SAN FRANCISCO — In an effort to limit the length of games for the 2020 season, Major League Baseball implemented a new extra-inning rule that places a runner on second base at the start of each inning after nine have been completed.
The rule did keep the Giants and Padres from playing a 17 or 18-inning affair on Thursday, but it didn’t make an atrocious 10th inning go by any faster for reliever Tyler Rogers or manager Gabe Kapler.
The first six hitters in the top of the 10th reached against Rogers as the Padres exploded for a six-run rally that wiped away any hope of the Giants securing their second straight come-from-behind win. A 10th inning that lasted well over 30 minutes led to a discouraging 12-7 loss and concerns about Kapler’s knowledge of the rules.
After five hitters had reached base to start the frame, Kapler finally went to the mound to pull the Giants’ struggling reliever. Rogers, however, wasn’t allowed to leave the game.
Kapler’s trip to the middle of the diamond marked the team’s second mound visit while Padres catcher Austin Hedges was at the plate as pitching coach Andrew Bailey had already gone out to see Rogers. Under MLB rules, a pitcher must remain in the game if he receives two mound visits during the same plate appearance, so Rogers was stuck watching Hedges bunt in a run on a botched fielder’s choice attempt from catcher Tyler Heineman.
“That was just a mental screw-up on my part,” Kapler admitted. “I’ve been around the game for a long time and I just had a lapse in memory.”
The Giants’ 10th-inning execution was nothing short of disastrous and brought to mind two memorable managerial miscues.
Stayed up late to open the gates.#FriarFaithful pic.twitter.com/DDYrYXmI2a
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) July 31, 2020
The first is one that has haunted Kapler throughout his career. During his first series as the Philadelphia Phillies manager in 2018, Kapler made a call to the bullpen to bring in left-hander Hoby Milner. Milner wasn’t aware he was expected to report to the mound as he hadn’t even thrown a warm-up toss, leading Phillies fans to wonder if Kapler had a grasp on how to manage his bullpen.
The second is a mistake former Dodgers manager Don Mattingly made in Los Angeles that helped Bruce Bochy win over the hearts of Giants fans. In July 2010, Bochy caught Mattingly leaving the mound from a visit before returning to talk to reliever Jonathan Broxton.
At the time, the second mound visit required the Dodgers to replace Broxton and turn the game over to George Sherrill, who promptly surrendered a go-ahed double to Andres Torres in a game the Giants won 7-5.
The move helped endear Bochy to Giants fans and gave them a deeper appreciation of his focus on details. His bullpen management in the 2010, 2012 and 2014 postseasons only helped his cause.
Kapler’s first clear decision-making mistake came at a point in time when the game was already out of reach and when it would have already made sense to remove Rogers from the game. The fact Rogers had to face one additional hitter didn’t help the pitcher’s cause or sway Thursday’s outcome, but it did serve as a reminder that Kapler has plenty to prove when it comes to mastering the details of his job.
“I think the most important thing is I just own it and take responsibility for it and don’t make the same mistake twice,” Kapler said.
The toughest aspect of Thursday’s game for the Giants wasn’t that the Padres mounted a six-run rally, but the fact it came after the Giants had come all the way back from a sizable deficit for the second straight night.
A night after trailing by four entering the seventh inning, the Giants faced a five-run deficit as the Padres raced out to an early lead against Kevin Gausman, Caleb Baragar and Sam Coonrod.
Once again it was outfielder Mike Yastrzemski who ignited a rally as he drew a leadoff walk to open the bottom of the seventh against Padres right-hander Luis Perdomo. An Alex Dickerson single and a Donovan Solano double forced the Padres to call on one of their top free agent signees and a familiar face inside Oracle Park, left-hander Drew Pomeranz.
The former starter who was flipped to the Milwaukee Brewers at the 2019 trade deadline struck out all three hitters he faced in an easy save in Tuesday’s game, but Pomeranz struggled with his command on Thursday and allowed a sacrifice fly to designated hitter Wilmer Flores and a RBI single to pinch-hitter Austin Slater which brought the Giants within two.
An extended seventh inning was the best possible scenario for the Giants because it allowed the top of the order to return to the plate in the eighth with another chance to strike against the Padres bullpen.
Steven Duggar, who was promoted from the Giants’ alternate camp Thursday to take the place of struggling slugger Jaylin Davis, led off the eighth against Emilio Pagan and beat out a slow grounder to the left side of the infield for his first hit of the season. Duggar sprinted down the line at 29 feet per second, a clip that’s considered elite in the major leagues, to set the table for Yastrzemski.
The Giants’ budding star didn’t launch another moonshot into McCovey Cove, but he did plant a flyball on the warning track in Triples Alley and raced to third base to represent the tying run.
The triple gave Yastrzemski his major league-leading 11th hit of the season and allowed Donovan Solano to collect his National League-best ninth RBI of the year with a sacrifice fly out to right field to tie the game.
The Giants’ late rally was made possible by the way their hitters battled against Padres starter Dinelson Lamet, who has some of the best raw talent of any pitcher the Giants will face this season.
With a four-seam fastball that topped out at 98.6 miles per hour Thursday and a wipeout slider that could be one of the best breaking balls in the National League, Lamet had the Giants guessing wrong all night.
Over five innings of one-run ball, Lamet threw 47 sliders and induced 22 swings from Giants hitters. The Giants only put three of Lamet’s sliders in play, swinging through 11, hitting eight foul balls and taking another eight for called strikes.
“After the first at-bat I felt like I was seeing the ball pretty well,” Belt said. “The starter was a little tough because his slider did so many different things and it was tough to gauge it and get a good pass off at it.”
The only issue Lamet ran into against the Giants was a high pitch count as he needed 91 pitches to finish five innings, including 22 in a high-stress bottom of the fifth that featured the defensive play of the night.
In his 2020 debut, third baseman Evan Longoria had a chance to ruin an otherwise outstanding game for Lamet, but Padres center fielder Trent Grisham robbed him of the opportunity. With the bases loaded and one out, Longoria drove a 97-mile per hour fastball toward Triples Alley that could have cleared the bases if it landed on the outfield grass.
Grisham ranged into the right-center field alleyway and made a spectacular diving catch on a sacrifice fly, but the second-year outfielder could have kept the Giants off the board altogether with a solid relay throw back to first base. Brandon Belt, who began the at-bat at first after drawing a walk, had already raced around second base by the time Grisham soared in the air to make the play, forcing Belt to reroute toward first base while ensuring he touched second on the way back.
This play by the Padres was equal parts incredible and terrible 😳 pic.twitter.com/JgUqfGcNiR
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) July 31, 2020
Errant throws from Grisham and Fernando Tatis, Jr. prevented Belt from being doubled off first in a play that was reminiscent of Rubén Rivera’s historic baserunning miscue on May 27, 2003 against the Diamondbacks that led Giants broadcaster Jon Miller to declare Rivera’s trip around the diamond the “worst baserunning in the history of the game.”
Immediately after Lamet escaped the jam, the Padres tallied a pair of runs in the sixth on a two-run home run from second baseman Jurickson Profar off Giants rookie Caleb Baragar.
