SAN FRANCISCO–The Philadelphia Phillies have hardly been competitive this season, but that hasn’t stopped starting pitcher Aaron Nola from stringing together lights-out performances over the past two months.
On Thursday evening, Nola ran into the San Francisco Giants, a team that has endured no shortage of offensive struggles this season. It was a match made in heaven for the Phillies’ ace, but baseball is a funny game.
The Giants put a dent in Nola’s tidy earned run average, forced Philadelphia to remove him after just five innings, and walked away with a series-opening 5-4 victory.
Nola entered Thursday’s contest having allowed no more than two runs over each of his past 10 starts, and the Giants promptly tagged the 24-year-old right-hander for five runs over five innings. A three-run fifth inning was Nola’s undoing, and helped San Francisco become the first team to score more than a pair off of Nola since June 16, when the Diamondbacks pushed across five.
Even though San Francisco didn’t get on the board until the second inning, the Giants hit Nola hard in the bottom of the first, as leadoff hitter Denard Span was robbed of a base hit on a spectacular diving play from Phillies’ center fielder Nick Williams. Hunter Pence also flew out deep to right field, while Jarrett Parker clobbered a double into left center. Buster Posey grounded out to end the inning, but the Giants had made their presence known.
Two innings later, Span also had a hit taken away by Phillies’ left fielder Rhys Hoskins, but as we know, baseball is a funny game.
The third time Span came to the plate, he blooped a soft Texas Leaguer down the left field line that dropped in for his first hit of the night. Three at-bats, two hard hit outs, and one base hit.
Span’s base hit put the Giants in business in the bottom of the fifth, and also came moments before Hunter Pence elicited a hearty chuckle from the Giants’ dugout and the team’s fans.
After Pence drew a walk, Giants’ left fielder Jarrett Parker came to the plate with two on and no one out and San Francisco looking to build upon a 2-1 advantage.
Parker drilled a Nola pitch deep into right center field, and Span, who was standing at second base, didn’t get a great jump. Pence, who started on first base, did get an excellent jump, and it created hilarity on the base paths. As Williams worked to retrieve the ball in center, Pence was hot on Span’s heels around third base, and maintained about a yard of separation as the two darted toward home plate. Less than a half second after Span scored to put the Giants ahead 3-1, Pence scurried across the dish to up that advantage to 4-1.
Later on in the frame, Giants’ shortstop Brandon Crawford looped an RBI single to left field to plate Parker, who finished the night with a pair of doubles, and it turned into a critical insurance run.
In the top of the sixth, Giants’ righty Jeff Samardzija encountered an extended bout of trouble, as he surrendered a leadoff home run to Williams followed by three consecutive base hits. Though a 4-6-3 and a double play helped Samardzija finish the inning with the lead intact, San Francisco’s edge had been sliced down to 5-4.
Because the Giants did maintain that lead, though, manager Bruce Bochy was able to turn the game over to a bullpen trio of Mark Melancon, Hunter Strickland and Sam Dyson, though not necessarily in the order he had imagined the three pitchers would throw a month ago.
Since he’s returned from the disabled list, Melancon has not re-assumed the closer’s role that San Francisco paid him a massive chunk of change to lock down. However, he did throw a scoreless seventh inning, and gave way to Strickland, who navigated a 1-2-3 eight. In the ninth inning, Dyson entered, and recorded his 10th save in 12 tries with the Giants, as San Francisco finished off a win over the worst team in baseball.
