Run-starved Giants get late start in home opener
SAN FRANCISCO >> If X marks the spot, Giants second baseman Joe Panik is the only member of his team with a map depicting home plate as a treasure chest.
For the third time in five games, Panik launched a solo home run to spark a struggling offense, but it wasn’t enough to help the Giants capture a homeopening victory in a 6-4 loss to the Seattle Mariners on Tuesday afternoon at AT&T Park.
While Panik hasn’t had much trouble navigating his way around the base paths in the first week of the season, his teammates practically needed a GPS before they found out how to cross the most important part of the diamond. The Giants’ offense did come to life in the late innings, but it was too late to overcome the Mariners’ hot start.
Until third baseman Evan Longoria snapped an 0-for-17 stretch to start his Giants career with a two-run home run in the bottom of the seventh, Panik was the only player to score over the first 42 1/3 in-
nings of the year.
“It was good to see some guys get some knocks,” Panik said. “Longo had a huge hit. That really kind of brought the stadium alive a little bit. In the dugout, it got everybody going.”
Thanks to a pair of home runs from Panik — one off of Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw and the other off Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen — the Giants split their season-opening four-game set in Los Angeles by winning a pair of 1-0 ballgames.
The Giants were blanked twice in the final two games of the series, and it took until the seventh inning for a run-deprived offense to knock Mariners’ fifth starter Marco Gonzales out of Tuesday’s contest.
“Their guy was carving us up pretty good there for a while, but we finally started waking up there,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “It was good to see some guys come off the bench and contribute.”
After the Giants went 1 for 28 with runners in scoring position during their four-game set against the rival Dodgers, San Francisco managed just four base runners over the first six innings against Seattle.
For an offense that doesn’t have much margin for error,
the Giants found themselves in an early hole after the pregame ceremony ran long.
While left-handed starter Ty Blach was asked to stay loose during a 12-minute delay, the Giants celebrated the first home game of the year by leading a touching tribute for the late Mayor Ed Lee, a devout fan, who passed suddenly in December.
Pregame festivities also included a parade of Giants legends taking the field and a ceremonial first pitch from former closer Brian Wilson, who returned to AT&T Park in full uniform and entered to his traditional warmup song, “Jump Around.”
The good will the Giants created with their fans before Tuesday’s first pitch didn’t take long to dissipate, though, as Blach allowed the first six runners he faced to reach base.
With the game originally scheduled to begin at 1:35, the Giants didn’t record their first out until 2 p.m. on the dot.
“They didn’t tell me it was going to be delayed until after I had gotten done warming up,” Blach said. “So I just kind of treated it like a visiting game, so like a sit down between innings. It wasn’t a big deal.”
After surrendering four runs on 36 pitches in the first inning, Blach settled down to throw three scoreless frames and needed just 32 pitches to work his way
into the top of the fifth. The left-hander gave his offense a path to come back, but the Giants haven’t had much luck staying on trail this week.
After Longoria’s seventhinning home run, pinch-hitter Gregor Blanco sparked an eighth-inning rally with a leadoff double, scoring on a sacrifice fly from Austin Jackson.
“We didn’t do much for six or seven innings but then we sparked late,” Longoria said. “We’re five games in and overall as a group, we really haven’t clicked.”
With two on and two out in the eighth, Buster Posey bounced out to shortstop to end the Giants’ last real threat.
• After undergoing surgery last Saturday to have three pins placed in his pitching hand, Madison Bumgarner traveled to Arizona last weekend for checkups to gauge his progress as he recovers from a fractured pinkie.
When asked if an early June return to the Giants’ rotation remained a possibility, Bumgarner said: “I think that’s a little conservative.” Though a timetable for his return has not been made public, Bumgarner said he’s eager to rejoin the team before June.
“I’m going to try,” Bumgarner said. “Like I said, it’s so hard to tell because it just depends on how the bone heals and how fast.”