Strong start wasted again — S.F. is swept
Madison Bumgarner watched Dereck Rodriguez pitch seven shutout innings Monday night. Then duplicated the feat Tuesday afternoon. Then, like Rodriguez the night before, he was asked to explain how his team could walk away a loser.
Fourteen scoreless innings by the Giants’ starters and a two-game sweep by the Astros. It was a microcosm of the Giants’ season if ever there was one.
“I felt we had a good chance to win both those games,” Bumgarner said after Tuesday’s 2-1 loss at AT&T Park. “Really good chance.”
Didn’t happen. Bumgarner, after 100 pitches, gave way to Ray Black, whose 100-mph fastball and
101⁄3-inning hitless streak made him the right man to protect a 1-0 lead in the eighth.
But Marwin Gonzalez opened with a double, and Tyler White crushed a two-run homer into the left-field bleachers, not far from where Gonzalez’s game-changing homer off closer Will Smith landed about 18 hours earlier.
“We let them slip away,” Bumgarner said. “You never want to do that. It’s getting to the time of year now where we’ve got to minimize those. We’ve got to find a way.”
The repeat performance easily could be attributed to bullpen collapses, perhaps unfairly, but the Giants were asking for trouble by scoring one run each game. It was tough to blame Smith and Black, who made 1-0 leads disappear with misplaced fastballs, especially because they had been so dominant before the reigning champs came to town.
That the late-game leads were a mere 1-0 was the first problem. The Giants had just four hits off Dallas Keuchel and five relievers and failed to advance the fastest man on the team, Alen Hanson, the final 90 feet after his triple to open the seventh. Steven Duggar popped up, and sidewinder Joe Smith entered and struck out pinch-hitter Hunter Pence and Andrew McCutchen.
For the second straight day, Brandon Crawford scored the Giants’ lone run. He homered Monday and doubled to open the second inning Tuesday, scoring on Chase d’Arnaud’s opposite-field single, the Giants’ lone hit in eight at-bats with runners in scoring position.
The Giants’ bullpen has been living on the edge a lot this season, never more so than the past two days. Smith and Black had to be close to perfect, and they weren’t. Smith had converted seven consecutive saves, and Black had thrown 101⁄3 straight hitless innings.
The Giants, who have been in the .500 neighborhood all year, fell to 57-58. They’ve spent a majors-leading 68 days holding a .500 record or being a game above or below, the epitome of ordinary.
Yet, Bumgarner has hope this team can make a playoff push, and bases his optimism on his experience in orange and black.
“This team, the Giants, we’ve been counted out plenty of times since I’ve been here and turned it around,” said Bumgarner, who has three World Series rings as proof. “I don’t remember a year we were the favorites except for maybe the first half of ’16.
“The rest of the time, we’ve never been the favorites. We don’t need that. Regardless, it doesn’t matter if you are or are not. You’ve got to win games.”
Certainly, Bumgarner pitched a winnable game. He struck out seven, walked three and gave up five hits, and his most impressive moment came when he covered the plate to get the final out in the sixth.
When a ball ricocheted from catcher Nick Hundley, Bumgarner rushed from the mound while Josh Reddick rushed from third. Bumgarner didn’t stop running as he caught Hundley’s throw and barreled his big body across the plate, tagging Reddick on the head.
The lefty did all he could to win the game, as Rodriguez did Monday. The team results spoke for themselves.