Can’t lose late if you lose early
Oakland needs no ninthinning drama to sweep
At least this didn’t involve another ninthinning gut punch for Giants fans. Sunday’s game was so onesided that by the end, drama no longer was part of the equation.
The Giants’ two biggest flaws the previous two days — their bullpen and their defense — lived down to the occasion once again, and the fundamentally challenged team on the bay’s west side was clobbered 153 by the A’s, who completed a toughtoforget threegame sweep.
The good news is that the Giants finally found a reliever who could pitch a scoreless ninth.
The bad news is that it was catcher Tyler Heineman, who was summoned in garbage time and faced the minimum three batters: Franklin Barreto grounded out, Chad Pinder doubled and Vimael Machin hit
a liner to center fielder Mauricio Dubon, who made a diving catch and doubled off Pinder.
Heineman was the first Giants position player to pitch since Pablo Sandoval in May 2019. Why didn’t Sandoval pitch? He is coming off Tommy John surgery. But he did play third base Sunday for the first time in 2020.
Heineman also was the first Giant who caught and pitched in the same game since Frank Bowerman. In 1904.
“I was just trying to throw the ball over the plate, give these guys a rest,” said Heineman, who last pitched at UCLA in a limited role. “We were beaten up pretty badly in the last few games. Anything I can do to help.”
The Giants’ defense wasn’t as costly as in the previous two nights, but the optics still weren’t great when the simplicity of hitting a cutoff man was ignored.
The biggest factor was the Giants relievers, and it didn’t take long to hit the point home. Starter Logan Webb hardly reached the dugout in the fifth inning when reliever Wandy Peralta’s first pitch was bashed by Pinder over the wall in left field. It got worse from there. The A’s scored nine runs in the inning, eight charged to the bullpen, and if the A’s were engaging in a distance contest, Stephen Piscotty clearly won it, thanks to his 454foot blast off Dereck Rodriguez that landed a few rows from the top of the leftfield bleachers, not far from the base of the soda bottle.
Pinder’s was a mere 422footer, putting the A’s ahead 42, and Marcus Semien finished the inning’s scoring with a 370footer, giving the A’s three homers in the inning. Mixed in that inning somewhere was a tworun triple by Mark Canha.
Peralta and Rodriguez were charged with five runs apiece, not exactly the definition of relief.
“The move is to very quickly address the issues, talk about what we can do better, continue to work on our process and have a short memory and get ready for the next day,” manager Gabe Kapler said. “That’s the only way to do it in baseball.”
Kapler, whose decisions Friday and Saturday were secondguessed throughout the weekend on social media and everywhere else the topic of the Giants surfaced, pulled Webb because he had thrown 88 pitches.
The righthander gave up just three hits and struck out five, but his command was off. He walked five men, three in the second inning. He repeatedly pitched himself out of messes but wasn’t given a chance to do the same in the fifth.
The daily fundamental mistake was committed by Dubon, who retrieved Matt Chapman’s runscoring double in the gap and threw wildly past second, enabling Chapman to take an extra base.
Webb struck out Matt Olson and Canha, so it didn’t cost the
Giants a run, but it was the latest defensive mistake in a season full of them. Right fielder Darin Ruf later turned a single into a triple.
Though Donovan Solano’s hitting streak ended at 17 games, a couple of Brandons had their best offensive showings of the season. Brandon Belt had three hits, including a homer, and Brandon Crawford had a homer and double, his first two extrabase hits of the year.