Aggressively good at losing

Arizona put on a home run derby.

If you’re reading this, then you’re probably a fan of the San Francisco Giants. And if you’re a fan of the San Francisco Giants, then you probably need a reminder right now that baseball is fun. It sure doesn’t feel that way. The Giants lost 8-2 to the Arizona Diamondbacks on Tuesday, their seventh loss in the last eight days, during which times they’ve averaged 2.63 runs per game. You have forgotten it. You have fully forgotten that baseball is fun, and I’m here to remind you.

One of the things that makes baseball fun is that, even in a game that lasts two hours and 16 minutes and isn’t particularly competitive, you can tell exactly where the outcome was determined. That doesn’t happen often in other sports. Usually there’s a slow burn like a candle at a dinner party, and if there’s a defining moment it comes at the very end.

But not in baseball. And isn’t that fun? It is sometimes, I promise you. It wasn’t on Tuesday, if you’re a Giants fan which, as previously discussed, you likely are.

The moment came in the bottom of the fourth inning. Hayden Birdsong was on the mound, and the Giants led 2-1. Birdsong had pitched very well to that point, having struck out five while allowing just one hit and two walks. He was bouncing back beautifully from his disastrous outing last week in the Great Retaliation War of 2025.

He took the mound for the fourth, tossed his warmup throws to Patrick Bailey, and settled in to face Eugenio Suárez.

He missed with a fastball, then with two sliders. Down 3-0, he returned to the fastball, but still couldn’t find the zone. A four-pitch walk.

In stepped Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to take his turn. Birdsong, squeamish from the cardinal sin of pitching, returned to his get-it-in pitch, the four-seam fastball. He threw it four times in a row to Gurriel, taking a little something off each time in hopes that it would increase command. It didn’t. They all missed. Another four-pitch walk.

That brought up Jake McCarthy. Having thrown five straight fastballs and missed each time, Birdsong decided it was time to try the slider again. It missed. So he returned to the fastball for the second pitch. It also missed, but it was a little closer.

10 straight pitches outside the zone will do something to a man. It will leave them desperate and clinging to any mirage that they think offers the promise of the strike zone. And so Birdsong, thinking that his most recent pitch had been the closest one he’d thrown in a while, returned to it, chasing the dragon that is a strike.

He found it. Lord, did he find it. He found that strike zone like you wouldn’t believe; found it as much as it has ever been found before. Found it so perfectly that McCarthy blacked out and returned to his childhood muscle memory, smacking thousands of balls off of tees, dreaming of being in the big leagues some day.

Or, to put it in the parlance of modern baseball, Birdsong grooved a meatball and McCarthy smacked the ever-loving crap out of it, and the D-Backs led 4-2.

That was it. That was the game. You knew it. I knew it. The Diamondbacks knew it. The Giants knew it. The dejected look on Birdsong’s face as he stepped back in against Randal Grichuk, missed with two more pitches, again grooved a tee-ball location fastball which, in the old Chase Field probably would have been a home run, but in the new and improved one was just a hellaciously loud double, told you that he, too, knew it.

And Bob Melvin, in prioritizing preservation over competition by turning to newbie Carson Seymour for the fifth inning, told you that he knew it as well.

Sadly we were all right. Not alright, though. Just all right.

Seymour’s night began the way that Birdsong’s did. Before Birdsong was on the ugly side of the game’s defining moment, he was on the wrong side of the Giants’ seemingly endless quest to remind you that their margin for error is oh so razor thin. With one out in the third inning, Birdsong allowed his first baserunner of the game when he walked James McCann. After recording the second out, a very rare thing happened: their Gold Glove catcher, Patrick Bailey, simply failed to catch a pitch, allowing McCann to take second base. He would score when Geraldo Perdomo roped a 1-2 hanging slider into right field.

For Seymour, the misfortune was even more dastardly. After retiring the first two batters he faced, he found himself in a 2-2 count with Suárez, one of the top home run hitters in baseball this year. Seymour broke out his heavy sinker for the kill pitch, and made Suárez look truly silly … a bat twice as long and three times as wide might not have hit that pitch.

But again, Bailey failed to catch the ball. And thinking that Suárez had fouled it, Bailey idly let the passed ball drift away from him, without a chance of recording the out. Rather than a 1-2-3 inning, Seymour had been done in by a rare blunder from his catcher, and also by what I maintain is one of the silliest rules in baseball.

Surely you know what came next. Gurriel, two pitches later, put a true Sandovalian swing on a sinker below the zone, and golfed it into the ether, breaking the game open in the process.

The Diamondbacks weren’t done, though. Surely they knew that the 4-2 lead was safe, and that the 6-2 lead was untouchable. But, as if to remind the Giants of their existence in the NL West following their rough start to the year, Arizona piled on, with Grichuk and McCann leading off the sixth inning with back-to-back homers.

None of them were cheapies, either. All four home runs that the D-Backs hit would have been gone in any Major League ballpark. Just to add a little humor to the misery, the one home run the Giants hit would have only been a home run in 29 of the 30 parks. The outlier? No, it’s not Oracle Park, it’s …. Coors Field?

That was one of just three highlights all game for the Giants, who struck out 10 times while looking utterly useless against Zac Gallen. But it was a gorgeous solo dinger by Willy Adames in the second inning, which started the scoring and briefly gave you dreams of a good baseball game occurring. Here, watch it again. Try to remember what it felt like. Try to remember the smells and scents of a happier time.

The second highlight came right afterwards, when Daniel Johnson smoked a 110-mph double into the gap and, thanks to some crafty baserunning (that’s a nice change of pace) took third when the D-Backs flubbed the relay, and would later score on a slow roller from Bailey.

The third highlight came in the top of the ninth, with the game already decided. Luis Matos, up today to replace the injured Christian Koss, gave Heliot Ramos a breather, and roped a double into the corner and over the fence.

Can he fix the offense? Probably not. But I’m willing to try anything.