Giants confused by baseball in loss

The Brewers played the part of a division leader as the Giants watched in awe.

Bob Melvin is over it.

Note slumped posture, the depth-less gaze as he stares down the brim of his cap at the 8.5 inch by 11 inch sheet of printer paper in his hands. He isn’t searching for answers or an explanation, but escape.

Is there anything more soul-sucking than a cork board in the visiting manager’s clubhouse office? Or the black of a PC monitor resting on top of a faux wood laminate desk top?

Oh, the money I would give to watch Melvin shrug through his post-game interview as he scrolled through Facebook on that computer. Crestfallen, despondent, sad dog, frowny face, oof—this is the word cloud casting a shadow over the San Francisco Giants universe right now.

What tiny ounces of hope for a postseason berth the team had when they embarked on this road trip have surely dissipated with this 2-4 record and its depressing conclusion.

A middling starter in Aaron Civale threw the kitchen sink at the Giants lineup and the unsuspecting offense was promptly crushed by the propelled porcelain.

Cutter, sinker, curveball, four-seam, sweeper—the sheer volume of the mix baffled. Michael Conforto’s 2-out single in the 1st, Tyler Fitzgerald’s 2-out infield single in the 3rd—that was it. Two hits over the whole nine. Civale struck out 7 over 7 innings, and K’ed 6 over the first three frames. The Giants only plate appearance with a runner in scoring position came and went in the first frame, ending with Matt Chapman stumbling through a cutter.

San Francisco hitters in name only.

On the other side of the slab, Hayden Birdsong struggled to find a rhythm against an increasingly indomitable Brewers’ lineup. Desperate for depth, the rookie couldn’t deliver, posting another disappointing outing in a string of disappointments for the Giants rotation. By the time of his 92nd and last pitch of the day he had managed to record only two outs in the fourth inning, making him the fifth starter in six games unable to pitch into the 5th inning.

Though Birdsong departed in a 3-0 hole, responsible for the two runners on base, he pitched, well, well, I guess.

He dealt with traffic on the base path in every frame and managed the running game well. Bryce Turang led off the 1st with a single, but didn’t advance after a line out and two strikeouts. In the 2nd, he got squeezed by the home plate umpire facing Gary Sánchez who worked a walk, advanced to third on a Joey Ortiz double before scoring on a sacrifice fly from Jake Perkins for Milwaukee’s second run.

The big misses that plagued some of his earlier starts had been minimized for the most part. He located his fastball to the North, setting up some deadly off speed and breaking balls to the South. Four different pitches secured his six strikeouts. Progress is being made.

But an out away from his first clean inning, the pitch count caught up to him. His command slipped and walked his third and fourth batters. Two pitches from the calvary, Jackson Chourio doubled, pinning a fourth and fifth earned run on Birdsong’s brief outing.

Good pitching was undone by better hitting. We had seen it all series, and we saw it again this afternoon.

The fastball that Garrett Mitchell lined over the wall in right-center to kick off Milwaukee’s scoring wasn’t a bad pitch, the lefty was just sitting heater and beat him to the spot. As frustrating as the missed calls were to Sánchez, he forced Birdsong to throw nine pitches, spoiling three two-strike pitches that were three different pitch-types at both bottom and top of the zone.

“Ball players” — that was the descriptor used by Hunter Pence from the booth in regards to this Brewers team. Just a bunch of “ball players.” Generally an inane comment, but it proved a remarkably apt signifier in this context. Supposedly both teams were made up of ball players, both fielding teams trained in the craft of playing the ball, but the difference between the two was undeniably stark.

With runners at the corners and two outs, Willy Adames broke for second, challenging a throw down from Patrick Bailey. The catcher threw down to a charging Tyler Fitzgerald who cut off the throw in the hopes of catching the runner at third off the base, and that’s exactly what happened. Fitzgerald had the ball in his hand, and Contreras was caught off the bag at third. All Fitzgerald had to do was wait for Contreras to commit to either third or home. Generally this is achieved by running right at the runner. If you have the ball, you are in control. But that fact was momentarily lost on Fitzgerald. He became Elmer Fudd listening to some rabbit and duck bicker away, forgetting that he had a rifle in his hand. For some reason he remained tied to Adames, and then when he finally decided to make a play on the runner of consequence, he bungled it. Not only did Fitz throw the ball across the diamond, releasing all the power he had over the situation, but he threw it towards third, behind the runner, allowing the not-fast Contreras to easily take home.

The Brewers were playing the ball, and the Giants were playing catch-up.