SAN FRANCISCO – During a season that has been filled with hair-pulling and teeth-grinding moments, Wednesday’s 8-6 loss to the Angels had to be one of the most frustrating and bittersweet for the Giants.
On one hand, they didn’t have much problem getting on base. They rapped out 10 hits and drew seven walks. Another runner reached by a hit by pitch.
Yet with all that action on the basepaths, San Francisco could only manage one run through the first seven innings and would have been blown out had it not been for the eighth inning when the Giants tried to mount a comeback and sent a jolt of life through the crowd of 32,842 at Oracle Park.
It’s a trend that Giants fans have been all too familiar with and not just this season, although it’s the only one that manager Bob Melvin is concerned with.
“It’s been a little bit of a problem this year,” Melvin told reporters at Oracle Park. “What we’d leave, 10 more on base today? As long as you get opportunities, you feel like at some point in time you’re gonna come through.
“Early in the season it was a real problem, and then we were able to combat that for a while. But games like this, when you leave 10 guys on base and you lose by two runs, especially with the opportunities we had early on … that’s where it could have been a different game.”
The Giants left men on base in seven of the nine innings. Six were stranded in scoring position.
San Francisco’s most productive inning was the eighth when they strung together four consecutive hits capped by Heliot Ramos’ three-run home run.
“It’s tough as a team, for sure,” Ramos told NBC Sports Bay Area. “We’re tying to do the best that we can. We wanted to get the starter out of the game quick so we could get into the bullpen but it is what it is. One of them days.”
The offense wasn’t a total waste.
Ramos’ moon shot was his seventh homer since getting called up from the minors on May 8. He also reached on an infield single and walked twice, raising his June average to .370.
Ramos acknowledged the frustrations of leaving guys on base – the Giants are batting .244 with runners in scoring position and are leaving an average of more than 15 players on base each game – but said the team is intent on getting it turned around.
“We’re going to keep grinding,” he said. “We’re going to keep doing what we do and just get them tomorrow.”
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