SAN FRANCISCO — The Giants found a new method to their mounting misery Friday night at AT&T Park. Just when they appeared primed to break out of their funk, they broke out a triple play.
Brandon Crawford’s line drive to first baseman Ryan Zimmerman with the bases loaded and nobody out in the bottom of the eighth was turned into the rare three-out parlay in a 4-1 loss to the Washington Nationals.
After snaring Crawford’s liner, Zimmerman ran to the first-base bag for the second out against advancing runner Buster Posey, then threw to third base to nail Denard Span, who had broken for home on Crawford’s shot.
“It’s one of the last things you expect when you’re in that situation for something like that to happen,” said Crawford. “It sucks.”
Indeed, it was the latest and most mortifying development in the Giants’ ongoing tailspin. If the triple play wasn’t depressing enough, their lead in the National League West was reduced to a single game when the Dodgers beat Arizona.
Losers of 11 of 13 since the All-Star break, the Giants are showing no signs of snapping out of their deep, depressing rut. The eighth inning rally looked to be a perfect chance for a stirring breakthrough. After seven suffocating innings from Washington starter and winner Max Scherzer (11-6), San Francisco got into the Nationals’ shaky bullpen in the eighth trailing and quickly put the tying runs on base when Span beat out a bunt single against left-hander Oliver Perez and Angel Pagan followed with a single to left.
Nationals manager Dusty Baker went to right-hander Blake Treinen, who promptly walked pinch-hitter Buster Posey, and Baker then went to the mound again, opting for another lefty, Sammy Solis, to pitch to Crawford. Crawford fouled off the first pitch he saw, then hit his hard shot right at Zimmerman. He broke his bat on the swing, but still got plenty of wood on it.
“It was not the best pitch I would want to hit, but you’re down 0-1 already and it was a hittable pitch, definitely,” Crawford said. “I just happened to hit it right at him.”
It was the first triple play the Giants have hit into since Sept. 6, 2009, when Aaron Rowand was the victim. It was the ninth triple play in San Francisco club history and, according to the Society for American Baseball Research triple play index, it was the first of its particular ilk in major league history.
The Giants couldn’t believe their bad fortune for all that’s already gone wrong for them the past two weeks.
“If Craw hits that ball anywhere else, it’s a different ballgame,” said manager Bruce Bochy. “But, when you get in these funks, what can go wrong goes wrong. When you’re in a good winning streak, the ball bounces your way and everything’s going your way. Right now, it’s not going our way.”
Crawford was confident that for as bad as it’s been, it can’t help but get better.
“It’ll turn around,” he said. “Things like this happen, I think. It’s gone on for awhile for us, unfortunately, but it’ll turn around for us.”
It’ll have to turn around for the starting pitching first. Jeff Samardzija, despite a better early showing than he’d had in his first two post-break outings, withered as the game progressed and was victimized by four extra-base hits in the middle innings that sealed his fate.
Samardzija said gap shots by Wilson Ramos in the fourth and Daniel Murphy in the fifth proved to be his undoing, but otherwise felt a lot better about getting on the right path and the team getting on the right path as well.
“We’re in all these games,” he said. “It’s not like they’re out of reach. It’s just little things here and there that’s preventing us from kicking this little streak to the curb.”
Things could change Saturday, when the Giants welcome back Hunter Pence to the starting lineup after a 48-game absence. Trade acquisition Eduardo Nunez will also makes his first start, and perhaps that will stir some badly needed offense as well. Nunez had a long flight to San Francisco from Baltimore, where his former team, the Minnesota Twins had been playing, and he didn’t arrive until shortly before game time and missed batting practice.
Nunez was initiated quickly to the Giants’ recent misfortunes when he pinch-hit with two out and runners at second and third in the bottom of the ninth and struck out.
“We have to get better here, really in all facets of the game,” said Bochy on Friday. “But a guy like that, he does a lot for a ballclub and he means a lot to us. The intangibles are really huge with him.”
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