CINCINNATI — Kyle Harrison had no chance of outperforming veteran teammates Blake Snell and Logan Webb over the past two days. It was unrealistic to expect him to come close. Two teams in the last 40 years had three consecutive shutouts by their starting pitchers, and neither had a fresh-faced rookie.
It wasn’t Harrison who briefly put Great American Ballpark on a no-hitter for the second straight night.
As dominant as Snell was Friday night, third-year Reds All-Star Hunter Greene was nearly as electric in handing the Giants a 6-4 loss.
Greene struck out 11 batters while blanking the Giants (55-57) over six innings. The only hitter off Greene was Michael Conforto, whose two-out single in the fourth ended Greene’s no-hitter and later contributed one of three home runs by Cincinnati’s bullpen that cut the final lead to two.
“You’re down 6-0 and all of a sudden they’ve got their best reliever in the game,” manager Bob Melvin said of his team’s late surge that fell short. “That’s something we’ve done all year. We just refuse to give up in these kinds of games. Listen, when you come out of a game like that — you’re down 6-0 — you take something out of it, that’s the fight we put up.”
Newcomer Jerar Encarnacion, who replaced Heliot Ramos in the seventh inning, added a solo home run in the eighth, his first home run since being recalled from Triple-A Sacramento before Friday’s game. But the Giants were held to four runs or fewer for their fourth straight game and the 15th time in their last 21 games.
“It was special because I started the year in Mexico, so I’m excited to be back here,” said Encarnacion, who hit 19 homers in 26 games for Oaxaca in the Mexican League before the Giants picked him up after receiving no major or minor league offers over the winter. “I believed in myself the whole time and I believed in God first.”
At the Giants’ current pace, it would have taken several days of play to fill the hole Harrison left for them, who allowed more hard contact in his first inning than Snell did in all of his outing the day before. Benefiting from a pitch out that allowed Patrick Bailey to prevent Elly De La Cruz from stealing his 56th bag, Harrison got through the inning unscathed, but it was just a harbinger of things to come.
Cincinnati gave up four home runs, including two by catcher Tyler Stephenson, and chased him with two outs in the fourth inning. The six runs he gave up tied a career high, set in a 6-1 loss to the Padres last September, the only other time he gave up four home runs.
When Jonathan India hit a hanging slurve into the second tier of left-field seats in the second inning, it marked the first run allowed by a Giants starter since Tuesday’s loss to the A’s, 19 innings ago. After Webb’s complete-game shutout Wednesday and Snell’s no-hitter Friday, Harrison said, “I really want to live up to the expectations of the guys who pitched so well the previous few days.
“At first I was really thinking about it. But I wasn’t thinking about their games because it’s different. You want to be good and score late in the game like they did, so it’s really frustrating that I didn’t do it today.”
Harrison allowed six runs in four starts in July and had gone 16 innings in his previous three appearances while holding opponents to two runs. His hot streak came after he lasted just 3⅓ innings in a July 6 loss at Cleveland, the only other time this season he failed to complete five innings.
In his last start, Harrison was one out shy of tying the longest start of his career, striking out 11 batters in 6 1/2 innings of no-hit pitching. Before Saturday’s game, manager Bob Melvin said the 22-year-old rookie has been pitching more effectively lately while saying he’s “on the verge of pitching a little bit lower in games.”
But, given an extra day of rest before Saturday’s game, Harrison showed signs of wear and tear early. In addition to the hard contact, Harrison’s fastball registered several readings below 90 mph and in his last game he had the three slowest fastballs he’s thrown this season.
This didn’t worry Melvin, who simply put it down to a bad night.
“He’s throwing with better velocity at times and he’s been able to throw at times when it wasn’t very good,” he said. “He was late a lot today, and I don’t think his breaking ball was as accurate as we’ve seen. Some days you just don’t have your best stuff.”
The Giants have placed their postseason hopes in the hands of a five-man rotation that showed the previous two days that it can live up to its reputation as the best in baseball, but also includes two rookies in Harrison and Hayden Birdsong who are approaching career-high workloads.
Harrison pitched 102⅓ innings last season at all levels, a total he will surpass the next time he takes the mound.
Asked if he had six more weeks left, Harrison said: “100 percent. …
“I felt so good in my last start and felt like I was on the right track. It was a really bad start today. I can’t say I did a whole lot right. In the bullpen, I threw some pitches that weren’t as good, but I didn’t think about it too much. It wasn’t the best day feel-good-wise, but I can always compete when I’m on the field and I didn’t compete as much as I wanted to today.”
Every game counts, given the Giants’ tenuous position in the National League wild-card race, and the loss puts them 4½ games behind the Mets (58-51), who occupy the last of the three spots and were still in the race against the Angels in Los Angeles. Between them in the standings, the Cardinals (57-54) have already won, and the Padres (59-52), Pirates (55-54) and Diamondbacks (59-51) were still in action when they last went out.
The loss also kept San Francisco from reaching .500 for the first time since May 31, when it was 29-29.
The Giants have since had seven chances to reach .500, but have lost all seven games.
“We didn’t get it done tonight,” Melvin said. “So we’re going to go ahead and win a series tomorrow. I think if we win the series tomorrow, we’ll be pretty happy with what we did here.”
Notable
Ramos was suffering from a right thumb injury and left the game after being knocked out in the bottom of the sixth inning. The club did not immediately provide a reason for his departure.
Following
Left to left Robbie Ray (1-1, 4.82 ERA), who became the only other Giants starter to allow three home runs in his previous start, will look to rebound in the series-clinching game against RHP Carson Spires (4-2, 3.46). First pitch is very early — 9:05 PT — and the game is streaming exclusively on Roku.
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