The boos started to boil over from the stands in the 6th inning. A walk, a wild pitch, and two consecutive RBI singles allowed by Ryan Walker set off audible mutterings of a mutiny. The fan uprising grew louder after Heliot Ramos couldn’t pick a line drive out of the lights, turning what should’ve been a flyout into a RBI double that ultimately beget a six-run 7th for Pittsburgh.
The boos became physical, dark winged omens that crow-hopped around the infield, shrieking expletives and crawing curses
as more baseballs collided with Giants defenders. A routine grounder that should’ve ended the inning jumped out of Willy Adames’s glove, leading to a 2-run triple off the bat of Brandon Lowe. A comebacker to Gregory Santos off the bat of Ryan O’Hearn hit the palm of his glove and ejected itself without the reliever knowing it. Another run scored.
What was an exchange of scoreless frames for four innings between starters Landen Roupp and Braxton Ashcraft devolved into an ugly exposé for the Giants once the bullpen took over.
Rampant and pervasive ills were on full display: their impatience at the plate, their inability to build rallies, hit for power, stress-out opposing arms, as well as their unstructured, unproven, and unreliable relief corps.
This bunch in a nutshell:
The Pirates plated 10 runs over the 5th, 6th, and 7th frames.
On a day that the Giants off-loaded an offensively-challenged catcher, another discarded backstop in Joey Bart collected four hits and two RBIs while scoring thrice. His infield knock to start the 5th chased Roupp from the mound, kickstarting Pittsburgh’s offensive takeover. They go on to collect 13 runs and 17 more hits off six different relievers. The hits weren’t blasts either. The Pirates picked and pecked on the Giants. They singled them out — in a sense, beating them at their own game (if it’s even fair to say this team has “a game”).
15 of Pittsburgh’s 20 hits on the night were singles (and two of their extra base hits came with Christian Koss on the mound in the 9th). Why were those measly one-baggers so meaningful. Quantity helps, but the main difference was clearly in the quality of the at-bats. A single on the second pitch of the at-bat versus the seventh or eighth? That wears on an arm. The Pirates took to the plate with a mortar-and-pestle, grinding the baseball down into a fine powder with foul balls and disciplined takes. They managed just a pair of hits off Roupp but forced him to throw 90+ pitches over 4 innings. 8 strikeouts, while cool, didn’t help his efficiency. Nor did his 44% first pitch strike rate. Pittsburgh’s starter Ashcraft’s rate: 65%. He ended up throwing 80 pitches over 7 complete. Pirates eventually worked five walks to go along with their 20 knocks, they took advantage of over-enthusiastic relays home, capitalized on errors, and went 10-for-22 with runners in scoring position.
Meanwhile, as the top half of innings labored on, the bottom half of innings went by in a blink of an eye, and there seemed to be no willingness by Giants hitters to change their approach until the 9th inning, when, down by a dozen runs, Ramos earned San Francisco’s first walk in 130 batters. They had gone nearly four games, 34 straight innings, without managing a base-on-balls.
Of course, Ramos bat-flipped it. The irony of the gesture had never been more apparent. It actually led to the Giants most productive rally of the game: an RBI single from Eric Haase, and three walks and a hit batter. Go figure.
In Mike Krukow’s words, the loss was a “burnt pizza,” a phrase taken from his time playing for the Cub affiliate Key West Conchs in the early 70s. The wisdom here is you don’t over-analyze a “burnt pizza.” Sometimes you make a dumb mistake, the oven temp is too high, or you forget to set a timer, and the pizza becomes a charred saucer in an instant. There’s wisdom in that story. But burning a pizza could reveal some obvious executive functioning problems that need to be addressed. Sometimes you can’t just throw a mistake out like that and move on — an autopsy might be necessary; a good and long, soul-searching look in the mirror in which you ask yourself, through gritted teeth, how did you burn the pizza?
Or we could just bin it, and distract ourselves. Oh, look over there! Bryce Eldridge’s first career homer!
