Surprised, and not surprised at all

A shocking loss caused by the usual, and unusual, suspects

The bottom of the 8th inning started out typically enough for the San Francisco Giants: a well-struck grounder that somehow found itself ensnared in the glove of Matt Chapman.

With a 5-1 lead over the Seattle Mariners in the twilight innings, the game had become a countdown of outs.

You’d think there was no more secure place on the diamond than the sure hands of the Giants third baseman in this business of procuring outs. But with the hard bit done—Chapman picking a short-hop rabbit off the bat of Jorge Polanco at 94 MPH—he airmailed the throw, pulling LaMonte Wade Jr. off the bag as Polanco met it.

An inauspicious start, for sure. A warning sign, a tremor, one that sent the most sensitive fans scurrying for safety in anticipation of a seismic event.

I’m not sure if Seattle’s improbable 8th would’ve registered on the Richter scale but it left the Giants’ world shaken. After Polanco, Seattle bats linked up for five more hits. Six consecutive singles that were peppered and sprayed and lined and blooped from foul line to foul line.

One of the best in baseball at eliciting weak contact, Rogers’s outing started out with some uncharacteristically loud contact. Ex-Giant Mitch Haniger’s follow-up knock to Polanco’s left his bat at 107 MPH. The fourth single left Josh Rojas’s bat at 102 MPH. Mixed in among the flame emojis were the typical dying quails: a single from Justin Turner’s (of course) drove in the first run on a soft liner to left. Leo Rivas blimped one to right at the pace of a high school sophmore’s fastball. Luke Raley’s game-tying knock to left came off his bat with all the power and zip of your grandfather backing his Oldsmobile Cutlass out of the garage.

It wasn’t your typical Rogers outing to say the least.

Nor was it typical of well…any Major League pitcher ever.

A meltdown of this magnitude (at least 6 hits allowed without recording an out) occurred twice in the same month in the 2023 season: Carlos Rodón got tagged for 8 runs on 6 hits and 2 walks in a start for the Yankees, and Tim Hill allowed 6 runs on 6 hits in a relief appearance for the Padres a couple of weeks prior. Before that you have leapfrog to 2021, then 2018.

According to Stathead, an appearance comparable to that of Rogers’ has happened just 56 times in MLB history before the reliever took the mound on Friday night. If we were to narrow the results even further, Rogers is only the 10th pitcher in history to allow at least six hits in an appearance without recording an out, without a walk, and without allowing an extra base hit.

Though as funky and fun and good and calm as Rogers has been all season, and throughout his Giants career, the 4 runs on 6 hits aren’t lows. He’s allowed 3 runs on 4 hits in two appearances this year. Los Angeles got him for 4 runs on 3 hits back in 2020, and in 2022, the Mets tagged him for 7 runs on 7 hits over 0.1 IP—a bludgeoning that inflated his ERA to above 7.00, which he miraculously whittled down to the mid-3.00s by season’s end.

Rogers came into the game with a 2.78 ERA and surrendered the baseball to Bob Melvin 17 pitches later with it swollen and bruised to 3.39.

There’s no real explanation to this meltdown either. Sure, Rogers has the most relief appearances in the Majors and we’re approaching September, but he’s distinctly more durable with his lack of velocity and underhand delivery. It’s not overwork. It didn’t seem anything was amiss in terms of location and stuff. Rogers doesn’t always need to paint the edges of the zone, nor does his pitches need to slip n’ slide across the plate. He just needs to keep being weird, and I suppose that makes him susceptible to weird things happening. Six straight singles qualifies as weird, that they came off bats constituting one of the worst offenses in baseball feels even weirder.

The Mariners have been in a funk at the plate. Take our current gripes and qualms and thorns with the San Francisco offense this year and then stretch that back two decades. Their current record at a game above .500 is thanks to their pitching staff which is arguably the best in the game. Last night, they had managed only two hits before the 8th inning. Their only run came on a solo shot by Luke Raley off Sean Hjelle in the 5th. Their scoring opportunities were mainly handed out by Giants arms. They loaded the bases in the 3rd but only because Hayden Birdsong’s flighty command bolted after the first two innings.

I think the decision to start Rogers on the bump in the 8th is above reproach. No one saw that coming, but whenever these freak incidents occur against Rogers it always seems to be at the hands of the slumpers, the meek-in-the-box, the ones desperate for a different look. Rogers is that different look—perhaps that funky release point was exactly what Seattle needed after facing the 7 foot high release points of Birdsong and Hjelle. Just a thought, and one as wriggly as jello if you’re a manager plotting out a pregame pitching map. Unfortunately for Bob Melvin, he just can’t catch a break in terms of the buttons he pushes, and he can’t just have Ryan Walker—who struck out 5 over two perfect frames—pitch the 8th and 9th and if needed the 10th innings of every game for the remainder of the season.

San Francisco lost this game because of Rogers’ uncharacteristic meltdown in the 8th, but their susceptibility to such wackiness could be explained by characteristic problems with the offense.

The Giants homered thrice off starter Luis Castillo, tagging him for five runs over six innings, but they also struck out 9 times.

The swing-and-miss was a concern all night, and it got worse as the game wore on. The bats went absolutely dead at the plate against Seattle’s relievers. To be fair: a pretty tough bunch, but opportunities were still left unrealized.

A lead-off double by Thairo Estrada in the 7th spoiled after Grant McCray botched a bunt, Tyler Ftizgerald struck out with a runner on third and less than two outs, and Heliot Ramos struck out with two gone and the bases loaded.

They went 2-for-10 with runners in scoring position with Ramos’s towering 2-run drive in the 6th the only knock of those two to produce a run. Numbers on par with their .196 batting average—the lowest in the National League—over the last month.

Over 10 innings, the Giants struck out 18 times, which is…a lot. A season-high in fact, passing the 17-mark they set over 10 innings in their 1-0 loss to Chris Sale and the Braves earlier in the month.

The franchise record for strikeouts in a game is 20, set in 2001, but that was over 15 innings. Other than the 18 that fanned over 9 innings against LA in 1959, Friday’s performance was the most strikeouts in the fewest number of innings in franchise history.

9 of the final 12 outs of the game were recorded by way of the K, and the unproductive outs reared their hands when San Francisco needed them most. Their 29.1 K% with runners in scoring position over the last 30 days is the second highest in baseball—another recurring theme during this fraught period, and certainly correlated to their recent struggles to advance the Manfred runner in extra innings.

Tip your cap to center fielder Julio Rodríguez though. Who knows how the game would’ve ended if he hadn’t robbed Fitzgerald of what looked like a sure single to center to start the 10th. Rodríguez charged in on the drooping liner and picked it off the grass with a sliding back-hander that not only kept Casey Schmitt, the runner on second, from scoring but also advancing.

With the first crucial out made, reliever Collin Snider struck out both Ramos and Michael Conforto to perpetuate San Francisco’s woes and set-up Seattle’s winning RBI single.

The Giants are back to .500.

Despite a pretty solid 18-15 post All-Star run, San Francisco can’t help but feel disappointed with those results after all the close games, lost leads and spoiled opportunities. Friday night was another ripe, winnable, and invaluable game left to rot on the vine.