KANSAS CITY — Even when things are going mostly right for the Giants, this team has so little margin for error that all it took was two bunts for it all to go wrong.
Such was the case on an obscenely hot and humid Monday night at Kauffman Stadium, which saw Willy Adames provide the clutch heroics to tie the game with two outs in the ninth inning, only for San Francisco to go on to yet another heartbreaking defeat.
Adames played a factor in it all falling apart in the bottom of ninth when, for no apparent reason, he wasn’t in position to tag second base after catcher Daniel Susac made an equally questionable call to try to get the lead runner on the first of two sacrifice bunts.
In the end, the Giants were handed a 4-3 walkoff loss by the Royals, one of only four teams around the majors below them in the league standings.
“No matter how it goes down,” manager Tony Vitello said, “you don’t like it.”
Vitello didn’t second-guess Susac’s decision to go for the lead runner, or Adames’ failure to cover second. He was standing near the bag but his feet were inches off, allowing Josh Rojas, who led off the inning with a single against Caleb Kilian, to get in safely.
Rojas didn’t need to slide, and even began to pull up before he reached the base, because Adames wasn’t in position to tag the base for the force out.
The two players convened about the miscommunication after the game with infield coach Ron Washington, who clarified that the mistake was on both players’ shoulders. Susac should have gotten the out at first, and Adames should have been at second until that decision was made.
“I just couldn’t tell from home” that Adames wasn’t on the bag, said Susac, who was also responsible for two of the Giants’ six hits. “I just threw it. … Looking back at it, probably [should have] taken the out at first. You live and you learn. I tried to take a chance.”
The game ended only two batters later, when Nick Loftin dropped down another bunt with Rojas representing the winning run on third base. Bryce Eldridge charged the ball, which appeared to be drifting foul up the first-base line, and tried to flip it to Susac with his glove but his 6-foot-7 frame didn’t bend down far enough to get his leather around the ball.
The ball rolled away, Rojas raced home and his teammates soon poured out of the first-base dugout to celebrate a win that appeared to be in jeopardy just a half-inning earlier.
“I think it was a tough hop for Bryce,” Susac said. “It was one of those balls that probably goes foul, but at the same time, if he gets it, he’s out by three steps.
“We talked about that. It was a tough play. But it tends to happen — one bad play leads to another, one bad throw leads to another. It’s stuff we’ve got to clean up.”
Susac was on the receiving end of one great throw earlier in the game, when Drew Gilbert fired a dime on one hop to home plate for an 8-2 double play, preventing Lane Thomas from scoring on a sacrifice fly in the second inning and keeping the score tied at zero.
The catcher called the throw the “best we’ve had from the outfield all year,” though Vitello commended his catcher for corralling the one-hopper and making the tag.
“Susac was great all night, and he was extremely composed as the ball was coming,” Vitello said. “When you’ve got a throw coming that’s that firm and it’s gonna take a hop, you don’t really know what kind of hop you’re gonna get. I thought the composure was outstanding.”
That put the Giants in position to take a 1-0 lead in the fourth on a 430-foot solo shot to right field from Heliot Ramos. But for the third game in a row, San Francisco took a lead, failed to add on and eventually let it slip away, never to be reclaimed again.
The Giants were down to their last out when Adames launched his 18th home run of the season — his third in the past four games — to tie the score at 3. It was the second consecutive blown save by Royals closer Alex Lange that he allowed a home run with two outs in the ninth.
What it means
There are officially 100 games down, 62 to go in what is shaping up to be one of the worst seasons in the Giants’ history, before or after their move to San Francisco.
At 42-58, they are one of only 10 in the 143-year history of the franchise with as many losses at the 100-game milepost. The 16 games below .500 matches a season-worst.
They’ll need to win Tuesday to avoid falling further below .500 than any point since the end of the 2017 season, which produced the Giants’ second-worst finish in their West Coast era.
Who’s hot
Blink, and you might miss it.
A day after the less-than-fleet-footed Bryce Eldridge swiped second base — his first career stolen base — catcher Daniel Susac kicked it into gear, too. Unlike Eldridge, the catcher drew a throw on his stolen base attempt and dove headfirst ahead of the tag for his second steal.
The Giants, who began Sunday’s game tied for third-fewest steals in the majors, intended to be more aggressive on the base paths, and that apparently includes two of their slowest runners.
Susac’s successful steal was the Giants’ 12th in the month of July without being thrown out.
In 15 games, they have matched their most stolen bases of any previous month, when they went 12-for-18 across 26 games in June. They had been 27-for-39 when July began.
Who’s not
It took less than an inning for Trevor McDonald to cough up the 1-0 lead Ramos provided with his home run, and he would walk off the mound only an inning later after experiencing discomfort in his elbow.
McDonald served up a 440-foot blast to Salvador Perez after he hit his second batter of the game to begin the bottom of the fourth. Isaac Collins singled home another run to make it 3-1.
That wasn’t the Giants’ biggest concern after the game, however. McDonald is set to undergo MRIs, and the prognosis didn’t sound great — San Francisco already has another arm, Tristan Beck, en route.
The 25-year-old right-hander summoned the training staff after something felt off on a slider he threw while warming up for the fifth inning. Teammates consoled him on the mound, and JT Brubaker took over.
Up next
The Giants resume their series against the Royals with the second of a three-game set Tuesday (4:40 p.m. PT). Tyler Mahle will make his first start of the second half against Luinder Avila.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source celebrity.land ’
