SAN FRANCISCO – The Giants’ playoff hopes will not be over, but they’ve made their task way more difficult.
The Giants needed to at the least tie this four-game series against the Braves to earn a potentially essential head-to-head tiebreaker, but they did themselves no favors by losing the primary two meetings, and after they went to bat on Wednesday, all of them but kissed those hopes goodbye.
A must-win game began with a Robbie Ray flop of epic proportions and ended 13-2, with one other left-hander – outfielder Mike Yastrzemski – having about as much luck finding the strike zone, to the amusement of the 27,460 spectators who stayed for the loss.
That fourth straight loss guaranteed the Giants would should play an additional game regardless of how Sunday's final game of the series seems. They lose the season series and might be the deciding factor in the event that they catch Atlanta within the win-loss column, where the gap has grown to 4½ games.
Ray left the mound after his thirty ninth pitch missed the strike zone, giving up his third free throw of the primary inning. He also hit the primary two batters he faced, hitting Jorge Soler on the foot with a slider and throwing a fastball into Austin Riley's hands. He also served up a knuckle curve on a silver platter so shiny that Michael Harris II sent it straight into McCovey Cove at 107.3 mph in his first major league at-bat since June.
Ray's second walk of the inning to Orlando Arcia forced within the Braves' first run, and Harris made it 5-0 together with his grand slam, the second home run to hit the water this season and the primary by an opponent. The five runs were probably the most Ray has allowed in an appearance as a Giant, while the 2 outs matched the shortest start of his profession, but the style by which it got here about gave it an entire other dimension.
Harris' grand slam was the one hit Ray allowed, making him the third pitcher in Giants history and the primary since 1951 to permit five or more runs on one or fewer hits. Ray's performance was so inconsistent and short-lived that it made him one among only 17 other pitchers (six starters) to walk at the least three batters and get at the least two hits in a game of 1 inning or less.
The Braves continued to push forward, scoring one other six runs with three home runs against Sean Hjelle, Erik Miller and Taylor Rogers.
Tyler Fitzgerald began the second half of the primary and started to chop the deficit as quickly as possible, hitting the primary pitch he saw from Atlanta starter Grant Holmes and sending it into the left-field stands for his second home run in as many games. But Atlanta's attack proved too strong for an offense that did not rating greater than 4 runs in any of the primary five games of the house series.
The Giants hit nine hits — just two fewer than the Braves' total — but were capable of rating only another run, when Patrick Bailey opened the seventh inning with a double and Brett Wisely brought him home with a single. The Giants have fallen to 2-4 at home, have a .183 batting average (36-for-197) — 3-for-24 with runners in scoring position — and have averaged 2.5 runs over their last six games.
Remarkable
Yastrzemski threw 27 pitches starting from 44.7 to 67.3 miles per hour, and only two of them were ruled strikes by home plate umpire Adam Beck.
Next
To avoid being swept, the Giants send RHP Logan Webb (10-8, 3.32) to the hill against LHP Max Fried (7-6, 3.56). The first pitch is scheduled for 12:45 p.m.
Originally published:
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