PHOENIX, Ariz.–Paul Goldschmidt hit his fair. Joe Panik hit his foul.
On Friday night in Phoenix, the Diamondbacks’ starting first baseman and the Giants’ starting second baseman each launched a ball into the bleacher seats at Chase Field. In the bottom of the third inning, Goldschmidt rocked a 2-1 changeup from Giants’ lefty Ty Blach into the left field porch to give the Diamondbacks an early 4-1 lead.
In the top of the fifth inning, Panik attempted to answer, as he smoked a 2-2 curveball well beyond the right field fence and above the Giants’ bullpen. Had Panik’s blast stayed fair, instead of hooking foul at the last moment, the Giants would have tied the game heading in the middle innings and given themselves a shot to take the series-opener from a Diamondbacks club in a heated race for a National League Wildcard spot. Instead, though, the ball landed on the wrong side of the foul pole, and on the very next pitch of his at-bat, Panik grounded into a 4-6-3 inning-ending double play.
“I was asking Agi, the first base coach, should we check it?” Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy said. “We were checking anyway. He hit it well. Looked like a hanging breaking ball that he just pulled. I don’t know how foul it was, I was hoping it would hang in there and I guess it just missed staying fair.”
Though San Francisco’s pitching staff kept the Diamondbacks from scoring over the game’s final six innings, the Giants’ offense didn’t muster enough runs to overcome the Goldschmidt home run in a 4-3 series-opening loss.
“He got a good pitch there, he took advantage of it,” Bochy said. “Kind of muscled it out. It’s why he’s having the type of year he is, not just against us, but against everybody. You try not to have guys on base when he’s coming up there like I said, but the way that inning got started, that was a poor start for Blach.”
Panik’s shot was a no-doubter if it stayed fair, and would have bailed out Blach who made one glaring mistake over five innings of work on Friday night. That mistake just happened to come against the Diamondbacks’ best player, and one of the last remaining front-runners in pursuit of the National League MVP Award.
The changeup Blach threw to Goldschmidt only traveled 381 feet, but it was a screaming line drive that had just enough on it to clear the fence for his 30th home run of the season. While Goldschmidt’s career average against the Giants isn’t particularly impressive, he’s managed to crush San Francisco with the long ball, as his Friday night home run marked the 16th a Giants’ pitcher has surrendered to him over his seven-year career.
It was also the fifth home run Blach has allowed in the month of August, after surrendering just nine round-trippers over the first four months of the season. Blach has now given up home runs in three straight starts for the first time this season.
“I’ve got to go out and execute pitches,” Blach said. “It doesn’t matter what the score is, you’ve got to just keep going and just keep trying to make pitches and keep the team in the game.”
The Goldschmidt smash came immediately after Blach’s defense failed to back him up, as a Denard Span error followed by a misplayed groundball put runners on the corners with just one out. After allowing a one-out single to David Peralta, Blach gave up a single to catcher Chris Ianetta, who blooped a ball just in front of Span in center field. Instead of sliding to make a catch or keeping the ball in front of him, Span misplayed it, which put runners on second and third. The next hitter, A.J. Pollock, then chopped a slow grounder to Sandoval at the hot corner, who couldn’t field it cleanly and make a play at first base.
Both Ianetta and Pollock’s plate appearances resulted in hits, but a more fluid defensive unit probably makes one or both of those plays. Ultimately, though, it set the stage for Goldschmidt to do damage, and though Blach probably didn’t want to pitch around the All-Star first baseman, he certainly didn’t want to leave a changeup out over the plate. That’s what happened, and it left the Giants feeling icy in the desert.
“You’ve got to take everything as a learning experience,” Blach said. “Just being able to pitch up here and pitch against the best hitters in the world. There’s a lot of positives to build on, we just take those and keep learning and just keep trying to get better.”
The Goldschmidt home run also overshadowed a productive night at the plate for Giants’ shortstop Brandon Crawford, who recorded hits in his first three plate appearances. Crawford entered the game 5-for-31 in his career against Arizona right-hander Zack Greinke, but he drilled a pair of doubles and a hard single off of Greinke on Friday.
Crawford reached base in all three innings the Giants scored, and he was responsible for scoring two of the Giants’ runs. Crawford also would have scored on Nick Hundley’s second inning double, but during Hundley’s at-bat, Greinke spun around and picked Crawford off on his attempt to steal third base.
“Craw I guess read something, we didn’t have anything on,” Bochy said. “He’s one of our better base runners and I guess he felt like he was getting in a pattern there and he guessed wrong. Greinke’s got pretty good game awareness and he smelled it and he got him.”
By cutting down Crawford on the basepaths, Greinke saved a run that would have helped the Giants in the late innings. Instead, though, the Diamondbacks’ bullpen kept the Giants off the board, and held off a San Francisco team that has now lost three consecutive Blach starts.