Blach struggles again as losses mount
Mets pound out 20 hits as Giants fall for 49th time in just 76 games
SAN FRANCISCO — Not even cross-country jet lag would serve as a good excuse for Ty Blach’s latest baffling pitching performance Friday night against the New York Mets.
As for the Giants, rude defeat has become an alltoo-commonplace occurrence, and any notion of an AT&T Park happy homecoming turned to sawdust almost immediately in an 11-4 defeat in which the Mets pummeled them with 20 hits.
San Francisco lost for the 49th time in just 76 games, and don’t look now, but the Philadelphia Phillies are suddenly primed to relinquish the heavy yoke of “worst team in all of baseball.” The Giants have now lost three straight, 10 of 11 and 19 of their last 24. They now have one more loss than the Phils, and only three more wins. It’s tightening up, and sad to say, it may be the only race of any consequence at this point in China Basin.
This latest humiliation might have been somewhat predictable.
The Giants staggered in from their all-night flight from Atlanta at 4:45 a.m., and the players got as much break as reasonably allowable to try and be reasonably ready. Batting practice was canceled, and players did not have to report to the ballpark until 5:15 p.m. Even with those concessions, key regulars — notably, Buster Posey — were not in the lineup.
Manager Bruce Bochy was not about to use a rough scheduling blip as a copout for the Giants’ latest ugly outcome, though.
“Sure, we got in early in the morning, but this is not the first time this has happened,” Bochy said. “You deal with it. Those guys (the Mets) had a night game, too (in Los Angeles), and it’s part of baseball. It’s no excuse. Ty flew in a day early and he was the one that got the most rest. Maybe that cost him, I don’t know. “
To be sure, Blach’s blowup pretty much rendered all extenuating factors moot. The 26-year-old left-hander’s mysterious and disturbing descent into inefficiency took its deepest dive yet. He gave up four hits and a run in the first inning, and then served up seven more hits in the second, including five doubles (including one by opposing pitcher Seth Lugo) and a monstrous two-run homer to left-center to Yoesnis Cespedes.
Blach (4-5) managed to pitch a scoreless third, but by the time he finished the inning, he had thrown 80 pitches and Bochy mercifully lifted him for a pinchhitter trailing 7-1.
It’s been a very weird June for Blach. He started the month with a completegame shutout of those aforementioned Phillies, but since then he’s gone 03 in his last four starts with some truly horrific numbers: 181⁄3 innings pitched, 37 hits, 22 earned runs and an ERA of 10.80.
Blach was a victim of some rather cheesy hits by the Mets, most notably a seeing-eye chunked double by Lugo, but this wasn’t a hard-luck outing by any means, and he admitted as much.
“I thought I made a few good pitches that they hit, but I also made a lot of mistakes that got hit really hard,” Blach said. “Credit those guys for taking advantage.”
Bochy thought Blach actually pitched a terrific game in his last start in Colorado, even though he gave up two home runs and got a no-decision in an eventual 7-5 defeat. But this game bore no resemblance to that one.
“The ball was up, he was missing his spots,” he said. “The changeup was up. The pitcher (Lugo), that groundball seeing-eye double he got, that was a changeup up, and that caused a lot of the damage. He couldn’t get out of that inning. With Ty, it’s location, and he was just off a little bit.”
Blach thinks he has a handle on why he struggled so badly in this latest outing.
“I might have just been a little quick timing-wise,” he said. “I’m going to go back and watch a few things. Usually when I’m leaving the ball up, it’s because I’m too quick on the backside.”
Little doubt about it, this was the worst start yet in Blach’s June swoon, and the rotation as a whole is really starting to leak oil without its ace, Madison Bumgarner. New York didn’t exactly roll into town with bells on, having just been swept in a four-game series by the Los Angeles Dodgers. And the Mets had lost seven of eight themselves.
As for the Giants’ offense, it couldn’t hope to keep up with the Mets’ onslaught. After New York went up 1-0 in the top of the first, the Giants did counter with a run in the bottom half on Brandon Belt’s twoout RBI double.
But by the time the Giants scored again, generating a three-run rally in the bottom of the sixth on the strength of a two-run Gorkys Hernandez single, it was already 10-1 Mets.
The Giants did have one fresh body to call on -- Conor Gillaspie, who started at third base after completing a rehab assignment with Triple-A Sacramento, where he was 8 for 27 (.296) with three doubles in eight games. Gillaspie had missed 32 games with back spasms.
Gillaspie replaced Eduardo Nunez, who was placed on the disabled list with a left hamstring issue. Nunez had missed three straight games and according to Bochy still wasn’t ready to play, so the Giants elected to just put him on the D.L. He’ll be eligible to return when the Giants start their next road trip June 30 in Pittsburgh.
The Giants designated right-handed reliever Bryan Morris for assignment before the game and recalled lefty Steven Okert from Triple-A Sacramento. Bochy said the club wanted another left-hander in the bullpen in addition to Josh Osich to add a little more flexibility. Okert got into Friday night’s game and surrendered three runs on four hits in an inning of work.
Morris, 30, gave up five earned runs in just twothirds of an inning Thursday, and while he initially had some success against right-handed hitters when the Giants first purchased his contract on April 30, lefties were hitting .433 against him (13 for 30) and all hitters were hitting .429 against him with runners in scoring position.