Exactly ten years ago, Giants’ slugger Barry Bonds hit home run No. 762 at Coors Field, the final blast of his record-setting career.
Was the 2007 season the last time the Giants had a power presence in their lineup? Well…
Tuesday evening’s homer-less defeat at the hands of the Colorado Rockies on the anniversary of Bonds’ last smash served as a brutal reminder of how much the Giants have fallen behind the times, as their 9-6 loss marked their Major League-worst 87th of the season.
The 2004 season, a year in which Bonds hit 45 home runs, was the last campaign in which the Giants featured a 30-home run hitter in their lineup. The Giants’ Tuesday opponent, the Rockies, already have two this season, and will add a third when Mark Reynolds hits two more home runs.
Twenty-three different players across baseball have already hit 30 home runs this season, while 24 more are within striking distance, having hit at least 25 with a little less than a month remaining. The Giants’ home run leader, Brandon Belt, has 18 and hasn’t played since August 7. It’s unlikely Belt will return this season.
The Giants’ lack of power is astounding, as their 110 home runs as a collective unit are 25 fewer than the next weakest team in the Major Leagues, the Pittsburgh Pirates.
San Francisco has won without hitting home runs in the past. The Giants won three World Series sans a 30-home run hitter. But the game is rapidly evolving, and the Giants’ lineup is rapidly…devolving.
The Giants’ lineup also took a significant hit in the bottom of the eighth inning, when catcher Buster Posey was forced to exit the contest after taking a foul tip off of his right hand. Posey missed three games last week with a left thumb injury, and he immediately grimaced in pain after the ball caught him squarely on the hand.
Even without a home run, the Giants’ offense did create issues for the Rockies’ bullpen, but it was too little, too late. The rallies San Francisco generated in the seventh and eighth innings nearly took starter Ty Blach off the hook for a loss, but the Giants’ inability to capitalize on their early-inning chances wound up haunting them.
Blach gave up five runs on Tuesday, but he allowed just two in his first five innings, a strong stretch that should have been enough to keep the Giants in the game. Until the Giants’ mounted a furious comeback, it wasn’t.
In 5.1 innings, Blach only allowed seven base runners, but Colorado tagged the Aurora native for five earned runs. In comparison, the Giants had seven base runners by the time their first 13 hitters had come to the plate. The problem of course, was that unlike the Rockies, they had nothing to show for it.
In the first two innings, the Giants grounded into double plays. In the top of the third, they loaded the bases, and then Hunter Pence struck out. It took a Brandon Crawford fifth inning single that plated Denard Span for the Giants to finally take advantage of an up-and-down performance from Colorado’s pitching staff, and by that time, the Rockies’ offense was ready to open the floodgates. The Giants had their chances, and they missed them. Simple as that.
The Giants’ struggle to hit for power isn’t their only issue on offense, though. Manager Bruce Bochy gave Pablo Sandoval another start at third base on Tuesday, and Sandoval slotted into the lineup in the sixth slot. At times over the past few weeks, he’s hit fifth or sixth. Sandoval’s presence in the lineup gave the team an early August lift. Since that time, Sandoval has slumped in a historic way. In a way only one other Giants’ position player ever has. His 0-for-4 outing on Tuesday extended his hitless streak to 37 at-bats, tying Johnnie LeMaster for the longest hitless stretch by a position player in San Francisco history.
It wasn’t all bad for the Giants, though. Twenty-four year-old right-hander Reyes Moronta made his Major League debut out of the bullpen, and struck out Charlie Blackmon with 98-mile per hour paint on the outside corner in the bottom of the seventh. Sandoval and Crawford also made diving plays to take away hits. And while no Giants’ hitter cleared the fences on Tuesday, San Francisco did force the Rockies to empty out their bullpen with a late comeback.
A seventh inning double by Posey scored a pair to cut San Francisco’s deficit from 7-1 to 7-3, and then in the eighth inning, Denard Span collected a pair of RBIs with a double down the left field line, and then Panik slapped his fourth hit of the game up the middle to drive Span in. But as San Francisco came close to upending Colorado, Posey struck out swinging to end the eighth inning.
Over the course of the 2017 season, the Giants’ opponents have found ways to rack up runs–sometimes via the long ball, as Rockies’ shortstop Trevor Story showcased on Tuesday– and sometimes via hits with runners in scoring position. Inevitably, the Giants aren’t scoring enough. Even at the liveliest ballpark in baseball, and even with a six-run showing, San Francisco’s offense lacks an X-factor. The result? The Giants are now 0-9 at Coors Field this season.