The San Francisco Giants lost their 80th game of the season by a single run to a similarly inconsistent St. Louis Cardinals. The 6-5 loss on Monday was like being spooked by our reflection. We smirked
at the St. Louis’s baserunning in the 2nd inning, chuckled idiots under our breath as they ran themselves in a 6-2-5-4 double play on a groundball with a runner on third and one out.
After the play, Jordan Walker lingered at second, not quite believing that the baseball that was just over there was now somehow over here. Manager Oli Marmol jumped out of his simmering pot of hot water and decided it best to handle his wide-reaching frustrations by screaming at home plate umpire Andy Fletcher, who handled the outburst as one would a tantrum from a toddler.
Early on, the Giants were probably too comfortable in their own skin. They were back home, they had just won a game, and for the first time in what felt like months, the team they were playing wasn’t L.A. On top of that, Justin Verlander, who had been pitching from a time-machine was on the mound, and the guy they were facing, Michael McGreevy, got knocked around for six runs the last time the line-up faced him. Vibes were probably high, then Heliot Ramos started the game with a lead-off homer…
Talk about bad omens.
Yes, the Giants had just won their most recent series against St. Louis, but it ended on a real-sour note that I don’t really want to get into. The Cardinals, at the time, were also missing their corner infielders and heart-of-the-order bats in Nolan Arenado and Alec Burleson. A duo that might not be Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani on paper — but have just as much right to be on the ballot for the Giants’ Hall of Nightmares.
Arenado is a no-brainer inductee. Across his decade-plus career (154 G and 614 AB), he’s played a full season against San Francisco putting together an All-Star quality .287/ .345/ .531 slash-line. His 33 homers are the most by any player against the Giants in the 21st century. The bat is one thing, but maybe what’s most infuriating is the glove. The glove whose patina we’ve watched turn from a soft dark brown to gold to platinum. Centerfield is where triple’s go to die when Willie Mays was patrolling those pastures, the same could be said for doubles up the third base line with Arenado patrolling that range.
Bats can be mollified because they’re finicky and temperamental. Defense doesn’t slump. Arenado just went 1-for-5 last night. He had a key double in the middle of the Cardinal’s 4-run 5th inning, but a lot of other things had to happen in that inning for that double to mean something. The defensive play he made at third to take extra bases away from Ramos to lead-off the 7th was the real soul crusher.
Ramos had been the hot bat. He had homered, and he had come through in the 4th with a 2-out, 2-RBI single to give them a 4-2 lead at the time. The Cardinals had immediately punched back, but after a Rafael Devers solo shot to put them within a run, the Giants were primed to throw down again. They just needed a little bit of late-inning boost, a hit to lead-off a frame, a runner standing on second. Patrick Bailey tried to be that bolt of lightning on a single to left in the 6th that he boldly thought he could stretch into a double. Then in the 7th, Ramos ripped the first pitch of the inning towards third at 111 MPH. Off the bat, the grounder had an xBA of .430. Based on its metrics, the ball had a good chance of finding a way into the left field corner — but certain personnel stood in its way.
On the surface, it wasn’t the most spectacular or physically-demanding play ever — it was just done so matter-of-factly. He read the ball perfectly off the bat. Almost like an outfielder tracking a deep fly, he turned his back to the ball, letting it travel a bit further up the line in order to snare it at a friendlier point on the bounce. The arm might be fading in Arenado’s age 34 season, but the hands…the hands are as soft and as certain as ever. You could whip a robin’s egg at Arenado and he’d field it, nesting it in his palm without a crack.
Thanks in-part to Arenado, Bailey’s single was the only hit by a San Francisco batter after the 5th — and that doesn’t really count. Bryce Eldridge’s two walks were their only base-runners and he never left firstbase. Despite the offense falling a measly run short, they arguably did their job early on. They tagged McGreevy for five runs, jumped out to two leads and had a couple of clutch hits with runners in scoring position (though they’d only get three at-bats in the whole game).
What ultimately got them was a dud of a Justin Verlander outing. The two parties of Verlander and Giants have been antipodes all season, unable to agree on favorable terms for their working relationship. The bats have generally been out to lunch when he’s labored on the mound. When they’ve eked out enough runs to line him up for a win, the bullpen has come in and bungled it. On a night when the offense did a solid job of providing early run support, Vintage Verlander, the ageless wonder who had been pitching out of his body for the past month, crashed back into his 42 year old form.
The four-seamer, which had been so effective for him recently, looked flat at the top of the zone. Overall, its velocity was down from his season average by nearly two clicks on the radar gun. Subsequently the slider wasn’t as firm, and the curveball didn’t snap as much as it had been. He gave up back-to-back doubles in the 2nd and 3rd frames. The wacky double-play in the 2nd was a gift that he didn’t get again when a similar situation arose in the 3rd. Still he nearly got out of it, if not Alec Burleson driving a 2-strike, 2-out curveball into right-field for a game-tying single.
Oh yeah, Burleson — his name might not send shivers down Giants fans’ spines, but he’s been an absolute pest against them these past two seasons. Going into Monday night, the lefty had gone 12-for-23 in his last six games against San Francisco (he’d end the night 15-for-27). The RBI single in the 3rd was already his second hit of the game, giving him sixth multi-hit game in the last seven he’s played against the Giants. In the 4th, with Verlander fuming after immediately losing the 4-2 lead on a 2-run HR to Ivan Herrera, Burleson piled on with a squibber off the end of the bat for an infield single that started the whole thing up again for the Cardinals. He scored the go-ahead run when Casey Schmitt beefed a grounder that if handled cleanly could’ve caught him breaking for the plate. Instead, the St. Louis took the lead, Verlander was taken out, and with an extra out to work with, the decisive sixth run of the game scored on a routine groundout by Jordan Walker.
Verlander didn’t pitch great, nor did he get the best support from his defense when he needed it the most. He gave up 6 runs (4 earned) over 4.1 innings pitched, a loss that spoiled an impressive five stretch in which he gave up just three runs over 31 innings, good for a 0.87 ERA.
Sitting at 77 – 80, San Francisco is now on the precipice of their fourth straight season without a winning record. They’ll need to win all of their final five games to avoid that fate.
