Not the prettiest ball game.
There’s a lot that you can say about the San Francisco Giants 8-5, extra-innings loss to the Miami Marlins on Wednesday night, and most of it is bad. You can say a few good things, like that they showed resilience or had a nice comeback, but most of the things you can say are bad.
It’s a particularly frustrating kind of bad, in that it’s close to being good. The Giants, still in the upper third of MLB teams this year, have not committed to the bit of being bad like, say, their divisional co-habitants in Denver. They haven’t even committed to the bit of being mediocre like their divisional foes in Phoenix. They’ve instead seemingly committed to the concept of being good, but lately seem to only put one foot in to that dance.
Their most egregious offense in this category came across the fifth and sixth innings, when they trailed 2-1. Mostly helpless against Edward Cabrera to that point, the Giants mounted a rally to open the fifth when Jung Hoo Lee drew a leadoff walk, and Willy Adames followed with a single, putting two on with no out.
An inning later they would do the same thing, this time with the walk coming courtesy of Rafael Devers and the single by way of Heliot Ramos.
Between those two instances of runners on first and second with no outs, the Giants squeaked out a combined one run. They scored that run the first time around, with a passive, don’t-get-greedy-just-score-a-damn-run approach, in which Patrick Bailey laid down a lovely bunt and Christian Koss hit a sacrifice fly.
That hitting conservatism proved warranted an inning later when they actually tried to mount a full-fledged multi-run rally and instead fell hilariously short, with Dominic Smith and Casey Schmitt flying out, and Lee whiffing to end the inning.
The second most egregious offense in the category of Almost Good But Also Maybe Not At All Good came in the ninth inning, in the rare comeback-filled frame that managed to fill you with as much pessimism as it did joy. Trailing 4-2 and in danger of losing by that exact score for the second straight night, the Giants were gifted a rally, when Calvin Faucher hit Smith and Schmitt to start the frame, then walked Lee, leaving the bases loaded with no outs.
And here’s where we’re reminded of baseball’s silliness. How sometimes your greatest successes come against your own intentions and, unfortunately, vice versa.
Up stepped Adames with the chance to play a hero. A knock could tie the game. An extra-base hit could send everyone home happy. A home run could … well, it could be viewed as excessive, but what’s a little excess between friends?
Adames chased the latter, and he almost chased it well enough. It had the look, and the sound. If the Giants were playing in Houston, Boston, or one of the Chicago destinations, it would have even had the distance.
Instead it fell just short. A productive out, to be sure, as it cut the deficit in half and put the tying run at third base with just one out, and the walk-off run in scoring position.
But just short. Sometimes our half-hearted attempts at winning are our own creation, and sometimes they’re cruelly shoved in our faces. Sometimes they’re both.
It wasn’t the dramatic walk-off grand slam that for a brief second we thought we’d been blessed with, but the Giants were still in a good position. And Bailey, whose poor offensive season has been at least mildly negated by the fact that all of his hits seem to come in the final innings, again provided, ripping a single.
But while Bailey’s single provided both the excitement and catharsis of tying the game in a clutch moment, it also swiftly smacked us with the reminder that the Giants are only flirting with goodness, not embracing us, and that means that all good actions must be met with an equal and opposite reaction.
And so, inexplicably, Matt Williams — who has had a fine season and an equally un-fine week — pressed the WIN NOW button as Lee approached third, and sent him on his merry way home.
It didn’t work out. It didn’t come particularly close to working out, though Lee’s creative dance moves as he neared the plate at least made for a mildly interesting viewing experience. Rather than settling for a tie and hoping they could knock in the winning run from third with less than two outs, the Giants had gone for broke, and the baseball gods and goddesses, as they tend to do, laughed at the orange and black for such silliness. It took only one pitch for Christian Koss to rope a 98.4-mph line drive with a .740 expected batting average that found a glove instantly, sending the game to extras.
From there, the Giants could not end the game the way they started it.
They started it blissfully, with Logan Webb setting down the side in order, on 10 pitches, with two strikeouts, and Mike Yastrzemski leading off the bottom of the first with his seventh home run of the season.
They ended it disastrously, with Camilo Doval allowing both a pair of walks and a pair of hits in the 10th, ceding the Manfred Man and then a trio of insurance runs, with a quarter-hearted rally allowing the Giants to recoup just one run.
And throughout the game we were treated to many more highs of decency met by the lows of reality, not just the egregious ones that have already been documented. They actually scored some runs for Logan Webb (who gave up two runs in six innings), the closest thing to Matt Cain since, well … Matt Cain. But that was met by five earned runs from Doval and Tyler Rogers, a pair of elite pitchers who entered the game having made a combined 75 appearances while allowing multiple runs just five times. They threw out three runners on the basepaths — one from each outfielder — but responded with two outs of their own in such scenarios, one in the biggest moment of the game, and the other a rally killer when Lee squandered a leadoff hit by pitch with a failed stolen base.
Perhaps worst of all, they happily took their free bases — they were plunked three times on the night — but Schmitt, who was roasted on the hands, wasn’t in the on-deck circle when the game ended with his spot up next, and went for an MRI after the game (which thankfully came back negative). It could be that losing with slightly more dignity cost the Giants their new third baseman, weeks before their old third baseman is scheduled to return.
That’s the funny thing about losses. Good things might happen; but more bad things will.