With one out in the 8th inning of Thursday’s afternoon rubber match, Cleveland Guardians center fielder Petey Halpin singled, then got caught leaning by JT Brubaker. The pickoff throw went to Bryce Eldridge, who ran Halpin to Willy Adames, who threw to Osleivis Basabe, who dropped the ball.
Three pitches later, Halpin was at third after Brubaker threw a wild pitch. One pitch after that, he’d scored the final run of Cleveland’s 5-2 win over the San Francisco Giants on an RBI single from Brayan Rocchio.
The Giants would make it interesting in the 9th, drawing two walks off closer Cade Smith (32 saves) after being down to their last strike, but Rafael Devers flew out to end the game and send the Giants to their sixth straight series loss, and their 9th road series loss in a row.
The story of the game was, once again, poor Giants defense. Little Leaguers can successfully execute a pickle, but not the Cement Glove keystone duo of Basabe and Willy Adames, who committed his 18th error of the season and also fumbled the exchange on a potential double play.
Cleveland’s three-run first-inning rally got a boost from a ground-ball single from Travis Bazzanna that went under Basabe’s glove, giving the Guardians first and third with no one out instead of a rally-killing double play. A bloop single and a sacrifice fly made it 2-0, then Adames booted a second double-play ball grom Angel Genao. That opened the door for an RBI single from Patrick “Patty Barrels” Bailey, the first hard-hit ball of the inning off of Landen Roupp (7-13) despite it being a 3-0 game.
Roupp settled down and gave up only two more hits in the next 4 1/3 innings, though he did issue three more walks. Conservatively, Adames forced Roupp to throw 13 extra pitches and made Tony Vitello burn a challenge on an “illegal slide” from Steven Kwan in the second inning that seemed purely motivated by trying to save his player from the embarrassment of dropping the ball for no reason. Otherwise the challenge was pure incompetence, but it’s hard to imagine we’d see that from the crafty Vitello.
Adames did provide all the scoring from the Giants on offense, hitting his 20th home run of the season and the 200th of his career after a Devers single in the first. He’s now the fourth shortstop in Giants history with more than one season of 20 or more homers, joining Alvin Dark, Rich Aurilia, and Brandon Crawford.
Guardians starter Gavin Williams (12-7) never got Devers out, issuing two of his three walks to the Giants DH. He got 11 strikeouts in 5 2/3 innings, giving up only one hit outside of the 4th. Williams’ biggest weakness is the long ball, but only Adames could take advantage and only once did they get a runner into scoring position off of him, after two 5th-inning walks. After he got pulled with two outs and a runner down in the 6th, pinch-hitter Victor Bericoto’s flied out to center, though the wind may have knocked the ball down.
The shaky defense continued. Bailey singled and stole second in the 4th, without anyone on the Giants noticing him running. Bryce Eldridge dove for an Angel Martinez ground ball in the 6th but couldn’t come up with it, Bailey reached base for the third time in a row with a walk and Kwan (1-for-2, three walks) singled off Sam Hentges to make it 4-2. The Giants did get a force out at third when they ran the “wheel play” on a sac bunt, but Adames declined to throw to first to try for the double play, which was probably just as well.
Good defense on the other side derailed the Giants in the 8th, when Rocchio made an acrobatic play to retire Bericoto after Eldridge walked and Jung Hoo Lee singled.
Left-handed relievers continued to stymie the Giants. The Giants pinch-hit the hitless Andrew Knizner and Jonah Cox, who’d struck out five times in a row, in the 7th inning off Erik Sabrowski. Knizner popped out, though he drew a walk in the 9th, and Cox eventually ran his strikeout streak to seven.
Positives! Christian Koss made a nice throw on the wheel play and caught a tough popup against the netting. Adames is hitting the ball hard, even if sometimes he’s using his glove to deliver the blows. Roupp settled down nicely after a rough first inning that was hardly his fault. And Knizner added some levity when he burned an ABS challenge with two outs in the 9th on a pitch that was such a clear strike that the National Labor Relations Board sent out an official statement of support for it after the game.
Next the team will travel to Boston, a homecoming for Rafael Devers and possibly Marcelo Mayer, though he’ll likely debut at home. Devers is likely to face old friend Erik Miller, who is getting extensive use from the Red Sox since the Giants traded him, striking out 12 and yielding only a single unearned run in 7 1/3 innings over seven appearances. Maybe the Giants will even win a road series!
(They will not.)
