SAN FRANCISCO — After mostly standing pat Tuesday afternoon at baseball’s trade deadline, Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi justified his decision not to dismantle a team freefalling out of playoff position by reasoning, “a hot two weeks can turn it around.”
After all, Zaidi said, “a bad two weeks put us in this position.”
However, the Giants’ stretch of poor play dates back far longer than a couple weeks and showed no signs of slowing Tuesday night in a 9-5 loss to the Dodgers, their second defeat in two games this series and sixth straight loss to their division-leading rivals. Since June 18, the Giants have gone 14-26 after Tuesday’s loss fell two games under .500.
The loss sent them a season-high 19.5 games back of the first-place Dodgers and kept them 4.5 games back of the Phillies for the final National League wild card spot, after Philadelphia also lost Tuesday.
A five-run rally in the fourth, capped by a Joey Bart homer, softened the blow of six runs allowed by a combination of more messy play behind starter Alex Wood and an otherwise subpar night from the veteran left-hander, whose ERA in six starts against his former club since joining the Giants rose to 5.68 (and 4.42 overall in 21 starts this season).
The Dodgers scored in three consecutive innings against Wood before knocking him from the game with one out in the sixth. A four-run rally that featured two Giants errors started the damage in the second, and Mookie Betts finished it off with a solo home run to lead off the fourth inning. They tacked on three more against San Francisco relievers with two doubles and two triples in the eighth, all with two outs.
Wood allowed a season-high nine hits en route to the six runs, which also matched a season-high.
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – AUGUST 02: San Francisco Giants starting pitcher Alex Wood (57) meets with teammates including San Francisco Giants’ Joey Bart (21) during their game against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the second inning at Oracle Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
In the four-run second, as Zaidi watched from the NBC Sports Bay Area broadcast booth, the Giants allowed two catchable fly balls to land in front of diving outfielders, botched a pickoff move that ended up in center field and allowed an extra base when center fielder Austin Slater struggled to pick up one of the balls that fell in front of LaMonte Wade Jr. Wood also plunked soft-hitting catcher Austin Barnes, who came around to score the last of the Dodgers’ four runs.
It was, at least, a banner day for Bart, coming hours after the club traded away veteran backup Curt Casali in a move Zaidi described as a “vote of confidence” in the young catcher. In addition to the 408-foot shot he slugged into the Giants’ bullpen, he finished off a strike-’em-out, throw-’em-out double play for the final out of the top half of the …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
