Arenado and big inning doom S.F.
Now that Major League Baseball has fully gotten into bed with bookmakers, the gamblers should know that whatever number the bank can offer on Nolan Arenado vs. the Giants, take the over.
If Arenado starts a season without a homer in his first eight games, and the next pitcher he faces has an “SF” on his cap, bet the kiddies’ college fund that the streak won’t reach nine. And it didn’t. Arenado’s first of the year, off Johnny Cueto with a man aboard in the sixth inning Monday night, launched a Colorado comeback from three runs down en route to a fiverun inning that sank the Giants 76 at Coors Field in the opener of a 10game trip.
The Giants could have won despite the Arenado homer if not for what is becoming their trademark bad defense.
They committed their leagueleading 12th and 13th errors, and it would have been 14 if not for the renowned homer scoring at Coors. Alex Dickerson, playing right field for the second time as a majorleaguer, made two mistakes that turned the sixth into a fiverun disaster.
A Charlie Blackmon single
that beat the shift and Arenado’s first homer of 2020 set everything in motion. He was 7for32 with one RBI when he stepped in, which made him the most dangerous hitter in the majors.
“He’s always going to be who he is,” Dickerson said. “By the end of the year he’s going to be a fantastic hitter. Sometimes you see a guy that good, that cold to start, you know something’s going to happen.”
Arenado’s homer was his 29th against the Giants, his most against any opponent.
Dickerson hit one of three Giants homers that were wasted. Mike Yastrzemski hit a tworun homer and Chadwick Tromp went deep for the second straight game.
Tromp is not going to get many more congratulatory phone calls from the Aruba prime minister because he soon might get elected prime minister.
Wandy Peralta allowed the other three runs in the sixth, which Dickerson confessed were largely on him.
Peralta got Daniel Murphy to ground out before Ryan McMahon drove a ball to the wall in rightcenter. Dickerson reached it and had it, then he didn’t.
The ball popped out of his glove for what should have been a threebase error, but was ruled a triple.
“Honestly, I think Dick makes that play 19 out of 20 times,” manager Gabe Kapler said. Dickerson agreed, even though he acknowledged his unfamiliarity with the angles in right might have played a small role.
“At the end of the day I’m still an athlete,” Dickerson said. “I’ve got to be able to catch a ball like that. I just had an inning where I had two big flukes that cost us.”
The second was a throwing error after he fielded a David Dahl single that scored Matt Kemp to tie the game 44.
Dickerson overthrew cutoff man Brandon Crawford so badly, Tromp had to scurry toward the Giants dugout up the line to cut it off, leaving the plate uncovered. Peralta should have covered the plate and didn’t, so Chris Owings jogged home with the goahead run.
Aside from the Arenado homer, on a high fastball, Cueto looked good as usual in Denver. He allowed one unearned run through five innings.
Kapler generally does not like his starters to face a lineup a third time, but he said Cueto earned it with his first five innings. He had allowed one unearned run.
“We’ve said from the beginning, if pitchers are efficient and they’re effective, we’re going to give them a leash and leave them in there,” Kapler said. “We’re not going to take dominant pitchers out of games.”
The Giants scored twice in the ninth to tighten a 74 game, but Dickerson flied out with Austin Slater at third to end it.
Henry Schulman covers the Giants for The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: