SAN FRANCISCO — There wasn’t a singular event that did in the Giants Wednesday. You can’t chalk up a loss that bad to one pitcher, one at-bat, or one pitch.
No, it was the byproduct of the Dodgers walking through the front door and ransacking the place.
The Giants saw it coming, but were incapable of stopping it.
And to think, it started so well.
The Giants had it made to start the game. They were battering Clayton Kershaw in the early goings, jumping out to a 3-0 lead after two innings, while their starter, Alex Cobb, looked formidable, with his two-seam fastball showing serious bite.
Yes, it was early, but the vibes were outstanding. The Giants looked good.
Then the dream turned into a nightmare.
And it’s tough to make the case that it will turn again anytime soon.
A game — and series — win on Wednesday would have been an early-season plant-the-flag moment for the Giants. It would have been a game the team and fans could point to it in the days, weeks, and perhaps months to come and say, “We can play with the best and beat ’em.”
What does a series loss — and a loss like Wednesday’s — say instead?
The Dodgers chipped away at the Giants’ feel-good lead with an RBI single and then an RBI double. Then Giants manager Gabe Kapler lifted Cobb — he allowed eight hits but only threw 77 pitches in 3 2/3 innings.
The new arm didn’t help. Max Muncy’s homer in the fifth tied the game at 3.
Then the Giants brought in their big free-agent pickup — reliever Taylor Rogers — to stop the Dodgers in their tracks and flip momentum back to San Francisco.
Instead, the Big Blue Winning Machine was gassed up.
Thirty pitches, no outs, nine straight Freddie Freeman foul balls with a 3-2 count, and four walks later, the Giants trailed 4-3. Muncy and Trayce Thompson added a couple more homers for good measure, and the Giants lost 10-5.
Logic — and the Giants are a deeply logical team — says Wednesday’s game is just one of 162. It doesn’t matter all that much.
At the same time, this is still a team — an organization — comprised of people, with genuine emotions like pride. Wednesday’s loss was the kind you feel in a much deeper way.
It was the kind of loss that might not be washed away with a shower and an off day.
For the organization, there’s a larger message to be gleaned from Wednesday’s loss, and it’s not flattering.
The Giants tried to win in the margins with the Dodgers in this series. On the whole, it didn’t work. It certainly didn’t work Wednesday. Get cute against a team that can put five or six All-Stars in the same starting lineup — and bring another one bench, too — and you are liable to end up where the Giants did.
The era of Moneyball is over. The game has become so quantified that there is no secret code for winning games anymore. You have to fight fire with fire, and the Dodgers are holding a flamethrower, even as they cut spending.
But hey, the Giants added Darin Ruf back to the lineup Wednesday.
For an organization that tried to make the case that its offseason was, in fact, good, Wednesday was a reality check.
Rogers — who was given a three-year, $33 million deal despite a decline in pitch velocity last season, which carried into spring training and now, the 2023 campaign — had the kind of outing that led to him throwing his glove in the trash can in the Giants’ dugout.
Facing the former NL MVP in Freeman, lefty vs. lefty — Wednesday was the exact scenario the Giants imagined for Rogers when he was signed.
Tip your cap to Freeman, but the fact a supposed strikeout pitcher couldn’t sneak one 3-2 pitch past the Dodger should be more than a bit concerning for the Giants.
Add in the fact that Michael Conforto, the free agent bat added in December after the Giants missed out on Aaron Judge and passed on Carlos Correa, picked up a calf injury in the game and was pulled in the fourth inning for precautionary reasons.
Don’t forget, there was a reason Conforto was available to the Giants at that juncture of free agency: he missed all of 2022 after shoulder surgery.
Meanwhile, the team’s other “big” free agent bat, Mitch Haniger, is yet to play for the Giants. He has a back injury.
And when free agent pitcher Ross Stripling came into the game to pitch the final few winnings, he was bashed around before everyone agreed to end the game — which took three hours, 10 minutes, an eternity by our new standards — and expand the strike zone.
So no, I am not buying the organization’s spin that signing many discount or late-market players in free agency was better than signing a big-time player (or two).
Because not only are the Dodgers’ best players far better than the Giants’, but their role players — Thompson, James Outman — are better, too.
The Giants acted like a medium-market team in free agency and are being accordingly treated. This Giants team has played two series against the league’s big-market, big-money, measuring-stick clubs — the Yankees and Dodgers — and have failed to acquit themselves, losing both by combined scores of 16-5 and 24-6.
In all, they’ve won one of four series this season, only beating the hot mess that is the White Sox.
Now, things will even out in the standings for the Giants — this team has .500 written all over them.
But whatever momentum the Giants had going into the season has been squandered, and a team that needed to give its fanbase an early reason to believe has only provided reasons to doubt further that this campaign will result in anything worth commemorating.
Source: www.mercurynews.com