Godley curve tough on S.F.
Lack of runs a trend early in the season
During his one-season detour to Arizona, Gregor Blanco saw Zack Godley’s curveballs dive like pelicans and thought he would love to see what they looked like from the batter’s box.
“I saw it today,” Blanco said Monday night, and not happily after Godley blanked the Giants for seven innings in a 2-1 victory for the Diamondbacks at AT&T Park in the teams’ first meeting of 2018.
“He has one of the best curveballs I’ve ever seen,” Blanco said. “I didn’t see a good pitch to hit all game. A lot of guys feel the same. This was a tough one today.”
This is the National League West, where pitching abounds. Most of the pitchers are going to be tough, and the Giants will have to find a way to push a few runs across to stay competitive. So far, that has been an issue.
In seven games against the Dodgers and Diamondbacks, the Giants have scored one, one, zero, zero, seven, one and one. The outlier was Saturday’s 7-5, 14-inning win against Los Angeles.
When a team has two Zacks in its rotation, and the one not named Greinke and earning $34 million this year pitches like Godley did, the Giants have to know their supposedly reconstituted lineup will need to be better than it has been.
“We’ve had a couple of nice games offensively,” manager Bruce Bochy said, “but we’re
getting shut down a little more than we should. He had us chasing his breaking ball all night. We couldn’t lay off it. Most were below the zone. We’re a more patient club than that, but we expanded the zone more than we usually do.”
Even the Giants’ run underscored the issue.
Brandon Crawford hit a leadoff double in the eighth against 34-year-old rookie Yoshihisa Hirano. Crawford’s drive pretty much started and ended the rally. He tagged and advanced on a Hunter Pence flyball, then scored on a Blanco grounder.
After Pablo Sandoval struck out as a pinch-hitter to end the eighth, Archie Bradley struck out two of his three hitters for the save. Brandon Belt looked at another last inning third strike for the last of his four strikeouts.
The Giants did not have many runners in scoring position but went hitless in four at-bats when they did, leaving them 8-for-67 on the season, a long-standing problem that has resurfaced early in 2018.
Pitching has been a bright side.
Derek Holland struck out eight and held the Diamondbacks to two runs in six innings. For the second straight start, he allowed his first two hitters of the game to score.
The only big hit Monday was a one-out triple by Paul Goldschmidt, who probably got to AT&T Park at 6 a.m., banging on the gates begging to be let into his favorite ballpark that does not have a swimming pool.
Goldschmidt was 3-for-30 before he drove in the first run with his blast into Triples Alley then scored on A.J. Pollock’s sacrifice fly.
Holland is not the type to dissect his outings, and even though the Giants have not given him a single run of support in two starts, he made it clear he will blame only himself.
“I knew it was going to be a pitching duel going into it, and (Godley) lasted longer than I did,” Holland said. “Tip your cap to him.”
Bochy has a favorite saying: You can’t keep tipping your cap to the opposing pitcher.
Sometimes you have to knock that cap off his head, and thus far, the Giants have done very little of that.
“He has one of the best curveballs I’ve ever seen. This was a tough one today.” Gregor Blanco, on Arizona pitcher Zack Godley