San Francisco Giants Lose Big in Houston: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The San Francisco Giants rolled into Houston looking to keep the offense rolling against Gerritt Cole and the Astros. Nine innings later, the scoreboard read 11-2 in the Astros favor and the Giants looked unspectacular.

While it isn’t easy to find a silver lining in blowouts such as this, they are there. In this case it happens to be the offensive performance of Brandon Crawford and Gorkys Hernandez. Throughout May Crawford has been swinging a hot bat for the San Francisco Giants, and tonight he was able to keep it going  with a couple hits off of Gerritt Cole. This included his two-run home run that put the only runs on the board for the Giants.

Gorkys Hernandez didn’t shine particularly bright in this game aside from his 1st inning single. Although it is worth noting how Gorkys is approaching each at-bat. Seeing multiple pitches and consistently using the middle/opposite field to find hits, Gorkys is proving to be a prototypical leadoff hitter and is giving the Giants every reason to give him playing time as his average hovers around .270.

Clearly not everything went well for the San Francisco Giants in this game though. Andrew Suarez started strong but seemed as though he couldn’t find the strike zone if he had a map in the 3rd inning. His inability to command his fastball ended up costing him as the Astros pieced him up for 5 runs and chased him from the game in 4+ innings of work.

Control issues were the theme of the Giants struggles in this game as the bullpen was also touched up for another 6 runs. Pierce Johnson, Rey Moronta, and Josh Osich all appeared to struggle locating against the Astros. As evidenced in this game, when you fall behind hitters on an offensive team, you pay the price.

With seven games left on the road trip, Jeff Samardzija and the rest of the Giants will look to steal a game away from a tough Houston team.