Giants rally undone by Cardinals' explosive eighth inning

The Giants couldn't play spoiler on their first night at Busch Stadium, and failed to take advantage of a seventh-inning rally. 

LOS ANGELES — Tuesday night’s game was the 100th since the 2016 All-Star break, when everything seemed to change for this organization. The Giants are 40-60 during that span, the worst record in baseball, so the night’s result certainly felt familiar. 

Matt Moore’s night felt familiar, too. 

The left-hander had another maddeningly inconsistent outing and there was no recovering. The Giants lost 13-5 and nine of the runs went on Moore’s line, tying a career-high. In his last start, Moore held the same Dodgers to one run over seven innings, and this all fits a pattern. Two of his starts have been brilliant, but in the other four he’s been charged with 23 runs in 17 1/3 innings. 

“It does get under my skin after a while,” he said. “In six starts, it’s been Jekyll and Hyde.”

Moore’s night matched his season in a way. He needed just six pitches to get through the first, but the second was a 39-pitch disaster. The Giants led 4-0 at the time, but Moore was taken deep on an 0-2 pitch to Franklin Gutierrez. Chris Taylor walked on four pitches. Yasiel Puig singled. Austin Barnes walked on four pitches to load the bases. 

“Matty is so good, but occasionally he does have these moments,” manager Bruce Bochy said of his left-hander’s propensity for four-pitch passes. 

The moment would only get worse. Moore was on his way to another free pass to Cody Bellinger, but the young rookie had other ideas. With the pitcher due up next, Bellinger loaded up on a 2-0 fastball and pulled it so far foul that it landed in the upper deck. He straightened it out on the next pitch, driving a bases-clearing triple into left. Alex Wood, the opposing left-hander, singled Bellinger home. A double and sacrifice fly made it 6-4 as the bullpen got hot. 

“Not going right after Taylor there, that was probably the mistake that wound up compounding it with the big inning,” Moore said. “Today it was about attacking, but before I knew it there were runners on first and second with no outs. Regardless of the Gutierrez at-bat, you’ve got to be able to make pitches. My off-speed stuff was up in the zone. Barnes hit a changeup hard. The breaking stuff was in and out of the zone. It was an immediate feeling right after the game of feeling I had so much more than that.”

Bochy wrung another four outs out of Moore before turning it over to a bullpen without a long man. The Dodgers kept pulling away, giving the Giants plenty of time to contemplate the night and the missed opportunity. Wood was not particularly good on the other side, but it didn’t matter. A night after beating Clayton Kershaw, any hopes of momentum died a quick death.

The Giants have played 28 games and won 10 of them. Only once have they taken back-to-back games, and the numbers say it’s not really a fluke. They have been outscored by 40 runs, the worst differential in the Majors. 

BOX SCORE

SAN FRANCISCO — The Giants have played so many big games at Busch Stadium over the past decade, but on their first night in St. Louis this season, they weren’t able to handle the role of spoiler. 

After overcoming a two-run deficit with a rally in the seventh, the bullpen gave up two in the eighth and the Giants lost 5-3 to the Cardinals. Mark Melancon put two on and pinch-hitter Matt Adams poked a two-run double off Tony Watson. 

Here’s what else you need to know…

—- Madison Bumgarner threw 32 pitches in the sixth and that ended his night. In his first start at Busch Stadium since the 2014 postseason, Bumgarner was charged with three runs on eight hits. With one start he left, he has a 3.20 ERA, so he’ll finish above 3.00 for a second straight year after four seasons under. 

—- The Giants fell flat on two early chances to blow the game wide open. With runners on the corners and no outs in the second, Aramis Garcia struck out, Austin Slater lined out, and Bumgarner went down looking. The bases were loaded in the third and the Giants scored a run on a walk, but Garcia struck out swinging to end the threat. 

—- Jordan Hicks was sitting at 102 mph, but the Giants found a way to get two runs across in the seventh and tie the game. After a walk of Austin Slater, Alen Hanson pulled a seeing-eye single to right on a 102 mph pitch. Gregor Blanco got the same heat and hit a shallow bloop that Marcell Ozuna butchered into an RBI single. Hanson reached third on a wild pitch and tied the game when Evan Longoria grounded out to first. 

—- Aramis Garcia has had a promising month, but his first night at Busch Stadium was rough. The rookie struck out four times. 

SAN FRANCISCO -- In the bottom of the eighth inning Tuesday night, Giants center fielder Gregor Blanco watched Padres first baseman Eric Hosmer single to left field and then reached for his back pocket. Blanco pulled out a small card and studied it as he walked back toward dead center.

The card had told him that Hosmer likes to go the other way, but Padres catcher Austin Hedges, the next batter, had different tendencies, so Blanco kept walking until he was about 30 feet to the right-field side of second base. Hedges grounded out to second, right in line with where Blanco was standing, and the dance started again, this time in left field.

Giants rookie left fielder Chris Shaw reached into his back pocket and pulled out a similar card. He took a quick peak, hiding the card alongside his glove, and then quickly tucked it back into his pocket before moving over a few steps. 

“I try to be discreet,” Shaw said the next day, smiling. 

The Giants have been discreet about this particular adjustment for months, but if you watch the outfielders closely, you’ll see them studying between innings or hitters. Before each game, bench coach Hensley Meulens hands out the cards, which are small enough to fit in a player’s back pocket but display a wealth of information. Each opposing hitter is listed with spray charts of where he most often hits the ball against left-handed and right-handed pitchers. The card tells an outfielder whether he needs to shade over toward the line, or play deep, or shallow, and much more.

Meulens has a much more detailed master copy in his own pocket and will make adjustments during at-bats depending on the swings he’s seeing, or info relayed from pitching coach Curt Young or manager Bruce Bochy.

“Everything is evolving,” Meulens said. “It’s much easier for me to have them have that info out there in their pocket. We needed to be in a better position to catch more balls in the air, and sometimes it’s a lot easier for them to take a peak at the card instead of me having to move three players from the dugout.”

In past seasons, Giants outfielders were presented with that info before a series or game and would have to memorize it. Meulens would make adjustments with hand signals from the dugout, but that’s easier said than done. With 40,000 fans buzzing and action on the bases, it can be hard to get an outfielder’s attention from the top step and relay that he needs to move a few paces one way or the other. 

Enter the card system, which already was being used by several other teams. The card itself is just a slip of paper with spray charts that look similar to the one shown on broadcasts, except instead of the field being broken up into five segments, it’s nine or more. There are plenty of details, but players have found the info useful.

“I’ve liked it a lot,” Austin Slater said. “There’s a lot of info that last year you would take five or 10 minutes before a game to memorize. This is way more efficient. Purists might not like it, but this is the way the game is moving.”

There already have been objections. Umpire Joe West confiscated a similar card from Phillies reliever Austin Davis earlier this month, and MLB eventually might crack down on the type of info that can be taken onto the field. For now, it’s helping the Giants try to improve an outfield defense that was awful last season. In September, it has proven especially useful.

Slater said he consulted the card for just about every batter against the Braves, who are an unfamiliar out-of-division opponent, and he expects to do the same against the Cardinals. Gorkys Hernandez doesn’t use the card against NL West opponents because he knows their tendencies, but he said he has used it to adjust against September call-ups. Shaw tries to check often and memorize the next four batters’ tendencies. 

The card is just the latest step for a staff that has tried to keep up with an evolving game. The Giant have had a member of the front office traveling with them all season to provide additional data, and members of the staff will get together next week to break down every aspect of their outfield defense and see where there have been improvements. It’s likely the card system will stick, which means players will have to get used to an adjustment to their pre-game routine.

“I forget to take it a lot of times,” Hernandez admitted, laughing. “When they give it to me, I put it in my locker. Sometimes I’ll see the batter come up and I don’t have it, so I try to look at his swing and read him that way, and then after the inning, I’ll run down and pick it up.”

There’s another adjustment, too. Slater said the in-game homework has led to some increased heckling. 

“We were on the road the other day, and some guy yelled ‘Why do you keep reaching for your pocket? Stop cheating!’ ” he said. 

The Giants view it more as gaining a tiny and legal edge. If they pick up an extra out here and there, it's all worth it.