Belt’s homer not enough as Giants lose third straight series

PHOENIX — A night after the long ball gave, the long ball took away from the San Francisco Giants.

Just three weeks into the regular season, the Giants have learned this lesson all too frequently for a team that plays its home games in the pitcher-friendly confines of AT&T Park.

Thanks to an A.J. Pollock solo shot off Ty Blach in the bottom of the sixth inning, the Diamondbacks took a 2-1 lead en route to a 3-1 win.

After playing six series this season, the Giants have yet to win a single one, splitting their first three before losing three in a row.

Blach entered the night as one of six major-league pitchers who had thrown at least 20 innings without surrendering a home run. Teammates Johnny Cueto and Chris Stratton are still members of an elite crew that’s figured out a way to keep the ball in the park, which is one of the main reasons a Giants’ team with a struggling offense has been kept in games.

In the sixth inning of his fourth start of the season, Blach finally allowed a ball to leave the yard as he gave up the crushing blow to a hitter he struck out twice earlier in the game.

In the seventh, the D-Backs added on, as a Ketel Marte home run off of Reyes Moronta extended Arizona’s lead.

The late rally from Arizona was enough to beat the Giants on a night when the offense finished its 10th game of the season in which it couldn’t produce more than a run.

For the third consecutive night, the hitters’ paradise known as Chase Field played host to a pitchers’ duel, as Blach battled D-Backs ace Zack Greinke in a low-scoring affair.

Greinke paces a deep, versatile Arizona staff that’s helped the club control the National League West since the start of April, and on Thursday, Greinke had little trouble controlling the Giants’ bats as the only mistake he made took place in the second inning.

After clubbing his 100th career home run in the 10th inning on Wednesday to propel the Giants to a 4-3 win, Brandon Belt stepped to the plate and unloaded on a Greinke slider to lead off the top of the second.

Belt said he hoped the journey from 100 to 200 home runs would be a much faster ride than his seven-plus-season path to the century mark, so his solo shot Thursday was exactly the type of start he was hoping for.

Belt’s blast was a welcome sight for a Giants’ offense that has struggled to manufacture runs this season, but once again, the rest of the lineup failed to offer much support.

San Francisco had a chance to add on in the third inning, but a tremendous catch in the right-center-field alleyway robbed Joe Panik of extra bases and an opportunity to drive Andrew McCutchen in from first base.

Panik smoked a Greinke offering high in the air to the gap, sending two Arizona outfielders sprinting toward the warning track. By the time the ball shot back down through the atmosphere, right fielder Chris Owings had ranged over to glove it for an out. But as he secured the ball, Owings crashed into Pollock, taking a knee to the face that forced him to leave the game.

Panik’s flyout was the furthest ball the Giants hit after Panik’s home run, as Greinke recorded seven innings of onerun ball to pick up a win.