Giants Fall To Padres In Extras, Lose Third Straight
Sunday Night Baseball featured the San Francisco Giants. Initially, the Giants were scheduled to play a typical day game against the Atlanta Braves. However, MLB bumped them back, and they arrived back in San Francisco at about 3:15 AM PDT.
The Giants didn’t use the late arrival as an excuse, but a quick, three-hour game would’ve been ideal. Instead, they battled the Padres for 13 innings. And to add further exhaustion to the situation, they lost the four-hour-plus marathon.
Jun 17, 2013; San Francisco, CA, USA; San Diego Padres starting pitcher Edinson Volquez (37) pitches against the San Francisco Giants during the fifth inning at AT
Jose Mijares, San Francisco’s seventh pitcher of the night, yielded three straight singles to start the 13th frame. The third single was Andrew Cashner’s (a pitcher) RBI bunt, which gave San Diego a 4-3 advantage. Jake Dunning relieved Mijares and he walked in a run to make the score 5-3.
Two-out hits were a vital for the Giants. The third inning started with Tony Abreu taking a walk and Brandon Crawford singling. Volquez, skating on thin ice, battled with Hunter Pence for nine pitches. With Buster Posey taking a day off and Pablo Sandoval nursing a foot injury, the Giants leaned on Pence to be a run producer. Instead, Volquez threw him a 3-2 changeup that Pence whiffed at.
Pence’s inability to move the runners over would’ve been magnified had Brandon Belt not followed him with an RBI single. Joaquin Arias also drove in a run with a sacrifice fly, and Hector Sanchez punched Volquez’s changeup into right field.
Pence’s at-bat proved to be an outlier, at least approach-wise. Belt’s single came on the first pitch. Arias saw one pitch before hacking. Sanchez, Juan Perez and Barry Zito all looked to jump on Volquez early too.
Volquez entered Monday with an uncharacteristic 5.87 ERA. His first three innings of work, though, wouldn’t have supported it. He had his entire arsenal clicking, and Perez managed to pick up an infield hit that barely made it to the infield dirt. Perez, who was called up less than a week ago, reached on the slow ground ball.
Zito, meanwhile, continued his success at home, and the disparity between his home and road ERA is well documented–1.94 at home, 11.28 on the road. He held the Padres to just two runs over 5.2 innings, and he struck out a season-high eight batters.
Zito’s wheels gradually started to spin off track in the sixth. He issued a free pass to Jesus Guzman, which was erased on Grandal’s fielder’s choice. With two outs, Pedro Ciriaco singled. Advancing to third was Grandal, which was a big 90 feet because he scored on Jean Machi’s wild pitch.
Machi surrendered three straight singles in the seventh. The third one, off the bat of Chase Headley, drove in the game-tying run. With runners on the corners, one out, San Diego was on the verge of taking the lead. Instead of collapsing, however, Machi induced a double play to keep the score 3-3.