Embarrassing

As ugly as losses get.

The San Francisco Giants lost 9-5 to the Atlanta Braves on Monday night. I’m starting this article by blandly stating the final score so that you can understand what we’re about to do here. We are not going to recap the game from start to finish, taking you on an emotional ride as you pretend to not know what happened and ooh and ahh at each twist in the adventure. There will be no narrative arc; no climactic moment, positive or negative.

They lost 9-5 and we’re just going to talk about that loss. We’re going to have a little group debrief, because we’re all here for each other. I’ll go first. When I’m done, feel free to chime in.

The timing of the things that happened in this game doesn’t matter. What came first and what followed what is irrelevant. All that matters is that the things that happened did, indeed, happen. They occurred. They transpired.

And they were tremendously embarrassing.

The type of embarrassing that led to an unusually long wait between the final out and Bob Melvin’s media availability, leading you to wonder whether the team was getting excoriated or someone was being informed that they were off the roster.

But the sequence of those embarrassing events doesn’t matter. Except for the beginning, which is still where we should start.

Hayden Birdsong took the mound in the first inning. The Giants had handed him a 1-0 lead, and there was optimism floating through the air after they forced 32 pitches out of the struggling Bryce Elder. More runs were on the way, you imagined. Young Birdsong, with plenty of time to rest away the end of first half struggles, was ready to shine.

Except he fell behind the leadoff batter, Jurickson Profar, 3-0. And even though he battled back, he ultimately relented and walked him. And then he walked Matt Olson on four pitches and then, as if to make sure you understood what had just happened, he walked Ronald Acuña Jr. on four pitches as well.

The bases were loaded without a ball being put in play, and just three of the 15 pitches Birdsong had thrown found the plate.

He naturally fell behind in the count to Drake Baldwin before finally firing off a get-it-in fastball in a 2-1 count. Baldwin, batting cleanup for a reason, was ready for it. He swung at it, he crushed it, he split the gap with it, and he celebrated on second base as his trio of teammates exchanged high-fives and ass-pats and jaunted to the dugout with a 3-1 lead.

Sometimes you just need to get it out of your system but, sadly, it was not out of Birdsong’s system. He walked Ozzie Albies on five pitches and then, on the very next pitch, came so close to hitting Sean Murphy in the face that it took everyone a moment to realize that he had hit him in the shoulder.

And with that, Melvin marched to the mound and Birdsong marched off it. He threw 25 pitches and six of them were strikes. He faced six batters and retired none of them.

The last Giant to start a game and not register an out? Scott Alexander in 2023, but he was an opener.

Before him? Zack Littell in 2021, but he was an opener.

Before him? Gil Heredia in 1992.

It was a brutal performance, and it was more costly than just three runs and the bases loaded. It was bad enough that, when combined with Birdsong’s struggles in his last handful of starts (going back to the Retaliation Game, Birdsong has made four starts, pitched 13 innings, given up 11 hits [including four home runs], 17 walks, and 16 earned runs, and thrown just 134 of 270 pitches for strikes), it’s very hard to imagine him taking the mound on Sunday when his turn comes up again. It forced a bullpen that was taxed mightily over the weekend to cover a full nine innings, which will almost surely lead to roster moves for preservation’s sake.

That’s the kind of performance that hurts the team’s chances on Tuesday and hurts the team’s chances on Wednesday, and makes you question whether they have any chances at all in the long run.

But while the loss — statistically and theoretically — falls on Birdsong’s shoulders, this isn’t an article about how horribly he pitched. It’s an article about how embarrassingly the Giants played, and Birdsong’s inability to record a single out was just the start of it all. Not all of the embarrassment proved costly, but in a way, Birdsong’s embarrassment — while the most costly — was the easiest to stomach. Sometimes you just don’t have it. That’s not half as embarrassing as forgetting to even consider trying to have it.

Yet the Giants did a lot of that. In the third inning, Nacho Alvarez Jr. (who has an All-Star name but a sub-replacement level bat) lined a one-out, one-on single into left, which Heliot Ramos soft-tossed into the wrong part of the infield with all the urgency of someone playing monkey in the middle with a doped up Bassett Hound, which allowed Albies to go first-to-third on a routine single to left.

An inning later, with Olson on second and Acuña on first, Baldwin hit a grounder up the middle. You’d think that might be enough to score a run, but what if I told you it was enough to score two runs?

Yes, Acuña, the most thrilling watch in baseball (fight me, Dodgers fans) never stopped running, and Jung Hoo Lee, assuming Acuña wouldn’t even dream of such a feat, lackadaisically got the ball back into the infield with all the urgency of a stop light turning green when you’re very late to an important something or other.

Two innings later, with Acuña on second as part of a two-out rally, Baldwin hit a lazy fly ball to left field, between Ramos and Lee, and the pair, as if to compound their earlier issues, each chased after the ball with all the urgency of Jan Levinson making ossobucco in the famed “Dinner Party” episode of the hit American sitcom The Office.

The ball landed lamely in front of Lee, who looked at his glove as though to say, “well, what was I supposed to do?” which would have been a more compelling argument had he not been standing stationary directly next to it for numerous seconds before it landed.

Then there was the eighth inning, when Camilo Doval walked a batter on a pitch clock violation so egregious that Profar was already ridding himself of his protective gear and beginning his walk to first before Doval looked to catcher Patrick Bailey, finally ready to throw, only to realize he was far, far too late. Bailey had already gone through the five stages of pitch clock violation grief before Doval even looked in: Hurry up gave way to No seriously dude you gotta throw the ball which turned to Ugh which morphed into Jeez dude, why’d you do that, which finally culminated in Hey, are you gonna look over here at any point today to find out that the moment came and went like half an hour ago?

Even the baseball deities conspired to embarrass the Giants. After Birdsong gifted a bases-loaded-with-no-outs situation to newcomer Matt Gage, the lefty brilliantly struck out two batters, then got a routine chopper to his five-time Gold Glover at third base. Except the ball called an audible and took a new route at the last second, eschewing Matt Chapman’s mitt entirely, allowing two runs to score while Chapman had egg on his face with no way to explain to the 34,857 fans in attendance that he did not put that egg on his face, it was put there against his will while he loudly objected.

There were bright spots to help cut through the embarrassment. Gage was sensational, with that luck-assisted hit being the only baserunner he allowed in two innings. Spencer Bivens, a day after being asked to carry a heavy bullpen load, carried an even heavier one, throwing 53 pitches, though he visibly ran out of steam and got eaten up at the end. Tristan Beck, a few days after an utterly brilliant showing, retired all four batters he faced, two by way of strikes.

Willy Adames, whose contract went from looking like a bloated whale to a steal, continued his torrential streak, hitting 4-5 with a home run and a pair of doubles, while turning an impeccable double play to pick up Ramos after his inexcusable error.

Chapman and Wilmer Flores both hit 2-4 with a double, while Chapman and Rafael Devers both hit 2-4 with a walk. And the game, after nearly three hours, mercifully ended, which is probably the brightest spot of them all.

The Giants return to action on Tuesday night, eager to rid themselves of their current six-game skid. At the very least, hopefully they won’t play embarrassing baseball. One would think that’s an easy enough ask.

One would think.