Giants pound 18 hits in blowout win over Pirates, who drop below .500
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The Pittsburgh Pirates ran into the hottest team in baseball, and the San Francisco Giants pounded them into submission.
Five players had three-hit games for the Giants, who compiled 18 hits and did the majority of their damage in the second and seventh innings in a 14-4 win Monday afternoon at Oracle Park.
Pirates starter Rich Hill gave up five runs in the second inning and blamed himself for leaving too many breaking balls up in the strike zone. The Giants took advantage to win for the 11th time in 14 games.
“This is a tough one to chew on,” Hill said on the AT&T SportsNet postgame show. “I felt like the ball came out of my hand well, but it all points to that second inning and five runs. You can’t do that, obviously, here and expect to keep the team in the game. The numbers speak for themselves. It was pathetic.”
After finishing April with a 20-9 record, the Pirates are 6-18 in May and fell below .500 for the first time since the third game of the season. The Pirates (26-27) dropped to two games behind the first-place Milwaukee Brewers (28-25) in the NL Central standings.
Hill (4-5) was 8-2 with a 2.34 ERA in 18 career starts against the Giants — his most wins against any opponent — but allowed six runs on nine hits and one walk on 94 pitches in six innings. The Giants tagged rookie reliever Cody Bolton for eight runs in the seventh.
Giants starter Anthony DeSclafani (4-4) was efficient in allowing three runs on eight hits in seven innings, setting the tone with a three-pitch first inning and never throwing more than 14 pitches in any inning.
The Pirates got off to a poor start despite Tucupita Marcano’s leadoff double, which marked his third consecutive game with a double in his first at-bat. Marcano, however, was caught in a double play when he headed for home on Andrew McCutchen’s fly out to left field.
“Tuca made an aggressive read. Honestly, from the dugout version of that, we thought he made the right read,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. “As we found out the rest of the day, the ball continued to carry and drift out, so he got a little aggressive there. We battled our way back and came within three, then we were going to play a bullpen game and it just didn’t go that way.”
The Giants got five hits off Hill to take a 5-0 lead in the second inning. Mitch Haniger singled, and Casey Schmitt doubled off the glove of left fielder Bryan Reynolds at the wall. Both scored when Patrick Bailey doubled off the bag and down the first-base line and reached third on an error by right fielder Josh Palacios. Brandon Crawford added an RBI double to score Bailey, and Austin Slater followed by crushing a curveball 410 feet to center for a two-run homer.
The Pirates answered in the third, when Palacios tripled to left and scored on an Austin Hedges groundout to short to cut it to 5-1. Marcano hit a two-out double, stretching his streak of hits going for extra bases to six consecutive, but was stranded when Reynolds flew out.
Bryce Johnson grounded into a forceout but stole second base and scored on a single by J.D. Davis to give the Giants a 6-1 lead in the fourth.
Jack Suwinski sent DeSclafani’s 0-1 slider 396 feet into McCovey Cove for his 10th home run to cut it to 6-2. Suwinski is the first opponent to hit a ball into the water at Oracle Park this season and only the third Pirates player to do so, joining Garrett Jones (2013) and Adam LaRoche (2007). And Suwinski would do it again in the ninth inning.
“We see when Jack hits on time, the ball can go a long way,” Shelton said. “That kind of gave us some energy to get back in the game in the seventh.”
Connor Joe snapped an 0-for-16 streak with a double to center, advanced to third on Ji Hwan Bae’s single and scored when Rodolfo Castro grounded out to first and Bailey didn’t hold onto Wilmer Flores’ throw to the plate to cut the deficit to three runs.
Then the Pirates fell apart.
Bolton replaced Hill for the seventh but gave up eight earned runs on six hits, including five consecutive, in one-third of an inning. Davis singled, pinch hitter LaMonte Wade Jr. laid down a bunt to third and beat Castro’s throw and Haniger doubled to left to score Davis.
The Giants were just getting started, as Schmitt followed with a two-run single to left to give the Giants a 9-3 lead and Bailey blasted a 392-foot, two-run homer to make it 11-3. After Bolton walked Crawford and Johnson, Slater followed with a two-run double to left for a double-digit lead.
“Just from watching it, it looked like everything was up, everything was flat,” Shelton said. “It looked like the breaking ball and changeup didn’t have the action we’d seen before.”
Shelton turned to lefty Rob Zastryzny, who walked Davis and gave up an RBI double to Haniger as the Giants increased their lead to 14-3.
The Pirates turned to shortstop Chris Owings to pitch the eighth inning, and he loaded the bases after sandwiching a pair of singles around a Castro error but didn’t allow a run. The Giants also used a position player, and Suwinski crushed Brett Wisely’s second-pitch slider 414 feet into McCovey Cove for his 11th homer to cut it to 14-4.
Hill emphasized the need for the Pirates to work their way out of their May slump, as they have lost seven of their past nine games.
“We have to continue to keep coming in and putting in the work, putting in the time and putting in the effort,” Hill said. “The teams that do that and have that no-quit mentality continue to fight and put themselves in positions to win. But let’s face facts where we’re at right now: We’re a game under .500.”
Source: TribLIVE
