By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
SAN FRANCISCO — The fan in the dugout box to the first-base side of home plate, the one who unbuttoned his Mets jersey to display a stomach supposedly the equal of Bartolo Colon’s? The pitcher never noticed.
He was focused on something more important.
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — This is torture, but there is no sweetness. The Giants are coming apart, greatness slipping away. Even on a day of blue skies there is gloom, foreboding, a sense of inevitability that runs counter to what we have seen, what we expected.
Sport is so bewildering, at times so demoralizing. A baseball team that for weeks seemingly couldn’t lose, a team that a month ago had the best record in the majors, is now a team that can’t win. Literally.
The Giants dropped another one Wednesday, this time to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-5. Or maybe that should read "again," this time to the Pirates. Three games against Pittsburgh at AT&T Park, three defeats.
The team that was 57-33 at the All-Star break, the team that had an eight-game lead in the National League West two weeks earlier, has lost 21 of its last 30 — nobody in baseball has done worse than that — and is now in second, behind the hated Dodgers.
There have been momentous shifts before. The Giants, the New York Giants, trailed the Brooklyn Dodgers by 13 games in August 1951, ended up tied and won the playoff on Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard 'round the world.”
There’s no sure thing. Except these days that the Giants will lose.
“We’re in a funk,” said Bruce Bochy, the San Francisco manager, before Wednesday’s game. And then, as if to prove him correct, the Giants blew a 4-0 lead like that, in a half-inning, when starter Matt Cain began the top of the fifth with a hit batsman and three straight walks and closed it by giving up a two-run homer to Andrew McCutchen.
Wham, a blow to left by McCutchen. A blow to the psyche by McCutchen.
A 4-0 lead after four? Surely this was a game that would end the woes. It wasn’t, and with the New York Mets coming in for four games starting Thursday night and then the Giants going to Los Angeles for three games starting Tuesday, perhaps the woes won't end until the season does.
The Giants are not a bad team, but they are playing bad baseball. When they hit, as they did on Wednesday, they can’t pitch. When they pitch, as they did 11 days ago when Madison Bumgarner threw a two-hitter and lost, 1-0, they can’t hit.
A team built on pitching, the Giants gave up eight runs in consecutive games, first to Baltimore, next to the Pirates. They lost both, of course.
There was an eerie quiet in the Giants' postgame clubhouse. The few players in sight sat and checked their phones. Not until Cain, as required, showed up for his interview, did anyone talk above a whisper.
Earlier, Bochy, the onetime catcher, had said in another room that Cain “lost his release point,” meaning that the place in his delivery where the ball is fired had changed. Like that.
Four batters, no hits, one run. Then a single for two more runs. Then a sacrifice fly for another run, and the game was tied, 4-4. But not for long. After another out, McCutchen hit one into the left field bleachers. Javier Lopez replaced Cain. Too late.
Bochy was thinking about his bullpen, which has been used far too much, and about Cain’s confidence, trying to save his relievers, trying to save Cain’s self-belief. Another time, that would have worked. Now, nothing works.
“It didn’t play out the way I thought,” said Bochy, when asked if he were second-guessing himself about the tactic. “I saw some good things. That one inning got away from us.
“Then their bullpen did a good job. The way we were swinging the bat, I thought we could come back.”
They nearly did, if anyone cares about possibilities along with results. With the bases loaded and no one out in the bottom of the ninth, Buster Posey — who already had three hits, despite that back pain — stepped up to the plate. But he hit into a double play, with the final run scoring, and so it goes.
“We’re taking some blows,” agreed Bochy. “We’ve lost some of our mojo. But we’re resilient. This is a tough club.”
A tough club that has found out how tough baseball can be.
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
PARIS — Unable to find Giants or Athletics results in L’Equipe, the historic French sports daily, one goes to the Internet and ESPN and gets not, say, the Red Sox but so help me Qarabag FK, an Azerbaijani soccer team. Yikes.
Not until I open the Examiner website do I discover the Giants have been in a free fall that began in San Diego, of all places, and continued at Fenway Park. The A’s unfortunately have been in a free fall since April.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — Bruce Bochy told us it was just a game. Of course, that was before it was played. That was two hours before the first pitch, and a reporter wondered if the Giants against the Red Sox would give both teams, particularly San Francisco, the chance to find out whether each was as good as some thought.
Including the players.
“Same thing when the Cubs came in,” said Bochy, the Giants manager. “What these guys (his Giants) have been through, I don’t think they have to measure themselves against anybody.” Then he added, “This is a tough group, Boston.”
Very tough. And if the game, which the Sox won 5-3 in 10 cold innings Tuesday night at AT&T Park, wasn’t a measure, for the Giants it had to be a disappointment — and proof that missed tags and wild throws will beat you just as quickly as big hits.
No, this one wasn’t ordinary. Maybe no game involving the Red Sox is ordinary. Boston people can’t get out of their city quick enough. They go to Florida, to California, everywhere.
But if they leave the premises, they don’t leave their fanaticism for the old town team. They take great delight in overwhelming visiting ballparks, chanting “Let’s go Boston,” and generally acting as if the Red Sox had never traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees.
It’s one thing when, say, the Boston expatriates fill the normally empty seats at the Oakland Coliseum when the Red Sox face the A’s. But to see them swarming sold out AT&T is a bit unnerving. The place looked and sounded like Fenway West.
“Boston has a huge following,” Bochy as much as warned pre-game when asked if this two-game series were special, “and so do we. Both are storied franchises that have been very successful the past decade. It creates interest. These two teams are having great years.”
The most recent part of the Giants’ year has been less than great. San Francisco now has dropped three straight, two on the road to the St. Louis Cardinals and then the return home against the Red Sox.
“The little things hurt us,” said Bochy. He meant catcher Trevor Brown throwing the ball into center field on Jackie Bradley Jr.’s steal in the seventh, then on a ground ball to short by pinch hitter David Ortiz, the runner from first, Chris Young, eluding the tag by a diving Brandon Crawford. What looked like it could have been a double play instead was only a single out, and Bradley dashed in from third to tie the game, 3-3.
In the 10th, with Santiago Casilla working his second inning for the Giants, Boston’s Mookie Betts laid down a bunt with two on and no one out — and beat it out. “We didn’t handle that one,” said Bochy. Not at all.
The Giants did get the runner from third on a force at home, but then with two strikes Xander Bogaerts blooped a ball in front of center fielder Denard Span, driving in the game-winners.
If there was any consolation for the Giants, it was the pitching of Albert Suarez, making his second start of the season. “We just want him to give us a chance,” Bochy said before the game. “I hope he throws like he did in his last start.”
He threw better, allowing only five hits, one walk and two earned runs in 6 1/3 innings. “Albert did a great job,” affirmed Bochy.
Which most of us wouldn’t say about Casilla, although Bochy wasn’t critical of his closer, especially since he pitched more than the normal one inning. Sandy Leon led off the 10th with a double, however, and Casilla and the Giants were in trouble.
“That’s a tough lineup,” said Bochy of the Red Sox. “They lead the majors in offense and scoring. I thought our pitching did a very good job.”
When someone wondered if he might change his closer, Bochy all but shrugged. “I still have confidence in Casilla,” he said.
By Art Spander
It isn’t quite the sweet torture of a few seasons past. Oh, the Giants make you sweat, make their manager — the incomparable Bruce Bochy — wish it didn’t have to be as difficult as it seems to be. Yet, with that pitching staff, and Monday night Johnny Cueto was the man, there’s also a feeling the other team might never score.
Now for two straight games, Sunday the awesome Cubs, Monday the not-so-awesome but very tenacious Padres, the other team hasn’t scored.
And finally the Giants did score. If barely. But when Cueto follows Madison Bumgarner, barely is plenty. Yes, consecutive games in which San Francisco could only score a run, Monday night when Hunter Pence, with a sore hamstring, pinch-hitting for Cueto, blooped a two-out ball to right in the ninth that Matt Kemp couldn’t reach.
Down went the ball, in ran Brandon Belt from first, and it was 1-0 Giants.
Just as on Sunday it was 1-0 Giants, if against another team.
They’ve got the routine down. So exhale. And commend management for signing Cueto, a free agent, over the winter.
He is earning $130 million, a lot, but the long-held theory here is for cars, wine and ballplayers you almost always get what you pay for. Cueto is wonderful verification.
In his last four games, including this cold Monday night at AT&T Park, Cueto has allowed a total of three runs. The statement has been repeated often but perhaps not often enough: If the opponent doesn’t score, you can’t ever get worse than a 0-0 tie.
Which is what we had going into the bottom of the ninth. Now what the Giants have is a third straight win and 11 wins in the last 12 games. That ain’t bad.
“Pretty amazing what our pitching is doing,” said Bochy. Not really. It’s doing that it needs to do. What Cueto, 7-1, with a 1.93 earned run average (compared to Bumgarner’s 2.17) did was hold the Padres hitless the first 3 2/3 innings, give up only two hits total and pitch his second consecutive complete game after going nine in a 2-1 win against the Padres five days earlier in San Diego.
“This guy’s done it when he was with Cincinnati in that Great America Park,” said Bochy of a location as different as imaginable from spacious AT&T, a pitcher’s paradise. Cueto last year was traded from the Reds to Kansas City, where he was on a World Series champion. As a free agent he joined the Giants, where life is both beautiful and nerve-wracking.
“I’m enjoying it,” said Cueto, a Dominican, through translator Erwin Higueros. “I can handle these close games.” He understands the English questions well enough but is more comfortable giving the answers in Spanish. His fastballs and sliders speak a universal baseball language. Get out of here.
Cueto swings a mean bat, but he doesn’t always connect. In the bottom of the seventh, with two outs, Angel Pagan, who had walked — and subsequently reinjured his hamstring — was on second and Gregor Blanco, walked intentionally, was on first. Bochy may have considered a pinch hitter but not for long. Cueto had thrown only 78 pitches so he came to the plate — and struck out swinging.
“I was thankful that finally Pence came in to get a hit,” said Cueto.
So was Pence, who before the game was tentative about getting into the lineup. “But I felt fine,” said Pence, “when I went up there.”
Bochy was pleased with the ending but less so with the progress of the game. “We made it hard,” he said. “We had those two runners on in the first. We didn’t execute.”
Kelby Tomlinson and Matt Duffy had back-to-back one-out singles, Tomlinson going to third. But Duffy was caught attempting to steal second and Buster Posey struck out.
“Their guy did a great job too,” Bochy said of Padres lefthander Drew Pomeranz, who went seven shutout innings. “We thought it would be a close game.”
Isn’t it always when the Giants are involved? Sure, there are exceptions, such as Chicago’s 8-1 win on Friday night, but otherwise it was 2-1 and 3-1 over San Diego and then 1-0 and 1-0 over the Cubs and the Padres.
“That game Sunday,” said Bochy about the victory over Chicago “was one of the great baseball games. It had everything. Then we come back with this one.
“We had Johnny Cueto on our radar last year. This is why we wanted to bring him here.”
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