Monday night’s matchup between the Braves and the Giants was the first time the National League foes squared off in Atlanta’s recently constructed SunTrust Park, but the shimmying, shaking, floating and fluttering that took place on the new playing surface were familiar sights for both clubs.
The outcome? That too was familiar. For the Giants at least.
The battle between Atlanta knuckleballer R.A. Dickey and San Francisco right-hander Johnny Cueto featured a pair of starters with a quarter-century of combined Major League experience, and it was the Braves’ veteran who out-dueled the Giants’ ace in a 9-0 drubbing.
The loss marked the seventh consecutive defeat for a Giants franchise that is now 20 games under .500 and on pace to become the first team skipper Bruce Bochy has ever managed to drop 100 games.
Though Dickey –he of the floating and fluttering– entered Monday’s contest having allowed at least five runs in three of his last four starts, his knuckler did its best impression of a prison warden, keeping Giants’ hitters hands tied up each time they came to the dish.
The 42-year-old Dickey is six seasons removed from his 2012 Cy Young campaign, but against a San Francisco lineup that’s been as dull as a disposable razor of late, the Braves’ right-hander played a leading role in the Giants’ eighth shutout loss of the year.
After the Giants pounded out three hits in their first seven plate appearances, Dickey turned into puppeteer with a pitching arm, pulling all the right strings and holding San Francisco’s lineup hitless until he was pinch hit for in the bottom of the seventh inning.
While Cueto –he of the shimmying and shaking– used a deeper arsenal that helped him match Dickey for much of the game, not all of his bullets hit their desired targets.
In the third inning, a leadoff single off the bat of Braves’ third baseman Johan Camargo turned into a run for Atlanta after center fielder Ender Inciarte delivered a one-out double into the right center field gap. The Giants had a chance to cut down Camargo at the plate, but a relay throw from shortstop Brandon Crawford narrowly forced catcher Buster Posey up the third base line and he couldn’t corral Crawford’s throw cleanly.
In the fourth inning, Braves’ first baseman Matt Adams turned on an 0-1 changeup Cueto left over the heart of the plate and tomahawk chopped it into the right field bleachers, lifting Atlanta to a 2-0 edge. It was the 17th home run Cueto has allowed in 2017, two more than the 15 he allowed all of last season.
It wouldn’t matter for Cueto, though, as Giants’ relievers Josh Osich and Derek Law combined to surrender seven runs in a bottom of the eighth inning that helped the Braves pour a gallon of salt on a gaping wound.
Over seven innings of work, Cueto allowed just five hits and no walks while tallying four strikeouts, but if he wasn’t going to throw a perfect game against the Braves, the Giants probably weren’t going to win.
Against Dickey, the Giants’ offense took the form of a day-dreaming cashier, never realizing an opportunity to make the Braves’ starter pay.
After a leadoff double to kick off the game from center fielder Denard Span, third baseman Eduardo Nunez extended his Major League-leading on-base streak to 30 games with a single up the middle. Braves’ shortstop Dansby Swanson got his glove on the ball, which forced Span to hold at third. The Swanson play proved costly for San Francisco, as a pair of popouts and a strikeout kept the Giants from cashing in.
In the top of the second inning, first baseman Brandon Belt slammed a double off the right center field wall and beat the relay throw into Swanson by a wide margin. However, in a stunning turn of events, Belt was called out by second base umpire Brian O’Nora.
But fortunately, Major League Baseball has replay, and as everyone knows, umpires are prone to human error. Unfortunately for the Giants, humans must interpret the replays, so the call was upheld.
The replay debacle was an embarrassment to the league and an embarrassment to the game itself, but if it was going to happen to anyone, the baseball gods probably got together and unanimously hand-selected the 2017 San Francisco Giants.
After the call, the game would go on, but the Giants’ offense would not. Such is life for the orange and black these days.