A loss.
Well, it finally happened. In his 10th start of the year, Robbie Ray finally pitched in a game that the San Francisco Giants lost. And, seemingly just because baseball loves to remind you how silly it can be, it just so happened that the Ray start the Giants finally lost was … well … his best start of the year.
Ray and his fellow lefty Kris Bubic put on a pitching show to tell your grandkids about, if your grandkids like baseball and ask if anything interesting happened on Monday night. Each southpaw shut down the opposing team for seven scoreless innings, though they approached their success in significantly different ways.
For Ray, the method was to challenge, overpower, and pull out the Houdini outfit when necessary. He did a good job staying in the strike zone, he struck out seven helpless Kansas City Royals, and his quality fastball velocity had an even higher perceived velocity due to his grunts. He did that arrogant thing where he didn’t seem to mind getting in trouble, because he knew he could get out of it.
In the first inning it was a one-out double by superduperduperstar Bobby Witt Jr., which Ray easily worked around. In the second inning it was old friend Mark Canha hitting a one-out infield single and never learning what second base felt like. In the third inning it was a leadoff Kyle Isbel single followed by a Jonathan India walk, putting him in a precarious two-on, no-outs situation with Witt in the box, where he artfully (read: luckily) got a scorched line drive to turn two.
In the fourth inning it was a one-out single by Maikel Garcia that led to nothing. In the sixth inning it was a one-out single by Vinnie Pasquantino, compounded by a foul pop-up that Casey Schmitt forgot to caught, but it went nowhere. And in the seventh inning it was a leadoff single by Canha, who was replaced by a pinch-runner, whom Ray promptly picked off.
For Bubic, the method was to throw hard-to-hit pitches and watch the Giants hardly hit them. He only lightly dabbled in the strike zone, and the Giants swung away regardless, sometimes missing, sometimes hitting the ball weakly, and only occasionally hitting the ball hard, but right at a defender.
Bubic took a no-hitter into the sixth inning, and should have taken it into the seventh inning were it not for an exceptionally generous scorekeeper who gave Wilmer Flores the glory of record-unbreaking on a groundball that had a .040 expected batting average, and that second baseman Michael Massey got in front of when Flores was still 50 feet from first, only to slip and not make the play and somehow avoid an error along the way.
Thankfully, the scorekeeper was spared being part of the story in the seventh inning, when Schmitt roped a double down the left field line, putting runners at second and third with no outs in what was still a scoreless game. The Giants had not just a vision, but a hope. This headline could have had a very different parenthetical.
Instead, Tyler Fitzgerald hit a line drive, and Willy Adames had wandered off of third base too far to scamper back in time. The first rally, gone before we ever knew it.
By the time the second rally showed up, the Giants were losing. Ray had done his job, getting the game to the bullpen with nary a run on the board, but the strength of the team was the weakness of the game. Tyler Rogers, who had allowed runs in just two of his 22 appearances this year, took over for the eighth and allowed a one-out double to India. That brought up Witt, in all his star glory. The broadcast booth mused about whether Bob Melvin might intentionally walk Witt, and they barely had time to verbalize that thought before he was retired. Then they delighted in Melvin’s decision-making and his trust of Rogers, and they barely had time to verbalize that thought before Pasquantino hit a homer to the part of the ballpark that is explicitly designed to reject home runs.
And just like that, the Royals led 2-0.
This is where the second rally comes in. Finally facing a new pitcher (lefty Daniel Lynch IV), the Giants mounted their comeback. Sam Huff hit a one-out single, and Heliot Ramos did the same.
Who better to have at the plate than Flores we all thought, before, in a 3-2 count, he gave us far and away his worst swing of the year, breaking down against an awkward sinker that buzzed his baby makers.
But where there’s a will there’s a way, and where there’s a way, Jung Hoo Lee usually prances in heroically. And indeed, he lined a double down the line, scoring Huff to cut the deficit in half.
Ramos, however, had to stay at third, where he could only watch as Matt Chapman popped a foul ball into the mitt of Salvador Pérez, who was surely thinking some thoughts and doing some painful reminiscing.
A third rally would require heavier lifting, after the Jordan Hicks relief era got off to an ugly start, in which he gave up two singles, a walk, and a run in the ninth. And a third rally would never really get off the ground, as LaMonte Wade Jr.’s one-out pinch-hit single in the ninth was all they could muster.
And so the Giants lost 3-1. Maybe pitch worse next time, Robbie.