Takeaways: Stinker puts exclamation point on Giants’ “worst series of the year”
Bruce Bochy on demoralizing weekend: "I can't remember when we had three consecutive games with that kind of baseball we just played"
SAN FRANCISCO — Not even a pair of feel-good moments involving players just breaking into the major leagues could take away the stench of the Giants’ three-game weekend series with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The Giants once again never had a lead as they allowed two runs in the first inning and three more in the second in a 6-2 loss Sunday, as the Diamondbacks completed the three-game series sweep and handed San Francisco its season-high fifth straight loss.
Mike Yastrzemski went 3-for-4 in his second big league game Sunday and reliever Sam Coonrod pitched a perfect eighth inning in his MLB debut. But the Giants were outscored 34-8 in three games and at 21-31, are actually a game back of where they were after 52 games two seasons ago, when they finished 64-98.
Without a doubt, this is the Giants’ lowest point of the season.
“That’s the worst series of the year,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “I can’t remember when we had three consecutive games with that kind of baseball we just played.”
Perhaps the only bright spot for the Giants is that they now get a chance to leave town and play nine games, starting with three-game sets against two teams that are actually in worse shape — the Miami Marlins and the Baltimore Orioles — than they are right now.
Some takeaways from Sunday.
1. Another lackluster outing by a starting pitcher: Shaun Anderson wasn’t allowed to settle into a rhythm early on Sunday as the fifth pitch he threw, a 93 mph fastball, was taken out of the park by Ketel Marte.
A base hit Eduardo Escobar, a wild pitch by Anderson, a throwing error by Buster Posey and sacrifice fly by Adam Jones put the Giants in a 2-0 hole before several of the 37,017 in attendance even had a chance to sit down.
The second inning wasn’t much better, as with three hits allowed by Anderson, another wild pitch and another error, this one by Evan Longoria, put the Giants down in an seemingly inescapable 5-0 hole.
For the third straight game, a Giants starter failed to throw at least six innings and allow three or fewer earned runs.
“Starters had a hard time getting the ball where they wanted,” Bochy said. “Anderson was up today early, finally made an adjustment. Along with the hits and the mistakes he made, now you throw in bad defense, and that’s the recipe for what happened today.”
2. Speaking of bad defense: Longoria’s error in the second came after Arizona had already scored three runs in the inning. Longoria now has a team-high seven errors in 42 games this year, fourth-worst among all third basemen.
The Giants had three errors in Anderson’s May 15 start. and two more on Sunday. Over their last 13 games, they have been charged with 16 errors, including five against Arizona.
That may be the most surprising development of this season so far, because recently, the Giants have been at least decent on the defensive side. Last year, they had the 14th-most amount of errors with 90 for the entire season, in 2017 they were 20th with 87 and three years ago, they had just 72 errors, best in baseball.
The Giants entered Sunday with 36 errors in 51 games.
“Just little things. Yeah, we throw a ball away (on Posey’s error), but we’ve got to back it up. We were slow there,” Bochy said. “Let guys take extra bases. It surprised me the shaky defense we showed this series.”
3. Newcomers provide some positive moments: As happy as Yastrzemski was to get his first three major league hits, which included a double in the seventh, he was even more excited for Coonrod, who retired all three batters he faced in a solid debut with his wife, father-in-law and grandparents all in attendance.
“I had more fun watching him than I did for myself,” Yastrzemski said. “It really cool, because you know the feeling that everybody’s pulling for you for the first day, hoping that things go well. Great that he got to go out there and get his feet wet.”
Coonrod, who was brought up Sunday when Andrew Suarez was optioned back to Triple-A, struck out Kevin Cron to end the eight with his ‘slurve’ pitch, a curve/slider hybrid that he uses as his finishing pitch.
Earlier this month, Coonrod wasn’t thinking about a promotion to San Francisco.
After a May 7 appearance against Fresno in which he allowed three earned runs in 1 1/3 innings, ending a four-game stretch where he gave up nine earned runs in 4 2/3 innings, Coonrod said he reversed course with the help of a two-seam fastball. Starting with a May 11 outing against El Paso, Coonrod, the Giants’ fifth round pick in 2014, began to use the pitch more often and allowed no earned runs and just two hits in his 4 2/3 innings with Sacramento.
“It’s definitely a different feeling because you just worked your whole life to get here,” Coonrod said. “I can’t really describe how it felt. Don’t really have the words for it.”