Defense isn’t up to task in rout
There’s an adage in baseball: Give a team six outs in an inning and you’re probably not going to enjoy a handshake line after the game. OK, it’s not an adage, but it should be.
A night after the Giants’ rollicking ninth-inning comeback win, they gifted the Braves six runs in a second inning for the ages — the dark ages — and lost 9-2 in a game that was fairly settled before a lot of fans found their seats and mercifully ended in 2 hours, 48 minutes.
Jeff Samardzija was not blameless. He did allow four runs in the second on homers by Dansby Swanson and Freddie Freeman on successive swings, but they came on his 32nd and 34th pitches of an inning that should have been over at 14 with no runs.
The whole shebang turned on a miscommunication over which shifted infielder should have covered second base on a double-play ball, third baseman Evan Longoria playing the role of shortstop, or shortstop Brandon Crawford from the second-base side of the bag.
“Our defense has been really good all year, but tonight we didn’t execute,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “Jeff should have been out of the inning and the pitches caught up with him.”
Regardless of why, the Giants failed to build any momentum off Tuesday night’s thriller. As often happens, they
got in their own way when they had a shot to mount a good run.
They could have won four of five for the second time this season. Instead, they now need a victory behind Madison Bumgarner on Thursday to avoid dropping three of four in the series.
Samardzija lasted six innings without allowing another run, becoming the first Giants pitcher since Russ Ortiz in 1999 to give up six runs with none earned.
The Giants started to come back against lefty Max Fried, but that effort hit a roadblock when Buster Posey was thrown out by plenty trying for two on his RBI hit off the bricks in right in the fourth inning.
Tyler Austin homered into the Arcade in the sixth to cut the Atlanta lead to 6-2, but that was as far as the Giants went. Austin Riley snuffed out any last hope for the Giants with a two-out, three-run homer off Derek Holland in the seventh after another double-play-type grounder netted just one out because of a defensive shift.
Samardzija started the second inning by hitting Riley with a 3-2 pitch. That’s on Samardzija, but a lot of what happened after that was not.
He struck out Brian McCann and got Ozzie Albies to bounce a ball back to the mound that should have gone for an inning-ending double play. But as Samardzija spun toward second base, nobody was there.
“I just saw center field,” Samardzija said.
Longoria and Crawford both headed toward the bag and both stopped. Samardzija threw to it to where Longoria was, not where he should have been, and both runners were safe.
“I was going to try to lead one of them toward the bag, but by that point, it was too late,” Samardzija said. “There are a lot of great things about these shifts, but sometimes they put you out of doubleplay position. It was a freak thing.”
The Giants spend a lot of time in spring training working on double plays, but they don’t practice with players out of their normal positions.
Matt Joyce’s single loaded
“Our really defense good all has year, been but tonight we didn’t execute.” Bruce Bochy, Giants manager
the bases and Fried hit a chopper to second baseman Donovan Solano, another ball that looked like a possible inning-ending double play.
But Fried hit it softly enough to prevent two, especially given how far toward first Solano was playing, the distance he needed to throw for the force and Fried’s speed.
That made it 1-0 with two outs, and it could have ended there when Samardzija struck out Ronald Acuña Jr. But strike three went through Posey’s legs to the backstop, Acuña took first and Albies scored for a 2-0 lead.
Samardzija called it one of his better splitters. He said he planned to study it on video to coach himself how to throw it again.
By then, Samardzija’s 14pitch inning had turned to 31. No. 32 to Swanson left the yard for a three-run homer. The Braves had a 5-0 lead and their best hitter up next.
Freeman homered, too. Samardzija finally got his team back to the dugout on his 38th pitch of the inning, strike three to Markakis.
“They have a good, deep lineup,” Samardzija said. “You can’t give them extra chances, and when you do, you’ve got to shut the door, which I didn’t do tonight.”