The Giants are back to their losing ways against the Diamondbacks.
As it has been all year, the pitching staff, be it rotation or relief, hasn’t quite figured out a way to stitch two quality performances together, dropping the second game of the series 10-6. San Francisco is now 2-9 against their division rivals this season.
Just as Roupp did on Thursday, starter Blade Tidwell muscled his way through 5 innings, but it wasn’t particularly pretty. The right-hander’s first offering of the game was rocketed
over the fence by lead-off man Lars Nootbar. More meatballs were served in a 5-run 3rd with Corbin Carroll and Tim Tawa both leaving the yard.
That decisive rally benefited from a couple of “breaks” going the D-Backs way. “Breaks” might not be the best word, at least for the un-challenged ball call that would’ve struck out Nootbar for the inning’s second out.
Way back in the era before ABS, sure, a fastball squaring up the outside corner and the umpire missing it was a gift, a break, for the opponent. Nothing a team could do about it, a bad call was out of the battery’s hands. But in this new era, catcher Andrew Knizner had an actionable step to right a wrong, to back up his pitcher — and yet when Tidwell froze Nootbar with a 1-2 four-seam, Knizner accepted the call as gospel from Alan Porter.
Now there are any number of approaches and philosophies of challenge strategy. We’ve seen the Giants make some questionable decisions to protest on inconsequential pitches early in games, leaving future batters/pitchers high-and-dry. There’s a feeling that you want to have at least one challenge late in the game. There’s also a feeling that it’s silly to squirrel them away — Krukow’s smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em philosophy. Swinging count leverage is also key. The difference between 1-0 and 0-1 counts in terms of probable outcome is huge. The difference between a 2-2 count and a strike-3, an out, is obviously far greater. Which is why Knizner’s acceptance of Porter’s call was baffling. Here was a chance to bag the second out, retire a batter who had homered off your starter two innings prior — it doesn’t matter what inning it is, as a catcher you gotta slap that noggin.
All in all, the guiding principle of ABS challenges is to reverse obvious mistakes. A player is no better than the umpire if they can’t distinguish between a baseball painting a corner and a baseball an inch or two off of it. Porter, the home plate umpire, had a rough game last night. The zone was tight. Pitches dissected by the zone edges weren’t getting called. All in all, he had 13 pitches challenged and 9 overturned. There could’ve been more. Umps are usually better than that. They should be at least, but a catcher needs to know the zone as well and be confident in their knowledge to refute what is passed off as the law. That “ooh” by Kuiper from the broadcast booth says it all. A damning tut for Porter, but Knizner as well. The catcher can’t miss a location like that, especially on Tidwell’s four-seam fastball, a pitch with no tail or slide or break that as honest and plain as can be.
Knizner went on to overturn four of Porter’s calls, so perhaps he knew the pitch was a strike — but in that crucial moment, he hesitated, overly deferential, or over-thinking whether “the timing was right.”
That inaction cost the Giants. On the next pitch, Tidwell surrendered the sweeper (the offering Nootbar was obviously waiting for), and it was drilled for a double at 110 MPH. Instead of two outs and the bases empty, Tidwell had to proceed against the meat of the order with a runner breathing down his neck. It didn’t go well. He fell into a full count against Carroll, and with a no free hand-outs mindset, handed him a sinker over the heart of the plate.
Even with two outs and the lead lost, the 3rd dragged on, setting Arizona up for its second “break” of the frame.
With a runner on first single, Nolan Arenado pulled a high-bounding grounder towards third that landed in foul territory beyond the bag.
This goober ruled it fair, and good for a double.
Two pitches later, on a flat slider to Tim Tawa, Arizona had extended their lead to four.
Tony Vitello and Logan Webb were pretty miffed by the fair call (which can’t be challenged). Webb received the first ejection of his career, and Vitello his second in three games.
They may have had a point — the ball bounced so high with so much spin, it’s really hard to tell if passed over any part of the base — but Porter had a point as well. Instead of Vitello coming up and talking to the umpire right after the call was made, he waited to explode into gestures and expletives until after the third out was recorded and three more runs had scored. Like Knizner, Vitello waited. Would it have made a difference if he was a little more immediate, a little more diplomatic, requesting Porter’s opinion on Alex MacKay’s initial call? Not sure, but what I’m sure of is waiting until the inning over to complain isn’t going to do anything, just as challenging all the obvious strikes-called-balls won’t make up for Knizner’s silence on that 1-2 fastball to Nootbar.
Despite the early deficit, San Francisco’s bats put up a good fight. Bryce Eldridge hit his 15th homer in the 1st and his 17th double, a two-out RBI knock in the 3rd that scored from Rafael Devers from first.
Jung Hoo Lee scrambled around the bases in the 2nd on a single and stolen base, then advanced to third on a ground out and scored on a sacrifice fly by Turner Hill.
Boss Koss pulled the Giants within one in the 4th with his first homer of the year, a 2-run shot off starter Kohl Drake.
San Francisco did a nice job of answering Arizona early. The offense scored in each of the first four innings. Four of those five runs touched home with two outs recorded. But that steady production came to halt in 5th when, with two on and two out, Jung Hoo Lee’s liner found the glove of Perdomo at short. The potential comeback train lost steam, and in the next half inning, the Diamondbacks pulled away for good.
Tasked with holding the line, Spencer Bivens, fresh off his contributions to Wednesday’s historic collapse, dropped it like it was hot, immediately forfeiting 2 runs on 3 hits to the first three batters he faced. But, again, as if this is any consolation, there were some “breaks” that went Arizona’s way. Devers couldn’t run down a tough bloop to shallow right. Not hard hit, yet hard to wrangle. That lead-off single was followed by a smoked double (terrible slider, no excuses there), and Ildemaro Vargas’s obliterated bat still managed to push the baseball far enough to the outfield to score two. One more would score in the inning. Another in the 7th.
Four runs earned off Bivens. Six off Tidwell. 10 for Arizona, 6 for the Giants.
Two more games on Saturday — baseball is such a gas right now, why not play two?
