Corbin Carroll 2, Giants 1

Both teams played their best…

I don’t know if the San Francisco Giants are better than the Arizona Diamondbacks. Tonight’s 2-1 loss was sort of a noble defeat in that the Giants played as well as they could for the time being and Arizona did, too. Turns out, Arizona has an edge from a talent perspective, which isn’t a surprise.

Corbin Carroll is That Guy. He’s just so good, and he’s been on a tear since the second half of last season. He’s erased memories of that awful start to 2024, and tonight he torched Justin Verlander for a pair of home runs that proved to be all his team needed to take the first game of a 3-game series at Oracle Park.

Carroll had 24 extra base hits (5 triples, 8 doubles and 11 home runs) heading into tonight’s contest, the sixth-best slugging percentage in MLB behind Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Pete Alonso, Teoscar Hernandez, and Kyle Schwarber. It’s his seventh career multi-homer game yet only his 2nd and 3rd career homers against the Giants — weird!

Even more painful, I had forgotten that he had been pretty well contained at Oracle Park for his career: .203/.286/.275 in 17 games (78 PA). So, a big night for this elite player in so many ways. The park was the perfect size for his game.

The same can’t be said of the Giants’ offense though, as their three key hitters — Heliot Ramos, Matt Chapman, and Willy Adames — were foiled by Oracle Park’s dimensions.

Ramos — who has been on a tear here in May and continued it tonight with a 3-for-4 — had his encounter with the park in the 8th after an impressive 11-pitch at bat against lefty reliever Jalen Beeks. The launched ball had an expected batting average of .720 along with the highest exit velocity in tonight’s game (110.8 mph):

Adames’s came an inning later in a flyout to right field that would’ve been a home run in George Steinbrenner Field.

Matt Chapman’s 4th inning flyout to right center traveled 381 feet thanks to a 103.2 mph exit velocity. It would’ve been a home run in Cleveland and at Angel Stadium.

Of course, the Giants got their run thanks to an opposite field single by Christian Koss.

So it goes, right?

Tonight marked Merrill Kelly’s 20th career start against the Giants. He’s been a thorn in their side from time to time with a 7-5 record and 3.30 ERA in 114.2 IP in 19 prior starts, but at Oracle Park, he’d been far less thorny (1-5, 5.36 ERA in 9 prior starts). Through the first 5 innings, he was fully merrilling the Giants with 6 K and 0 BB in 5 IP and just 1 run allowed on 66 pitches. He mixed the changeup, cutter, four-seamer, and sinker effectively working in the 90-93.5 mph range.

After allowing just 1 hit through the first 3 innings, he allowed 4 in the 4th and 5th innings and it felt like maybe the Giants were starting to get to him. Instead, in the 6th, he got two quick outs thanks to weak groundouts from Yaz and Chapman. A single by Heliot Ramos was fruitless as Jung Hoo Lee flew out weakly to follow. He kept the Giants off balance all night, which just goes to show how effective sequencing can be even without velocity, so long as have command and control of at least three pitches. Easier said than done most of the time, of course, because this is Major League Baseball, but this is the 7th time in his 9 starts this season that Kelly has allowed fewer than 3 runs.

On the other side of the mound, Justin Verlander was solid against a feisty Arizona lineup. Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper observed that they were sitting on his curveball, which makes sense because that’s been his weakest pitch this season (15.4% Whiff rate and just 5.4% of a put away rate despite being thrown about 11% of the time). Tonight, his best pitch was his slider, which got 3 of his 7 swinging strikes. He pitched into the 7th but was pulled after the leadoff hitter got on and he’d reached 79 pitches.

He looked good but not dominant and had a bit of luck in the early going when Josh Naylor lined a ball over Mike Yastrzemski’s head which then lodged underneath the center field wall, turning a triple into a double and forcing Corbin Carroll to stay at third base instead of fly home — but! Verlander made the most of it. There’s only so long that this fortysomething version of the future Hall of Famer can keep a modern lineup like the Diamondbacks at bay but tonight was a very strong effort to extend his run of starts allowing 3 runs or fewer to 5.

The Giants’ bullpen was its usual strong self, but the lineup was also its usual bad self. They couldn’t get to a rocky Arizona bullpen and they walked just once against 10 strikeouts. They’ve walked just 25 times and struck out 89 here in May, while scoring 50 runs in 11 games (thanks mainly to that 9-run 11th inning in Chicago). Even hitting Jung Hoo Lee cleanup couldn’t spark the offense! They’re now 0-3 against their two main competitors in the division who are also top contenders in the Wild Card race. Oh, and they’ve also lost four in a row for the first time this season.

Both teams were 13-13 heading over their last 26 heading into this series and Arizona hasn’t won back to back games in three weeks so, who knows? Tomorrow’s a new day.