SAN DIEGO — The Giants waited 30 games to finally play a National League West foe but took less than 30 minutes to find themselves in a 3-0 hole.
After passing test after test in the season’s first month to show the baseball world they’re legitimate, the Giants floundered in their first test against one of their division’s powers, losing 7-4 to San Diego Tuesday night.
Logan Webb gave up nine hits in five innings and was done after 79 pitches, and not even a couple of torpedo bats could save the Giants in a game that celebrated Padres legend Tony Gwynn and drew 47,345, the second-largest crowd in Petco Park history. It was the Padres’ 15th sellout of the season.
In what’s clearly the deepest division in the majors, the 19-11 Giants are a half-game ahead of the 18-11 Padres ahead of Wednesday’s matinee. The Dodgers opened the day tied with the Giants at 19-10 and were routing the Marlins late in their game Tuesday night in Los Angeles when the matchup in San Diego went final.
Not that the standings matter a whole lot in late April, but for the Giants, a team that was universally picked to finish fourth in the NL West, hanging with the Padres and Dodgers at this juncture is an early-season success story.
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The Giants had the majors’ top record in spring training and carried the momentum into the season, the first of the Buster Posey administration. One of their signature abilities has been overcoming deficits as their 10 comeback wins rank second in the majors, trailing only the Dodgers.
The Giants valiantly tried for No. 11. Trailing by four runs, they managed a three-run rally in the sixth inning. Willy Adames doubled, Jung Hoo Lee singled, and two outs later, LaMonte Wade Jr., doubled the runners home.
However, with Webb out of the game, Randy Rodriguez yielded a two-run homer to Xander Bogaerts in the seventh, and the Giants now need to win Wednesday’s series finale to avoid losing just their third series of the season.
The Giants’ cause wasn’t helped by right-handed sluggers Matt Chapman and Wilmer Flores, the No. 4 and No. 5 hitters, who combined to go 0-for-8 with seven strikeouts.
The best news for the Giants out of the series opener was the quality of Adames’ at-bats. The $182 million shortstop brought an anemic .202 batting average into the game with just five of his 23 hits going for extra bases. He had just one home run.
He homered, doubled, and scored twice on Tuesday, a promising sign for the perennially slow starter whose bat historically heats up with the weather. Adames’ homer in the fourth inning off Nick Pivetta traveled to right-center, and his double went to left-center.
For the first time this season, the Giants had two hitters using torpedo bats, courtesy of Tyler Fitzgerald, who received two of the new-styled bats from Louisville Slugger last week. He debuted one of them Friday, going 0-for-3, then sat out the weekend with a chest bruise.
On Tuesday, he was back in the lineup and let Patrick Bailey use one of them. They were the 8-9 hitters in the lineup, and in the fifth inning, they hit back-to-back, two-out singles with Bailey sending a liner to right and Fitzgerald a fly down the line in left. But they were stranded when Mike Yastrzemski struck out.
Fitzgerald said he’ll continue swinging his torpedo.
“I don’t want people to think the bat is affecting my performance,” he said before the game. “I almost didn’t use it that one day because it just felt there was a little pressure. I was the first one to get it, and people were going to make up their minds based on what I did, so I was trying to be low-key about it. Yeah, I’m going to keep using it.”
Not many of the hits Webb surrendered were particularly hard hit, though nothing was soft about Manny Machado’s contact. Webb retired his first two batters, but Machado hit a 107.4 mph single, the first of five straight Padres baserunners.
Webb walked the next batter and gave up three straight hits, including Bogaerts’ RBI single and Jose Iglesias’ two-run single. Machado’s 99.8 mph single capped a two-run rally in the fourth.
Unlike the old days when games inside the division were crammed into the season’s first month, the Giants finally played an NL West opponent on the penultimate day of April. They don’t play the rival Dodgers until June.