Diamondbacks 3, San Francisco 10: Nueve de Cuatro

Fun fact: according to the Fox Sports AZ broadcast booth, every time this season in which the Diamondbacks have given up 5+ runs, it has happened in the 4th inning. And so it was today.

So this one actually looked like it might be fun, for the first few innings. Giants starter Derek Holland struck out the first four batters he faced, to be sure, and Zack Godley couldn’t locate his fastball to save his life against Joe Panik, the first batter he faced, which led to an eight-pitch AB before Panik grounded out to Ahmed, who made a really nice play on a hard-hit ball. Buster Posey reached on an excuse-me opposite-field single in a 1-2 count, in which Godley had apparently found the handle on the fastball. He struck out Andrew McCutchen on four pitches, grazed Brandon Crawford with a breaking pitch that started off heading for the left-handed batter’s box and continued on that trajectory, and then struck out Evan Longoria on three pitches to end the initial threat.

The Diamondbacks got their first hit in the second, a hard-hit Chris Owings grounder into the hole at shortstop. Crawford made a great diving stop, laying out fully to get a glove on it, but Owings beat his weak throw to first easily. Ketel Marte then gave a high fly ball a ride to deep right field, but it died on the warning track.

Meanwhile, Godley seemed to have settled into a groove of sorts, sitting down the next six batters he faced. In the Diamondbacks’ half of the third, we got another two-out hit, this one a solid Nick Ahmed double on a 3-1 pitch into the left field gap that rolled to the wall. David Peralta then hung a nice, seven-pitch at bat on Holland, who seemed to be getting more and more erratic, but popped out to second for the third out. Sad, but Holland definitely seemed to be weakening.

And sure enough, we broke through in the fourth, as Goldy put up another long, solid at bat against Holland, before lining a single to shallow left on the seventh pitch of the AB. Our hitters tonight really did put up a lot of good, battling plate appearances where they saw a lot of pitches and wore Holland down. One out later, Jake Lamb (who I have to say seems to be showing an uncharacteristic degree of plate discipline since he’s come off the DL) drew a six-pitch walk. Owings promptly struck out on four pitches (first of three Ks for him in the ballgame), but Ketel Marte continued his hot streak by hammering a double over Hunter Pence’s bug-eyed head that hit off the wall in left, bringing both Goldy and Lamb in to score.

[I just spent about 10min trying to embed the FSAZ video clip off the Twitter to give you all an actual offensive highlight video, but no dice, alas. Tonight is clearly a night when we cannot have nice things. Sorry.]

Anyway, Dyson hit a high pop fly to shallow center to end the Diamondbacks’ half of the inning. Still, we had got us a lead, and Godley seemed to have settled in nicely, right? 2-0 DBACKS.

Um, no. Godley left his third pitch of the bottom of the fourth—either a curve or a sinker, I’m not quite sure—in the middle of the zone. Andrew McCutchen was sure, though, and blasted it into the left-field bleachers. Two pitches later, on a sinker that did in fact sink and seemed like a pretty good pitch, Brandon Crawford did the same thing, only more toward left-center. Lead erased. Godley was clearly rattled, but managed to retire Longoria on a grounder to Lamb. He then walked Hunter Pence, and then went full on Gorkys Hernandez. The 3-2 pitch registered on PitchTrac as a a strike, a sinker whose bottom dropped out as it entered the strike zone. John Ryan Murphy maybe made a framing mistake, though, catching it in the dirt, and home plate umpire Lance Barrett ruled it a ball. I think that call was what finally broke Zack, actually, as he gave up a two-run double in the next at bat to pinch-hitter Alan Hanson, who’d come in to hit for Holland. Another HBP pitch followed against leadoff hitter Joe Panik, loading the bases again, and finally Torey Lovullo came out and got his beleaguered starter. Fernando Salas entered the game, gave up a double to Posey that brought in three more, before striking out McCutchen, intentionally walking Crawford, and inducing Longoria to pop out to Goldy to end one of the most wretched innings I’ve watched in a long time. 7-2 GIANTS.

And, well, it was pretty much over after that. Jake Barrett pitched the fifth and sixth for the Diamondbacks and pitched pretty well, facing the minimum aside from a leadoff dinger to Sandoval in the fifth. 8-2 GIANTS.

TJ McFarland then entered the game for the seventh, giving up another run on a couple of hits. 9-2 GIANTS.

We mounted a bit of an anemic sort of comeback in the top of the eighth, with Peralta drawing a one-out walk, Murphy singling him to second with two outs, and Lamb driving him in with a single to left. Of course, that was snuffed about, thanks to Owings’ third whiff in a row. 9-3 GIANTS.

McFarland came out for the bottom of the eighth, promptly gave up a homer to pinch-hitter Nick Hundley, put the next man on thanks to an error by Ketel Marte, but got Posey to ground into a double play that cleared the bases. Then, for whatever reason (I’d walked away from the television by this point, honestly), we brought in Brad Boxberger who struck out McCutchen to put a stop to this. 10-3 GIANTS.

Whoever pitched the top of the ninth for San Francisco faced the minimum. Game over.

BELLS AND WHISTLES (such as they are)

The Banana Stand: Ketel Marte, +20.7%
Capsizing the Queen Mary: John Ryan Murphy, -7.3%
Jeffrey Tambor: Zach Godley, -40.9%

Sadly quiet Gameday Thread, even for a Monday, with a paltry 261 comments, though that’s kind of understandable as the thread got quieter and quieter as the Giants continued to tack on runs. Present and accounted for were AzRattler, BobDolio, DORRITO, Dano_in_Tucson, DeadManG, GuruB, Jackwriter, Jim McLennan, Joey Lewis, Johnneu, Makakilo, Michael McDermott, MikeMono, MrMrrbi, Renin, Sean Testerman, ShirtOffYourBack, Ubersnake, asteroid, coldblueAZ, gamepass, hotclaws, lildbackfan21x, onedotfive, shoewizard, since_98, and smartplays. ShirtOffYourBack was the most prolific commenter with 40.

Not much in the way of game-topic recs, so for CotN I’m going with this one from Johnneu, for kind of capturing the substance of what happened tonight in a nutshell.

That’s all, thanks for reading. Here’s hoping we bounce back tomorrow. Even with how tonight turned out, I like matching up our 2018 ace with San Francisco’s tomorrow. Good night, all.