PHOENIX – Bad. Terrible. Awful.
Manager Bob Melvin had some kind words on Tuesday night after the Giants lost 8-5 to the Diamondbacks, extending their season losing streak to 6 games.
“It was a terrible game from us today, especially in the beginning. When you're on losing streaks, at least you fight. We did that for the most part. It was a terrible game,” Melvin said. “We made it exciting at the end, but we didn't play well. We got Harry several outs. We had a starter on the ropes in every inning and couldn't make anything of it. It's a bad game in a bad stretch for us.”
The clubhouse remained closed to reporters for quarter-hour, and when the doors opened, the room was hushed.
For the second time in only over two months of baseball, Melvin felt the necessity to handle his club. There was also a team meeting after they were defeated in Philadelphia, and the message this time was to bounce back the following day and never let something like that occur again.
“Tomorrow,” said Melvin. “We'd better.”
Chase Field have to be beginning to feel like a house of horrors for the Giants. They watched their season collapse here last September, the yr before that a teammate on the dugout kicked one other within the butt with a bat out of frustration, they usually haven't won a game on this constructing since September 2022.
Less than every week after reaching their high of two games over .500, the Giants fell to 29-33 and finished fourth within the National League West, a half-game behind Arizona.
“It's just not good. It was a terrible game,” starting pitcher Kyle Harrison said of the message to the team. “We have to find a way to win these games and stay in it.”
Just a day after Melvin called his team's opening loss “a game of inches” and noted that they played higher than their losing streak suggested, the manager quickly modified his tone.
On the opposite hand, he watched his club load the bases once, get caught in a double play twice, have runners out on third base 3 times, and customarily stumble defensively through the primary half of the sport, with 4 batted balls all bouncing off the gloves of the Giants defenders as Arizona built a 3-0 lead within the third inning.
“For a while it looked like we were walking around in quicksand,” Melvin said. “It is what it is. But it doesn't feel very good when you play like that.”
Casey Schmitt was bombarded with three hard-hit balls to shortstop and was unable to catch any of them, and Arizona scored its first two runs when Kevin Newman hit one other pitch off the highest of Matt Chapman's outstretched glove into the left field corner.
Schmitt wasn't charged with an error until the following inning, nonetheless, when he was caught on a hopper off Randal Grichuk's bat. The first two plays were a bit of harder, forcing him to walk to each side, but he could have had two errors on his list after he let a more routine hopper from Ketel Marte slip through the center to center field, allowing the fourth run of the inning to cross the plate.
“I definitely should have hit both of them,” Schmitt said of the balls Marte and Grichuk hit. “That's just unacceptable on my part. … I may have just lost sight of it a little bit. There were two (other) balls just out of my reach, just off the tip of my glove, but I'll take another look at it and go from there and get better.”
Since throwing seven scoreless innings at Coors Field a month ago, Harrison has allowed a minimum of three earned runs in each of his last five starts, increasing his ERA to 4.18 from 3.20 after his May 7 start against Colorado. He has retired just five batters, but traded his strikeout skills for more efficiency, pitching past the fifth inning for the primary time since his showpiece six starts ago.
Harrison called the launch “a good step forward for me.”
“I've been working a lot on my mechanics and just trying to get back to the version of myself that I'm used to,” he said. “Velo was there. Felt good. Changeup was there. Slider was there. So definitely a good thing to build on.”
That start in Colorado was also the last time a Giants pitcher aside from Logan Webb went six innings, and the nine outs forced by Jackson and Taylor Rogers increased the bullpen's workload – the key league leader – to 144⅔ innings for the reason that starting of May.
“We needed six innings today because we were a little limited in the bullpen,” Melvin said. “He had to get a few extra outs. He didn't pitch badly. He didn't walk anyone. He allowed a couple of hits. Harry pitched pretty well.”
Regarding the impact of the weak defense behind him, Harrison said: “It takes its toll.”
“But you have to get a handle on the defense behind you, and that's all I was thinking at the time.”
Jackson allowed a leadoff single by Blaze Alexander, and Newman's sacrifice bunt that moved him to second base ended up being considered one of only two he made, while allowing six of the eight batters he faced to succeed in base and 4 to attain.
“It just wasn't a good day for him,” Melvin said of Jackson, who has limited opponents to a .200 batting average since getting back from the injured list on April 22. “He's found his way. It feels like he's found his way a little bit with some good games, but today was not a good game. A couple of walks and it got out of control in the seventh inning.”
Back within the leadoff spot, Heliot Ramos reached base in each of his first three attempts, and Chapman added two hits—extending his on-base streak to 22 games—however the Giants rued their missed opportunities, leaving nine men on base and scoring 2 of 10 runs with runners in scoring position.
“The at-bat qualities were good until we really needed a good at-bat,” Melvin said. “We let them work and got into situations where we were in the driver's seat and could take the responsibility off them.”
Chapman got here to the plate with runners on the corners on his last two attempts and was unable to get through in essentially the most critical situations. He was eliminated on a groundout in the underside of the fifth inning and had to observe as 22-year-old rookie Justin Martinez hit a 101 mph third strike for the ultimate out of the seventh inning.
A strikeout by Schmitt and a flyout by Luis Matos wasted a bases-loaded opportunity within the second inning, and Patrick Bailey got into two double plays that squandered potential comebacks in the primary and third innings before hitting a bloop single to left field within the fifth to bring home Schmitt for the Giants' second run.
“We have a guy on the ropes every inning, but we can't score a few runs?” Melvin wondered. “It's just a bad game.”
Remarkable
As the Giants search for a starting pitcher, the team explained why a young arm was not an option. Inflammation in Land RouppDue to a forearm injury, the 25-year-old right-hander has not been in a position to pitch since May 16. This was his last appearance at Triple-A Sacramento, where he had a 2.79 ERA and 16 strikeouts in three starts.
During his rehabilitation at nearby Papago Park, Roupp threw distances of as much as 90 feet on flat ground on Tuesday and can return to a mound in the midst of next week, in response to the club.
Next
RHP Jordan Hicks (4-2, 2.70) against LHP Jordan Montgomery (3-3, 5.48) within the series finale, with first pitch scheduled for Wednesday at 12:40 p.m.
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