SAN FRANCISCO–On a night in which the Los Angeles Dodgers won their 60th contest of the regular season, the team that was expected to provide their greatest foil in the race for the National League West crown played another meaningless game.
Since starting the year with a 9-17 mark in the month of April, the San Francisco Giants have actually found a way to regress, as the club dropped its 55th game of the season on Saturday evening, a 5-4 defeat at the hands of the lowly Miami Marlins.
It’s only July 8, but fans at AT&T Park have endured hopeless baseball throughout the regular season from a team that had visions of another deep playoff run when the year began. When the All-Star break finally commences on Monday, San Francisco will sit at least 25 games back of their rivals from Southern California, and it’s hard to imagine a greater discrepancy has ever existed between the two franchises this early in a season.
On Saturday, the greatest Giants’ offensive highlights actually came in a pregame ceremony, when San Francisco honored the all-time home run leader, Barry Bonds, by unveiling a plaque featuring Bonds on the team’s Wall of Fame. During the ceremony, the Giants played the audio from Bonds’ greatest moments with the orange and black.
The Giants should have just asked Bonds to play left field, instead.
A night after a ninth inning home run off the bat of center fielder Denard Span prevented the Giants from suffering their ninth shutout loss of the season, San Francisco’s offense again took a few hours to wake up, as the Marlins gave rookie left-hander Chris O’Grady a three-run cushion after their first four frames.
The Giants’ offense did rise in the late innings, and the team had an opportunity to tie the game in the ninth after second baseman Joe Panik clubbed a two-out single to plate shortstop Brandon Crawford and cut the Marlins’ lead to 5-4. However, Miami closer A.J. Ramos struck out right fielder Hunter Pence with the game-tying run on third base to end the late rally.
“Good rally, though, I’ll take that with the way we fought back there, we had a good hitter up there and they got a big strikeout,” Bochy said. “But early, we just didn’t do much offensively.”
O’Grady, a former high school quarterback, made his Major League debut on Saturday evening against San Francisco right-hander Jeff Samardzija, a college wide receiver at Notre Dame, who became the fourth pitcher in baseball to lose 10 games this season.
O’Grady wasn’t necessarily sharp, but he didn’t have to be against a Giants’ lineup that failed to string together consistent at-bats and didn’t apply much pressure to him until the bottom of the sixth inning.
“We weren’t hitting many balls hard,” Bochy said. “To me that was the frustrating part of the game is that we couldn’t do much against their starter and he stayed off the barrel of the bat and just couldn’t score off of them until late there.”
With San Francisco trailing 4-1, catcher Buster Posey blooped a ball that could have easily been mistaken for a seagull dropping down the right field line that turned into a one-out double. In the ensuing at-bat, Belt traded places with Posey by slapping a double down the left field line for his second two-bagger of the evening.
Belt’s double ended O’Grady’s night and prevented him from notching a quality start, but the Marlins’ lefty did more than enough to put himself in a strong position to earn his first Major League victory.
O’Grady could have escaped having allowed just a pair of earned runs, but Marlins’ reliever Jarlin Garcia offered a wild pitch to Crawford that allowed Belt to advance to third and then score on a Crawford groundout.
The Giants threatened again in the seventh, but Panik and right fielder Hunter Pence both failed to come up with base hits with pinch hitter Kelby Tomlinson waiting in scoring position.
Samardzija allowed a pair of first inning runs on an RBI double from Marlins’ center fielder Christian Yelich and an RBI single from left fielder Christian Yelich, and fell behind 3-0 after first baseman Justin Bour led off the top of the fourth inning with a solo shot to deep center field.
Though the Marlins strung nine hits together against the Giants’ right-hander, he gave the team’s bullpen a break by throwing seven innings of four-run ball a night after starter Matt Moore lasted just 3 and 1/3 innings.
“He (Samardzija) wasn’t quite as sharp, I think that’s fair to say,” Bochy said. “But he’s so competitive, there he gives us seven innings, four runs, he walked one I think, overall it wasn’t a bad outing but not quite as sharp as he’s been. But he’s such a horse and here he carried us deep in the ballgame again. He gave us a chance to win and like I said early we just couldn’t mount anything offensively.”
On Sunday, the Giants will turn to right-hander Johnny Cueto to avoid a sweep, as Cueto will start in place of Matt Cain after missing his scheduled Thursday outing with an ear infection.
For San Francisco, it’ll be an opportunity to ride into the All-Star break with a one-game win streak, which are harder to come by these days. For Cueto, it could be a showcase performance that convinces another franchise to trade for him and keep him away from two more months of misery.