When Justin Verlander decided to wrap up his major-league career with the San Francisco Giants, he may not have expected a playoff berth, or a lot of run support, but he probably thought his new team would at least be able to field a bunt to third base. That was not the case Thursday, as Verlander picked up his 10th loss thanks to a nightmare fifth inning and some rough defense on bunts.
The San Diego Padres blew the game open in the 5th inning when
Freddy Fermin tried to bunt two runners over and ended up scoring both of them when Casey Schmidt threw wildly to first and Luis Matos couldn’t pick up the ball down the right field line. The next two Padres also bunted to third, resulting in an infield hit and runners on second and third for Manny Machado, who lined a two-run double to left-center to chase Verlander.
Reliever Matt Gage came in and plunked Ryan O’Hearn with his first pitch. Machado stole third and Ramon Laureano knocked in Machado to make it an 8-2 lead.
To their credit, the Giants rallied. They led off the top of the 6th with back-to-back homers from Rafael Devers and Willy Adames.
That was home run No. 25 of the season for Devers and No. 20 for Adames and it chased starter Dylan Cease (6-11). Unfortunately, Adames’ blast was the Giants’ second-to-last hit of the game. Matos doubled to lead off the 7th, but wouldn’t move past second base. Four Padres relievers threw four shutout innings, yielding only two walks along with the Matos double.
For the four-game series, the San Diego bullpen threw 13.1 innings and gave up zero runs. The Giants had a total of three hits off Padres relievers, plus six walks and 15 strikeouts. They only scored 10 runs overall in the series, but all that damage happened against the starters. The Padres remain a game back of the Los Angeles Dodgers despite getting swept by them last weekend, primarily thanks to beating the Giants in six of their last seven games against them.
The Padres’ bullpen may be their ticket to postseason success, with a number of flamethrowers covering the late innings to make up for their weakness in starting pitching. They probably won’t be able to enjoy this level of success from bunting repeatedly to third base, however.
San Francisco did get an excellent game from Matos at the plate, who scored the game’s first run when he tripled to lead off the third inning and scored on Andrew Knizner’s double, a bloop that seemed to throughly confuse Fernando Tatis, Jr. in right field. It was Knizner’s second extra-base hit of the season in his 21st game.
The Giants capitalized, sort of, getting Knizner home after Jung Hoo Lee reached on an error and Heliot Ramos hit into a double play. At least it wasn’t a triple play!
After retiring the first nine Padres he saw, Verlander got into trouble in the 4th when Tatis led off with a double, followed by singles from Luis Arraez and Machado. Xander Bogaerts later tied the game with a sacrifice fly.
While it did look like Verlander was faltering, it’s hard to fault Bob Melvin for keeping the veteran starter in the game. Yes, it might have been wiser to have a quick hook on Verlander, but at this point in the season, the team in in 10th place in the National League. Getting Verlander another win might be a better goal than marginally improving the team’s chances of winning, which were already small given the bullpen awaiting them.
The Giants are 9-22 in the second half of the season and 2-10 in their last dozen games. Since by rule, the season must continue for another six weeks, they’ll drag themselves to Milwaukee to face the league-leading Brewers on Friday.
