Nothing to click ‘like’ for in loss
Giants fan 15 times as Phillies cap sweep
PHILADELPHIA » Thursday was a day of firsts for the Giants.
Their contest against the Phillies featured the team’s first- ever game broadcast exclusively on Facebook.
Their 6- 3 loss marked their fourth straight defeat in Philadelphia, and the first time they’ve been swept in 2018.
And with 15 strikeouts, including 12 against Phillies starter Vince Velasquez, the Giants for the first time in the franchise history — 135 years! — have struck out 11 times or more in four consecutive games.
“It was the opposite of what we saw in Atlanta,” third baseman Evan Longoria said. “We were able to jump out to an early lead and add on, and it makes it a lot easier for the pitchers. We didn’t give them any help in this series.”
Following a sweep of the firstplace Atlanta Braves, the second stop of the Giants’ 10- game trip featured disastrousmoments at the
plate, on the base paths, in the field and on the mound.
After the past three Giants starters failed to pitch beyond the fifth inning, left- hander Ty Blach returned to the site of his first and only career shutout. The offense spotted Blach three early runs to work with, but he surrendered four in the fourth and was yanked by manager Bruce Bochy after recording just one out in the fifth.
Star ters Jef f Samardzija, Derek Holland, Chris Stratton and Blach combined to throw 18 innings over four days as the Giants were swept in a four- game series by the Phillies for the first time since May 1982.
Giants hitters did little to aid the pitching staff, as San Francisco established a franchise record for strikeouts in a fourgame series with 55. The club’s previous high was 44, which were accumulated from Aug 29- Sept. 1, 2003 against the Diamondbacks.
“We ran into a hot team, and we didn’t do a lot offensively,” Bochy said. “A lot of strikeouts. I don’t know what we had, 14 or 15, but they threw some good arms at us. Their pen has been doing a good job. They put it to us.”
Three Giants — Longoria, Gorkys Hernandez and Brandon Belt — struck out at least six times over four games while Brandon Crawford and Gregor Blanco each struck out five times.
Entering the game riding their third different three game losing streak of the year, the Giants surged to an early lead thanks to a pair of home runs.
Blanco crushed his fifth career leadoff home run on the second pitch of the game, and second baseman Alen Hanson turned on an 0-1 fastball and pulled it into the right field bleachers to provide his club a 3- 0 lead in the second.
“It was sending a message to the other team that we were ready to play the game,” Blanco said. “It was a really tough series, and I needed to do something to change the momentum. The f irst couple innings it worked out and then after that, we just never caught up.”
After Hanson’s blast, nine of the next 11 Giants struck out. Eight of those players went down swinging, as Blach was the only player during Velasquez’s most dominant run to take a called third strike.
“It just seemed like it was an uphill battle the whole way,” Longoria said.
The 17 swing throughs Velasquez induced paled in comparison to the 26 Tuesday’s starter Aaron Nola racked up, but he pitched well enough to exit with a 5- 3 lead after six innings.
For the fourth straight day, Phillies first baseman Carlos Santana delivered a devastating blow as the hottest stretch of his season continued with a three- run home run in the bottom of the fourth.
“We were trying to pitch him tough the whole series,” Blach said. “You could see from the first day he was seeing the ball pretty well. We were just trying to be aggressive in the strike zone with him and he was taking some good swings.”
Santana entered the week hitting .169 with three home runs and 13 RBIs, but he raised his average 22 points and finished the four- game set with six home runs and 26 RBIs. Santana’s home run off Blach lifted the Phillies to a one-run edge that increased when Odubel Herrera greeted left- hander Will Smith with an RBI single after he entered in the fifth.
Though two of the four games the Giants lost against the Phillies were blowouts, Smith, Sam Dyson, Reyes Moronta and Hunter Strickland kept the club in the game by allowing just one earned run.
But af ter capturing three consecutive comeback wins over the Braves, the Giants were unable to secure timely hits against the Phillies.
On a day of firsts, the Giants hope that trend doesn’t last.