Giants bats wake up too late in defeat
In his first three starts this season, rookie Logan Webb served as the Giants’ stopper, leading the club to three much-needed wins that followed tough losses.
In his fourth outing of the summer, Webb learned that he can’t carry the team by himself. Not when the defense behind him won’t do its part stopping anything.
The worst defense in the major leagues had one of its worst innings of the year with Webb on the mound in Houston on Thursday, committing two errors, whiffing on a relatively routine grounder that was ruled a single and failing to quickly turn a potential double play.
A four-run bottom of the third
doomed Webb and the Giants at MinuteMaid Park against the Astros as San Francisco fell four games under .500 following a 6-4 defeat.
For the second consecutive day, the Giants’ lineup was an early no-show as the team had three errors by the time the offense recorded its first hit against Astros starter Lance McCullers, Jr. in the top of the seventh inning.
Right fielder Austin Slater prevented the Giants from being shut out with a solo home run in the eighth — his third homer of the road trip — before San Francisco’s lineup made things slightly uncomfortable for the Astros and manager Dusty Baker with four hits and a walk in the ninth.
Donovan Solano’s second double of the night and a two-run single from Brandon Crawford helped the Giants bring the goahead run to the plate against Ryan Pressly, but pinch-hitter Evan Longoria flew out to center field on the first pitch he saw to seal the defeat.
Sloppy defense has been a calling card of the 2020 Giants as they entered Monday’s series opener in Houston with a major league-worst 18 errors.
That number doesn’t account for several plays similar to the Solano failed to make in the third inning when he tried to range into the hole between third base and shortstop to stop a Jose Altuve groundball that rolled into left field.
It does, of course, include all of the catcher’s interferences the Giants have been called for this season, which is now up to four after rookie Chadwick Tromp committed his first interference of the season on a play that should have gone down as a Josh Reddick ground out on Monday.
Giants manager Gabe Kapler said he and catching coach Craig Albernaz have instructed Tromp and fellow catcher Tyler Heineman to move closer to the plate so they can better frame breaking balls, but the duo has now combined for four costly interference calls that make up nearly half of all catcher’s interferences (9) recorded in the majors this season.
The specific error itself is something of an unknown concept to Giants fans as Buster Posey entered the year with three catchers interferences in his career and none in his last six seasons.
Like the other mind-boggling defensive miscues the Giants have committed this season, their fans are now all too familiar with the ruling.
When Posey elected to sit out the 2020 season, the Giants assumed their defense would suffer. When Kapler chose to give Evan Longoria a day off at third base, he assume everything would work out well.
Kapler started Solano, one of the National League’s hottest hitters, at third base Monday, but the move didn’t take long to backfire.
In the bottom of the third, an errant throw from Solano to Tromp hit baserunner Alex Bregman and led to an Astros run while a botched groundball in the bottom of the fourth allowed Myles Straw to reach base and forced Kapler to remove Webb following just 3 1/3 innings of work.
Solano’s failure to reel in Altuve’s grounder didn’t show up in the box score, but the two errors he did make —one fielding and one throwing— did.
Kapler’s decision to leave Webb in to open the fourth inning was a mild surprise considering the 23-year-old right-hander needed 36 pitches to complete a third inning in which he actually threw the ball quite well. The big blow in the frame, a two-run double from Michael Brantley, came on a 68.9-mile per hour blooper that bounced off the foul line chalk in shallow left field before caroming into the stands.
A day after Kapler took Giants veteran starter Kevin Gausman out of a game at Dodger Stadium when he had thrown just 80 pitches in 6 1/3 innings, Webb began the fourth with 70 pitches.