Reconstituted bullpen falters in Denver
DENVER — These are not your father’s Giants, assuming Dad was a huge fan two weeks ago.
Those Giants blew through Coors Field like an apocalyptic Rocky Mountain thunderstorm. They scored 40 runs in a fourgame sweep.
Today’s Giants, with a reconstituted bullpen, and Alex Dickerson and Evan Longoria injured, seem mortal now.
Friday night’s 54 loss was their fifth in the past eight games. They have dropped consecutive games for the first time since June 2627 and returned to .500 ahead of Madison Bumgarner’s first start since the trade deadline.
Coors Whisperer Mike Yastrzemski, who went 9for20 with five extrabase hits in the July series, did his best to bring back that good old feeling from oh so long ago (midJuly).
He gave the Giants a 42 lead in the fifth with one of the longest homers a man can hit, a 472footer.
“I have to hit a ball twice usually to get it that far,” Yastrzemski said.
But the bullpen failed to hold the lead.
Ryan McMahon tied it 44 with a tworun homer in the sixth off rookie Sam Selman and the Rockies scored the deciding run in the seventh against Reyes Moronta. Ian Desmond, who replaced a badly injured David Dahl an inning earlier, got the RBI with a double.
President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, manager Bruce Bochy and the staff earnestly believe they can replace Mark Melancon, Drew Pomeranz and Sam Dyson from their system.
But you can’t subtract that much from such a good bullpen without expecting some rough nights from inexperienced pitchers.
“You don’t know,” Bochy said. “You look how they’ve been throwing the ball.”
Selman allowed three homers in 40 innings this season in the Pacific Coast League, where you can sneeze a ball over the fence. He now has coughed up two in two bigleague games. The slider he hung to McMahon could not have been more centered over the plate.
“We have confidence in the kid,” Bochy said. “I’m sure he’d like to get that pitch back. He’ll get settled in there.”
Steven Duggar had a nice evening in his return from TripleA with a single, double and run.
Scooter Gennett hit an eighthinning double in his Giants debut and had a mixed night afield. He bobbled a ball to help Colorado score its first run but threw a runner out at home at a key juncture.
The constant for the Giants over the two series at Coors has been Yastrzemski.
Facing starter Peter Lambert with Brandon Belt aboard, Yastrzemski hit his historic homer into the second deck to cap a threerun fifth.
The 472footer was the secondlongest by a Giant in the fiveseason Statcast era. Belt hit one 475 feet here in 2015.
Yastrzemski’s 10th of the season also made him the thirdoldest Giants rookie, at 28, to reach double figures, and the oldest since 31yearold Monte Irvin in 1950, the year after becoming the Giants’ first African American player.
Yastrzemski would not celebrate it because he grounded into a gameending double play against Scott Oberg with the potential tying and goahead runs on base. He was more upset about that than happy about the homer.
“One hundred percent,” he said.
Shaun Anderson was better in fiveplus innings, so much so that Bochy tried to squeeze a sixth inning out of him to preserve a short bullpen.
Bochy let Anderson bat (and strike out) with two on and two out in the top half. Anderson then allowed Daniel Murphy’s leadoff single in the bottom half, prompting Bochy to summon Selman in a situation that Pomeranz might have handled before he was traded.