Cobb gets chewed up in SF Giants 8-4 loss to D-Backs
Alex Cobb got lit up and banged up thanks to some bad SF Giants defense, and the Arizona Diamondbacks got an 8-4 win in the series opener in the desert.
While the Giants got to the surprisingly-wild Diamondbacks starter Zac Gallen for four runs in five innings, Arizona's bullpen shut down the Giants the rest of the way, holding the team hitless for four innings.
The top of the D-Backs lineup killed the Giants, with Corbin Carroll going 2-for-4 with two runs and two RBIs, and Ketel Marte reaching base five times, going 4-for-4 with a walk and two RBIs. Tommy Pham also reached base three times in his five plate appearances, and added an RBI fielder's choice.
Arizona took the lead in the second inning thanks to a series of wild throws and defensive misadventures from the Giants. The first wild throw was from Cobb, who grazed catcher Gabriel Moreno, costing the Giants a barerunner and their replay challenge. With two outs, Geraldo Perdomo broke his 0-for-25 streak with a double just out of Mitch Haniger's reach.
Then super-rookie Carroll grounded a two-run double to left, through the hole that Wilmer Flores vacated for the shift.
After a walk to Ketel Marte and a mound visit from pitching coach Andrew Bailey, Carroll took off for third. When Patrick Bailey's throw got away from Flores, Carroll headed for home, where a good throw would have nailed him. Unfortunately, it was not a good throw, and Marte came around to score on the overthrow. Two Flores errors, two Arizona runs.
In the words of Mike Krukow, "An accurate throw he's out. But Flores hurries the throw, throws over the head of Bailey and all of a sudden, it's a snowball fight." All of a sudden, a 2-1 Giants lead was a 5-2 Diamondbacks lead.
Cobb threw 33 pitches in the second inning, which didn't help his nagging hip injury. It finally got to be too much on his second pitch of the third. He tweaked something and when the trainer came out, Cobb departed, ending his outing and possibly his 2023 season.
It might be the end of Cobb's Giants career, in fact, as the club has a $10 million option on Cobb for next year. But an option year for an injured player might be too much for Farhan Zaidi to resist, assuming he's still in charge.
The Giants got the scoring started when LaMonte Wade, Jr. hit a single that got past Carroll in right field for a very generously-scored triple. He scored when Pham bounced his throw home after Mike Yastrzemski's sacrifice fly, clearly distracted by his fantasy football rival Joc Pederson standing in the on-deck circle.
Pederson was locked in, blasting a home run 425 feet to dead center and refraining from yelling, "Stashing players on the injured list is well within the rules!" as he rounded the bases.
Arizona got a run back in the bottom of the inning after Carroll scored on Pham's chopper to second, but Cobb escaped the inning by inducing two infield groundouts.
Diamondbacks ace Zac Gallen settled down after the Pederson home run, striking out the next four batters he faced. Thairo Estrada singled to break that streak, but Gallen erased him by getting a first-pitch, 3-6-3 double play from Yaz.
The unsuccessful replay challenge came back to haunt the Giants in the 4th inning, when Patrick Bailey's throw clearly beat Perdomo at first, but he was called safe. Wood plunked Carroll to load the bases with no one out, and Ketel Marte singled through a drawn-in Giants infield for two more runs.
The only consolation? The Giants actually threw out a runner on the basepaths, though it's a testament to the total lack of speed from their outfielders that Marte nearly got a double on a groundball between shortstop and second. That let Wood escape when, after a walk to Pham, Christian Walker hit a ball to the same place as Marte, but this time Wood got an inning-ending double play.
The Giants got two runs back in the fifth when two hits and a seven-pitch walk to Estrada loaded the bases. Wade hit a sacrifice fly to right, then Yastrzemski reloaded the bases with a walk, after blasting a Gallen pitch just right of the foul pole that absolutely thrilled the bullpen.
Flores walked to cut the lead to 7-4, before Pederson struck out on three pitches, the second two looking.
One dramatic difference from these two teams is speed. Center fielder Alek Thomas tripled to start the bottom of the fifth, thanks to his own wheels and the Giants outfielders' lack of them. Yaz dove but missed the ball in the gap and the banged-up Haniger simply can't run right now, making it an easy triple for Thomas and an easy score on a sac fly.
In the top of the eighth, Thomas used that speed to rob Michael Conforto, sprinting into the gap and making a leaping catch to save extra bases for Conforto and at least one run for the Giants.
Ultimately, it was more bad defense combined with mediocre hitting that kept the Giants in the loss column. In a game they absolutely had to win, the team showed why the playoffs are becoming a distant dream.
