Lightning yet again in another 9thinning collapse
Like all sports, baseball has its own language. Can of corn, Texas Leaguer, Humm Baby and one singlesyllable bit of naughtiness that, with no fans, can pierce any level of fake crowd noise a team can generate. Statcast should record the decibels and run a daily chart.
Starter Tyler Anderson shot that epithet with bazooka force into the Anaheim night Monday after a threerun fifth inning that cost the Giants a lead, the big hit a tworun Albert Pujols double.
Four innings later, right fielder Mike Yastrzemski did the same as he watched Tommy La Stella’s tworun, gameending homer in the ninth fly over his head, another shot off Trevor Gott, another late lead blown, a 76 Angels victory that dealt the Giants another blow they did not need.
Gott looked sharp as he struck out Brian Goodwin on three pitches to start the inning, but a hot David Fletcher hit a high fastball the other way for a single, ensuring that Gott would have to face Mike Trout unless he got La Stella to hit into a double play.
Instead, La Stella reached low for a breaking pitch and golfed it just over the rightfield wall, ensuring the Giants’ fifth straight loss and 12th in their past 15.
Gott followed shutout innings from Jarlin Garcia, Tyler Rogers and Tony Watson after Mike Yastrzemski’s tworun double in the sixth brought the Giants from behind to give them the 65 lead.
The Giants had a lot to forget when they flew to Anaheim. Blowing those leads against Oakland then getting trucked 153 in the sweepender was … what’s the best word?
“It’s very demoralizing,” Darin Ruf said. “It’s very tough physically and mentally to get past it.”
The Giants did hit in the A’s series and continued to hit against the Angels. Every Giants starter had at least one hit except for Chadwick Tromp, who got a sacrifice fly.
Brandon Belt hit a tworun homer, Mauricio Dubon had two singles and a steal that contributed to runs, and Yastrzemski hit a tworun double in a threerun sixth to spare Anderson a loss after the lefty made a big mistake to the wrong hitter.
Anderson surrendered the tworun Pujols double to break a 33 tie with first base open. Pitching coach Andrew Bailey visited the mound to remind Anderson of that fact.
Manager Gabe Kapler had just let Anderson face Trout with two on and one out after Trout had hit his 10th homer the time before.
Besides showing faith in his starter, Kapler also followed through on his pledge to lean more heavily on an improving rotation with his bullpen now a sieve.
Anderson got Trout to hit a liner for the second out. But Anthony Rendon doubled home the tying run before Pujols hit his tworun double. Bailey had probably reminded Anderson he could pitch the future Hall of Famer gingerly with first base open.
Pujols hit a rope off the base of the short fence down the leftfield line. His body language after the swing suggested he thought he had hit his 660th homer to tie Willie Mays for fifth alltime.
Anderson commanded the zone for much of the night, walking one and striking out eight. Thirtythree of Anderson’s first 38 pitches were strikes. So was the 39th — too much of a strike, in fact, and Trout didn’t miss it, sending a solo homer to rightcenter to tie the game 22.
The two Giants runs came from Belt’s second homer in two games, in the first inning, off Griffin Canning, after the righthander hit Donovan Solano with a twostrike, twoout pitch.
The end of Solano’s 18game hitting streak Sunday left Fletcher with the new longest current streak in the majors, which he extended to 15 games with a firstinning single.