Panik, Longoria homer, but late rally falls short
No matter how professional or seasoned a group of athletes is, regardless of how sure they are that things will turn, sometimes they need to see a positive sign as much as the nail-biters in the stands do.
Thus, the Giants’ late three-run rally in Tuesday’s 6-4 loss to Seattle in their home opener did more than offer the faithful hope that this team will hit.
It reminded the players, too, whether they thought they needed it or not.
“We’ve got a great lineup that’s going to do some damage,” second baseman Joe Panik said. “It’s a matter of when, not if. To get going late and not settling for a 6-1 game, not giving away any at-bats, showed the character of this
club.”
Panik hit his ritual home run in the fourth inning against left-hander Marco Gonzales, making the Giants the first team in major-league history to score its first three runs in a season on solo homers by the same man.
Panik has become a fascination in these parts with his early power, but that was not the biggest jolt of the day for a team that nonetheless lost its third straight game after two 1-0 wins.
After a fourth-inning drive to the wall in center extended his season-opening hitless streak to 17 at-bats, Evan Longoria hit a two-run homer in the seventh to cut Seattle’s lead to 6-3.
In the eighth, the Giants’ 44th inning of the season, they finally manufactured a run on a Gregor Blanco double, Kelby Tomlinson single and Austin Jackson sacrifice fly against setup man Juan Nicasio.
The Giants got the potential go-ahead run to the plate twice in Andrew McCutchen and Buster Posey, who both made outs, before Edwin Diaz’s 1-2-3 save.
Manager Bruce Bochy said he thought the late rally will boost the psyches in the room.
“We were fighting back,” Bochy said. “It was good to get some life at the end because their guy was carving us up there.”
The carver, Gonzalez, is a Ty Blach pitching clone who outBlached the Giants’ left-hander. Gonzales’ ability to squeeze the life out of the Giants’ bats was disconcerting for S.F. fans because he is not Clayton Kershaw, Alex Wood nor the Dodgers’ other starters who held the Giants to two runs over four games in Los Angeles.
Gonzales’ curriculum vitae had included 14 big-league starts since 2014 and a 5.47 ERA. He had not pitched more than five innings in a big-league game before he went 61⁄3 Tuesday and allowed three runs.
Blach did not have it and put the Giants in a 4-0 hole six batters into the game. He lasted 41⁄3 innings and allowed all six Seattle runs.
Longoria’s homer, which followed a Posey single, ended Gonzales’ afternoon.
On the pitch before Longoria went deep, he thought he had his first Giants hit with a flyball down the right-field line that Mitch Haniger had no chance to catch. It fell inches foul, leading Longoria to wonder who or what he had ticked off.
“The ball I hit to center I hit better than the one I hit out,” Longoria said. “I was wondering if the baseball gods were mad at me for some reason.”
Welcome to AT&T Park, Evan.
Longoria, McCutchen and Jackson each had a hit in their first game before the home crowd after going 2-for-43 in L.A. McCutchen also saved Blach from even worse damage in the first inning.
Blach was 30 pitches in and still had nobody out when McCutchen threw out Kyle Seager trying to dive back to second base on Ryon Healy’s RBI single.
Blach had to cool his heels in the dugout for nearly 20 minutes after he warmed up as the pregame ceremony went long and delayed the first pitch by 12 minutes. He did not know the game would start late, but did not use that as an excuse for letting the first six hitters reach. “It wasn’t a big deal,” he said.