Cain Shelled In 14-3 Loss To Cardinals
The Giants, and Matt Cain looked to be in another pitchers’ duel early. But that first impression was far from a reality, as the Giants would go on to lose 14-3.
Cain pitched three perfect innings in efficient fashion to start the game. It looked like he was also going to be rewarded with early run support when Angel Pagan tripled to leadoff the bottom half of the first. But Adam Wainwright would bare down. He struck out Marco Scutaro and Pablo Sandoval on a pair of buckling curveballs. And to end the threat he got Buster Posey to groundout.
Apr 6, 2013; San Francisco, CA, USA; St. Louis Cardinals second baseman Daniel Descalso (33) rounds third base on his way to score during the sixth inning at AT
It turned out that Wainwright was the one who would receive the run support–a lot of it.
The Cardinals manufactured a nine-run fourth inning that had AT&T Park silent after a pre-game ring ceremony.
The disastrous inning for Cain started with a single off the bat of Jon Jay, who would score twice in the inning. Jay advanced to second on Angel Pagan’s fielding error, and moved to third on Matt Carpenter’s ensuing single. Allen Craig allowed Jay to score on a sacrifice fly, and the Cardinals would form yet another rally.
Cain allowed five hitters to reach base until Wainwright popped out bunting. That would only be temporary relief, though, as Jay Walked and Carpenter smacked a two-run single on his last pitch of the day.
Jose Mijares was called upon to stop the bleeding, but with the Giants’ fortunes, he couldn’t bail Cain out. He hit Craig’s back foot before allowing a two-run single to Carlos Beltran.
So, after the Giants scored two runs in the third on Pagan’s RBI double Pablo Sandoval’s RBI single, the Cardinals matched them–plus much, much more.
St.Louis went a stunning 10-for-14 with runners in scoring position and had a combined eight two-out RBI. The Giants, meanwhile, went an improved 3-for-9 with runners in scoring position. Entering the game with a 2-for-21 mark with RISP, well, anything would’ve been an improvement.
And despite getting hits from Brandon Belt, Nick Noonan and Guillermo Quiroz in the ninth inning, nothing would’ve been enough to overcome the Cardinals’ powerful offense.
It just so happens that those three collected their first hits of the season all in the ninth inning, when San Francisco had something cooking. Quiroz’s RBI single with two outs made the score 14-3 after St.Louis put two more runs on the board in the eighth and three more on the board in the ninth. Carpenter was in the middle of it all, going 3-for-5 with a double a three RBI.
Really, it just wasn’t a good day for Giants’ pitchers. Not only did Cain yield a career-high nine runs, but he became just the second Giants pitcher ever to surrender nine-plus runs in a single inning. The last time Cain gave up nine runs was on April 18, 2009.
If there was one pitcher who had a good day, it was Chad Gaudin, who allowed only one hit over three innings in relief. George Kontos allowed three runs in the ninth inning and Javier Lopez also got touched up for two hits and two runs (no earned).