San Francisco Giants lose 8th straight at home as Diamondbacks complete sweep

Swept. Shut out. Snake bit. It doesn’t matter how you say it, the bottom line is this: the Giants dropped their eighth straight home game to the fourth place Arizona Diamondbacks.

The Giants defense was a sad story. There are several words we can use to describe the Giants defense: the technical term would be error-filled. The word I would use to describe the plays I’m talking about, well…let’s just say it isn’t fit for publication. Missed catches, bobbled balls, wild pitches, bad throws—you name it. I certainly wouldn’t call it magic—I’d say it was more tragic than anything.

The Giants offensive game can be summed up pretty easily with one phrase: “hit into the double play” or the even simpler “double play ball”. Casey McGehee was responsible for the first two—one in the first to end the inning and another in the fourth. With one out and two men on board, Nori Aoki hit into a double play to end the fifth.

McGehee led off the seventh, and I swear I actually thought this: at least he won’t be able to hit into a double play. Shame on me. McGehee had a good at bat, and even got himself a base hit. Justin Maxwell was the next batter up, and guess what he did? If you guessed double-play ball, you win a prize. The Giants were unable to get a base runner on in the eighth, so it came down to our last three outs.

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The Giants got a little something going in the ninth—Joe Panik got things started with a lead-off double, Brandon Belt followed it up with a base hit, and McGehee drew a walk. Maxwell was supposed to be up next, but Bruce Bochy probably figured he should hedge his bets. When you’re in a situation like that—bottom of the ninth, with only one out, the bases loaded and down four runs—it makes sense to bring in a big gun to pinch hit. And that’s just what Bochy did. He brought in Buster Posey.

We had all our Giants hopes for winning this game pinned on Buster. But the ground-into-a-double-play virus went through the Giants lineup like a flu through a kindergarten class. Posey caught it. He hit into the fifth double play of the game, ending the inning, the game, and our hopes for scraping out a win in this series. The final score was: Giants 0, Diamondbacks 4.

Chris Heston followed up his no-hitter with a solid outing: in five innings, he gave up three runs on seven hits and four walks. He had his strikeout pitches working as he fanned six. Michael Broadway looked pretty good out there for the inning he pitched–he faced three batters, gave up one hit and struck out two.

The baseball Gods think they’re funny. After Saturday’s game I requested a do-over. In fact, I said make it a double. So today I’m asking for another do-over, but no doubles—I’m not even going to mention the word.

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