Baseball games, even walk-offs, are not decided by one play. And, more pertinent to the sweeping point that I will eventually make at some point in this story, baseball games certainly are not decided by one lack of a play, even though our minds often wander the “what if” caves all night. There’s some damn good spelunking in those caves. Far better than anything the San Francisco Giants are doing. Allocate your time accordingly.
All of this is to say that there are a lot of reasons, people, and moments
behind the Giants’ 3-2 loss to the Kansas City Royals on Tuesday. Tyler Mahle allowed a pair of runners to reach base without recording an out to start the sixth inning — that’s bad. Sam Hentges entered and allowed an inherited run to score, while loading the bases — that’s bad. Keaton Winn replaced him and gave up a go-ahead RBI single that would have been a tailor-made double play if it were a few feet in either direction — that’s unlucky. The front five in the lineup (Heliot Ramos, Bryce Eldridge, Casey Schmitt, Rafael Devers, and Willy Adames) combined to hit 1-18 with six strikeouts — that’s atrocious. They had six balls all day hit harder than 91 mph — that’s awful. Luinder Avila had far and away the best start of his career — that’s either bad or unlucky, depending on your point of view.
And so on and so forth. You know the drill. You’ve followed 59 of these losses now.
But. You know there’s a but. All those literary tropes in the first paragraph were leading to that but.
While a loss is always a collection of poor moments weaved together to build an unsightly quilt, there are, in some cases, A Moment. Usually it stands out in the box score. A big home run. A walk-off hit, which the Giants had experienced in two of the prior three nights.
But sometimes, especially for teams with a narrative, that moment is a little more hidden. Because it’s less how the moment impacted the game, and more what it represents. A Moment that stands as a surrogate for A Season, and my goodness are the Giants in the midst of A Season.
Tuesday’s loss had such a moment. It occurred in the top of the seventh inning. The Giants had ceded a pair of runs in the prior inning, seeing their 2-1 lead get flipped into a 3-2 deficit. They needed one lowly run, and they had three innings to accomplish it.
Jung Hoo Lee led off the inning with a single, setting a potential rally in motion. Jesús Rodríguez, who had doubled earlier in the game and scored on an incredibly artful slide, laid down a lovely bunt to advance Lee into scoring position. With that, Avila, who had stymied the Giants all game long, was done. He exited the front of the stage, while Matt Strahm entered from the back.
And suddenly, all was set for A Moment. The Moment. Which was, arguably, less a moment and more an absence of one.
The tying run was at second base, with just one out. The pitcher, while once an All-Star, was a player laboring through the type of season that ends careers — Strahm entered the game with a 724 ERA, and having allowed 10 home runs in just 32.1 innings.
It’s at the point in the tale where I need to point out one critical detail: Strahm is left-handed. He presumably writes left-handed, and I suppose he likely eats left-handed, but, more pertinently, he throws a baseball left-handed.
And it was Drew Gilbert’s turn to bat.
Gilbert, as you’re likely aware, simply cannot hit left-handed pitchers. Not yet, at least. Probably not anytime soon, if ever.
He entered the game having hit 1-28 against southpaws, with one walk and 10 strikeouts. He had ground into as many double plays against lefties as he had hits and walks, combined, against them. Throw in last year’s starts and he’s a career .065/.104/.087 hitters against left-handed pitchers.
Here’s some context that you really, really weren’t asking for: for his career, Tim Lincecum hit .112/.171/.129.
So in the one corner the Giants had Tim Lincecum in the midst of a hitting slump. And in the other corner they had something about as visible as Lincecum these days: a bench.
With Harrison Bader and Jonah Cox injured, the Giants didn’t have a right-handed center fielder they could turn to, but they had Grant McCray, a fellow lefty who could serve as a defensive replacement if Gilbert were pinch-hit for.
And on the bench they had Daniel Susac, a right-handed hitter who had a delightful game at the plate on Monday. Sitting next to him was Luis Arráez, who received a rare day off but was available to pinch-hit. You might be familiar with Arráez: he’s hitting .316 against left-handed pitchers this year.
The only question should be whether they opted for Susac or Arráez. But since this is A Moment we’re talking about, you know what they actually did: let Lincecum Gilbert have his at-bat.
These are the moments that define a game, sometimes for surprising good and other times for predictable bad. Since I’ve already revealed numerous times that the Giants lost, you probably can surmise as to which category this moment fell into.
Gilbert took a first-pitch strike in the heart of the plate, then fouled off a second-pitch strike in the heart of the plate, then swung wildly at a third-pitch fastball a foot above the zone. And just like that, he was gone. And so, too, was the rally.
Tony Vitello would finally pull that bench off the shelf in the ninth inning. After Lee drew a mighty impressive one-out walk, McCray pinch-ran for him. But alas, McCray never attempted to steal second, despite reliever Alex Lange using both of his step-offs.
And when the game ended — fittingly, on a Gilbert fly ball (this time against a righty) — Arráez was standing in the on-deck circle, awaiting an opportunity two innings late, and which never came.
Had Vitello handled the seventh inning more sensibly, what would have happened? The Giants lose, probably. Because that’s the team they are. But the inevitability of defeat does not forgive a baseless process. If anything, it only makes the inexcusable that much harder to justify.
It’s times like these that make you wonder whether the Giants are 17 games below .500 because of talent, luck, or simply because, top to bottom, it doesn’t seem like anyone has any idea what they’re doing. The evidence is certainly mounting in favor of one of those options.
