CINCINNATI — In a game that started with a confrontation and was delayed by rain for more than two hours, the Giants kept waiting for a punch from their lineup that never came.
With a 5-1 loss to the dreadful Cincinnati Reds to open a 10-game swing through the Eastern time zone, consider insult added to injury.
The Reds, who still own MLB’s worst record even after Friday night, were without their No. 3 hitter, Tommy Pham, who was scratched minutes before the rain-delayed first pitch over a pregame altercation in which he slapped Joc Pederson in the face. Yet, it was the Giants who left Great American Ballpark early Saturday morning (after a 2 hour, 8 minute rain delay) looking worse than the worst team in the majors.
“We play 162 games. There are going to be games that are not our best. Tonight was one of those games,” manager Gabe Kapler said. “It wasn’t our best game. In order for us to get where we want to go, we want to play better baseball than that. There’s a number of areas we can point to where we can improve.”
The loss featured more Giants blunders than runs.
Activated from the IL before the game, Jake McGee wasn’t listed on the lineup card and wasn’t allowed to pitch when Kapler called upon him in the eighth inning. His replacement, Jose Alvarez, proceeded to hit a batter, walk another one and allow two hits in the process of giving up two runs.
The damage against Alvarez would have been limited to one run, if not for Joey Bart’s glove getting in the way of Nick Senzel’s swing. The catcher’s interference negated a soft ground ball that would have ended the inning and allowed a second run to score.
Of Rodón’s three runs, one came on a solo shot from Brandon Drury. But another scored from second base on a swinging bunt. Second baseman Donovan Walton fielded Tyler Stephenson’s third-inning dribbler and tried to flip it from his glove to first baseman Wilmer Flores, but it went over his head, then Flores threw wildly to home plate.
The Giants might have had something brewing in the sixth inning when Mike Yastrzemski led off with a walk, but he was doubled off first base when Pederson flew out to right and Yastrzemski was caught in between the bases.
While explaining the events that preceded the pregame scuffle that featured Pham slapping Pederson across his left cheek and players from both teams pouring on to the outfield grass — it apparently all originated over a fantasy football dispute — Pederson wondered if the altercation might have had downstream effects on the Giants’ sloppy play Friday.
“We’re scuffling a little bit, so that just makes things worse, and this is just an added distraction,” Pederson said. “You want to eliminate those as much as possible because this game’s so hard. Like I said, we lost. It feels like what happened was unfortunate, but it’s still a big distraction to other guys around here. We didn’t play a good game tonight. If I had something to do with that, being a distraction, that makes me feel really bad because I’m here to help this team win, not be a distraction.”
While it was bench coach Kai Correa who handed over the lineup card at home plate before the game, Kapler took the blame for leaving McGee off by mistake. He said Yastrzemski thought Pederson’s ball was going to fall, so he wasn’t thinking about tagging. Walton, however, “I think had some time to get the ball out of his glove,” Kapler said.
“It was a challenging day, but we’re going to move past it very quickly,” Kapler said. “All of the stuff that happened today, we’re going to move past it very quickly, come back ready to compete tomorrow and turn the page. It’s what we do as a group.”
In their last game, a 9-3 win Wednesday against the Mets, the Giants beat up on a rookie pitcher making his second MLB appearance. They couldn’t do the same to 24-year-old fireballer Graham Ashcraft in his second MLB start.
After homering four times in two innings against the Mets’ Thomas Szapucki on Wednesday, they managed just four hits over 6⅓ against Ashcraft and his consistent diet of 100+ mph offerings. Twice they strung two hits together but failed to keep the rally going. The Giants didn’t advance a runner past second base until the eighth inning, after Ashcraft exited, and that wasn’t exactly a display of offensive firepower, either.
With Flores’ single through the hole at shortstop off Cincinnati reliever Art Warren in the eighth, Darin Ruf advanced to third, becoming the first Giant to touch the bag all game.
Pederson came to the plate with the bases loaded and a chance to change the game with one swing, as he did four times in their previous two games, but the Giants had to settle for the single run after Warren’s pitch nicked Pederson’s jersey, forcing in Ruf from third base, and Brandon Crawford grounded in to an inning-ending double play.
After the pregame altercation, all eyes were on Pederson as he stepped in to the box for the first time to lead off the second inning. Pederson worked a full count, beat out a hard-hit grounder to short and advanced to second on a single from Brandon Crawford. Evan Longoria, Luis Gonzalez and Donovan Walton followed with three straight outs.
Rinse, repeat.
Crawford made it second base on a hit from Longoria after singling again in his second at-bat in the fourth inning, but once again that is where the Giants offense stalled, and Crawford was left standing on second base.
