Giants’ bats silent in shutout
Their lead in NL West shrinks to 1 game with 2 weeks to play
At home and on the road, in day games and in night games, and in each individual month of the 2021 season, the Giants have won with remarkable consistency.
The Giants owned MLB’s best record at the All-Star break, have gone 40-21 in the second half of the season and are 10 games above .500 in September as they march toward the playoffs while pursuing a new San Francisco-era record for victories.
In most circumstances, the Giants’ remarkable dominance would set the stage for an anticlimactic ending to the regular season, but a 3-0 loss to the Atlanta Braves on Sunday was the latest reminder the club is headed for a photo finish.
With the Dodgers securing an 8-5 win over the Reds in Cincinnati, the Giants’ defeat shrunk their division lead to 1.0 game with 12 left to play for the rivals. If the 19 head-to-head matchups between the Giants and Dodgers this season are any indication of what’s to come, the division race won’t be decided until the final day of the schedule and could come down to a Game 163 on October 4.
“I feel like we’ve been playing great baseball, going on a win streak, but they’ve just been matching us,” right fielder Kris Bryant said. “And that’s annoying. It’s annoying that both of us are playing good at the same time. But hey, people expected the Dodgers to be doing that and we’ve just got to keep our head down and try our best not to scoreboard watch.”
Even amid one of the greatest regular seasons in franchise history, every Giants loss has massive ramifications because of the huge postseason advantage the NL West winner will gain from avoiding a one-game wild card game and Sunday’s defeat was no different.
The Giants’ offense was shut out for the first time since the Braves beat San Francisco 9-0 in a series finale at Truist Park on August 29. Braves lefty Max Fried became the
fourth starter to throw at least seven shutout innings at Oracle Park against the Giants this season as he joined Dodgers righty Walker Buehler, A’s lefty Cole Irvin and Cardinals lefty Kwang-Hyun Kim.
“Fried was nasty,” Gabe Kapler said. “That was as good of a start as we’ve seen all year and he just executed his breaking ball at will in the zone, out of the zone, had good life to all of his pitches and I think this is one where you tip your cap.”
Giants starter Anthony DeSclafani pitched well, but the team’s lineup and its defense behind him did the veteran right-hander no favors. The Braves won behind a two-run homer from Adam Duvall and a big day from Eddie Rosario, who hit a seventh-inning solo shot en route to becoming the second player to ever hit for the cycle at Oracle Park and the first since A’s outfielder Eric Byrnes accomplished the feat on June 29, 2003.
DeSclafani recorded his third quality start of the month on Sunday, but the outing ended on a sour note as he walked off the mound in the seventh inning after giving up the goahead, two-run home run to Duvall.
“Today I put our team in a losing spot and that’s what ultimately matters right now,” DeSclafani said. “Not being able to throw up a zero just hurt. Everything is magnified, but we’re good at putting games behind us.”