Padres 6, Giants 2:
Defensive lapses help San Diego.
The Giants aren’t a team that can afford to make many defensive mishaps. They don’t have the big boppers to blow out opponents, so defense can make or break them on any given night.
Friday night, it broke them. A couple of costly breakdowns in the sixth inning — one after a tremendous diving stop by Buster Posey — doomed the Giants in a 6- 2 loss to the Padres in China Basin.
Posey, the five- time All- Star catcher who was making his 10th start at first base, would have robbed Cory Spangenberg of a hit had pitcher Chris Stratton been quicker to cover first base. Spangenberg slid across the bag and initially was called out, but a review lasting a mere 32 seconds correctly showed he was safe.
“The biggest play of the game was me not getting over to first base there,” said Stratton, taking the blame despite the offense collecting just five hits. “I thought it was probably going to be foul, but Buster made a heck of a play. You just can’t be late. It was a big inning, and it lost us the game. It’s 100 percent on me. ... We practice it all the time. You preach it. As soon as the ball is hit that way, whether it’s foul or not, you’ve got to start heading that way.”
As for Stratton’s hesitation on the Posey play, manager Bruce Bochy said, “He’s probably as good as anybody covering first. They had speed going down the line. He was probably just a tad late.”
Instead of two outs and the bases empty, Stratton had to pitch from the stretch to Freddy Galvis, who singled Spangenberg to third. The defensive woes continued when a pitch bounced off catcher Nick Hundley’s mask. He retrieved the baseball and chose to try throwing out Galvis at second.
However, the ball sailed to the left of the bag and into center field as neither second baseman Alen Hanson nor shortstop Brandon Crawford ( playing in the hole against Manuel Margot) was able to stop it. The wild pitch permitted Galvis to reach second and, more important, the throwing error allowed Spangenberg to score.
“We had him,” Bochy said. “Nick recovered well. He just yanked the throw a little bit to the left.”
When Margot then singled, it was 3- 1 Padres. Pablo Sandoval’s two- out single in the seventh made it a one- run game, but the Giants failed to do any more damage, and San Diego padded the lead with a threerun ninth.
The big hit was Eric Hosmer’s two- out, two- run single off Will Smith’s 0- 2 slider. Jose Pirela followed with a run- scoring single.
Bochy drew up a lineup excluding first baseman Brandon Belt and second baseman Joe Panik, both left- handed batters, and replaced them with righthanders Posey and Hanson against the left- handed Clayton Richard.
Both Belt and Panik pinch hit, Belt striking out in the seventh and Panik opening the eighth with a single. Gorkys Hernandez followed Panik with a strikeout — after disputing two pitches he thought were ball four — and Posey popped out.
After Panik advanced on a wild pitch, McCutchen struck out.
The Giants scored their first run well before darkness. Hernandez doubled to right- center leading off the first, but the Padres made two stellar defensive plays to keep Hernandez on the bases. Center fielder Margot traveled far to right- center to rob Posey, and third baseman Spangenberg, with the infield in, stabbed McCutchen’s sharp grounder.
Stratton was charged with three runs ( two earned) on nine hits in six innings.
“I felt good. As weird as it sounds, I felt in control for the most part,” Stratton said. “When you give up nine hits, you don’t usually say that, but I did feel like that.”