San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Cardinals 5, Giants 4: Melancon looks ahead.
ST. LOUIS — One week hence, Mark Melancon will be halfway through the four-year, $62 million contract the Giants awarded when they viewed him as a savior for a bullpen that blew up against the Cubs in their final 2016 postseason game.
The best that can be said for their marriage is, they have two more seasons to prove it was not a colossal mistake, for Melancon to steer his career back toward 2015 and 2016, when he saved 98 games for the Pirates and Nationals to get the contract. From the moment he blew a ninth-inning lead in the 2017 season opener in Arizona, through his loss in Saturday’s 5-4 game against the Cardinals, on Tyler O’Neill’s 10th-inning home run, Melancon’s health and performance have made the faithful cringe.
For now, Melancon has two things to offer skeptics ahead of his 2019 and 2020 seasons.
One, the elbow and forearm issues that derailed him appear to be gone. Two, he has not lost confidence in his own abilities, nor his desire to fight.
“This is the most excited I've been in the two years I've been here,” Melancon said when asked about his future. “I feel like this is the most pain-free I’ve been, the most excited I’ve been to show up at the yard every day. I’m confident my stuff is good and will play out.
“The last few days have been rough, but that’s part of the game, and you have to learn to roll with those times. I’m eager to get to tomorrow. I hope I get in there.”
Melancon is right about his stuff. He gets swings and misses with his cutter, changeup and curveball. In his two losses this series, he got two outs and seemed headed for perfect innings before things fell apart.
In the eighth inning on Friday night, Melancon struck out Jedd Gyorko and retired Yadier Molina on a groundball before he walked Harrison Bader and allowed a Yairo Muñoz single. Matt Adams’ pinch-hit, two-run double off Tony Watson gave St. Louis a 5-3 win.
In the 10th inning Saturday, Melancon got Bader and Muñoz on flyballs, then built the count to 2-2 when he hung a curveball that O’Neill sent over the leftfield wall to start a celebration at Busch Stadium.
This maddening loss mimicked so many others this season because the Giants were on the verge of winning multiple times and could not close the deal.
They took advantage of two St. Louis errors, good baserunning and one of rookie catcher Aramis Garcia’s four hits to score three runs in the seventh and take a 4-2 lead.
Garcia’s two-run hit from the eighth spot kept Giants starter Dereck Rodriguez in the game, but the rookie lost the lead on six pitches: four balls to Gyorko and an 0-1 curveball that Molina slammed for the tying home run.
Rodriguez was done after allowing four earned runs for just the second time, and the first since his second big-league start on June 9.
“I met Yadier a couple of times when he was part of the WBCs my dad played in,” said Rodriguez, whose dad, Ivan, was a catcher for Team Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic. “He’s a smart catcher, a smart guy back there. He’s one of the best. He knows what he’s doing. He probably knew a curveball was coming.”
The Giants had a great chance to go ahead in the 10th after first baseman Matt Carpenter made two errors on one Gorkys Hernandez groundball, putting runners on the corners with one out for one of their hottest hitters, Alen Hanson. But Carlos Martinez got Hanson to swing at ball four for strike three, and Austin Slater took a called third strike to end the threat.
Manager Bruce Bochy, frustrated with his own team’s failings, nonetheless credited the Cardinals, who appear to be playoff-bound.
“That’s one reason they are where they are,” Bochy said. “They get big hits, big home runs. That’s what they’re looking for. That’s what they’re trying to do.”