Friday night, and still managed to drop another game to a Rockies team that tallied 10 runs in each of the game’s first two contests.
On Sunday, the Giants sent right-hander Matt Cain to the hill in an effort to dig out of a hole that seemingly gets deeper by the day, and Cain gave the Rockies his best shot. It wouldn’t matter.
Once Cain exited Saturday’s game, reliever Bryan Morris allowed five hits and three earned runs over 1 and ⅔ innings of work and San Francisco’s offense never showed the late life it revealed in the first two games of the series.
A pair of two-out mistakes cost Cain, who elevated a second-inning fastball to Rockies’ eight-hitter Tony Wolters which allowed Wolters to flip a single into the right center field gap that plated right fielder Carlos Gonzalez.
In the fifth inning, Cain set down the first two Rockies’ hitters, but a single from left fielder Ian Desmond and a walk to Gonzalez set the table for shortstop Trevor Story, who ripped a 2-2 fastball Cain left up in the zone into center field to give Colorado a 2-1 lead.
Over the past two weeks, Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy has lamented his team’s inability to pick up its pitching staff, as it’s forced San Francisco’s staff to pitch under pressure. Perhaps it’s the Giants’ hitters who should be feeling the heat.
On Saturday, Cain started his 39th career game against the Rockies, the most of any pitcher in Major League history.
While the 13th year veteran allowed nine hits in five innings of work, eight of the Rockies’ hits off of Cain came with two outs, which allowed him to wiggle out of jams in the third and fourth innings.
By allowing nine hits, Cain snapped a stretch of four consecutive games in which Giants’ starters allowed at least 10 hits, all games San Francisco lost.
Cain’s opponent, left-hander Kyle Freeland, tossed six innings of one-run ball in his second career start against the Giants. The eighth overall draft choice of the Rockies in 2014, Freeland threw seven innings of shutout ball against San Francisco in an 8-0 Colorado victory on April 23.
Freeland encountered early trouble, as five different Giants’ hitters reached base in the first two frames, but he helped his own cause by picking off shortstop Kelby Tomlinson after Tomlinson walked to lead off the game.
In the second inning, Freeland induced a 5-4-3 double play ball off the bat of Aaron Hill to spoil a potential rally after catcher Nick Hundley reached on an error.
The Giants finally pushed a run across the plate in the top half of the fourth inning, when center fielder Gorkys Hernandez punished a high fastball from Freeland back through the box to score Nick Hundley.
Hernandez started Saturday in place of Denard Span, who was one of four Giants’ regulars out of the lineup against the lefty Freeland. Along with Span, shortstop Brandon Crawford, first baseman Brandon Belt and third baseman Eduardo Nunez all rode the pine, with Nunez sitting out his second straight game with a minor hamstring injury.
Belt appeared as a pinch hitter in the top of the sixth against Freeland, but struck out swinging on a 3-2 fastball to leave left fielder Austin Slater stranded in scoring position and extend Belt’s hitless streak to 18 at-bats.
The Giants’ inability to add on in critical moments plagued them again Saturday, as the team left 10 runners on base in the first seven innings at Coors Field. An inning after Belt struck out with Slater on base, it was Slater’s turn to leave right fielder Hunter Pence in scoring position when he took an 0-2 slider for a called strike three.
With the loss, San Francisco has now lost five straight games and 14 of its last 18 contests. The Giants now trail the first-place Rockies by 18.5 games in the National League West, and have dropped six straight series.