Another Loss to Pirates: One of 9 Games That May Have Sunk Giants' Season

How repeated failures against some of baseball’s worst teams may have sealed San Francisco’s playoff fate.

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Another day, another San Francisco Giants loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates. With the defeat, the Giants are now 0-4 against the Pirates, who are 45-64 against all other opponents. In this particular game, the Giants seemed to have it in the bag, opening up leads of 2-0 in the first and 4-1 in the fifth. But the Giants’ bullpen, both depleted and arguably mismanaged, let it slip away.

Justin Verlander made another start in which he was more than good enough to earn a win (five innings, one unearned run), and he even touched 98 mph.

Enter Carson Seymour—who, to be fair, breezed through a clean, 12-pitch sixth against the Pirates’ 3-4-5 hitters—but things unraveled quickly when he was sent back out for the seventh.

He issued a leadoff walk—something that would haunt the Giants again later—with a three-run lead. He then surrendered a two-run homer to Jack Suwinski, who entered the game hitting .103/.274/.162 with one home run, a 33 wRC+, and a 39.3% strikeout rate, albeit in just 84 plate appearances.

Suwinski’s home run came on the ninth pitch of the at-bat, and as you can see, the eighth pitch could have (and should have?) been called strike three:

All of a sudden, the Pirates were right back in the game. It was a bit baffling to see Seymour pitch both the sixth and seventh innings in what had to be considered a must-win game from Bob Melvin’s perspective, unless several other arms were unavailable.

Ryan Walker, José Buttó, and Joey Lucchesi all seemed to be far more logical candidates for the seventh inning of a relatively close game. Although each had pitched on Sunday, none had thrown on Saturday. Were all three unavailable?

Seymour has now allowed eight runs (six earned) in 11 MLB innings this year, including a staggering five home runs against just 48 batters faced. That means if you pull up a random plate appearance against him, there’s a 10.4% chance it ends in a home run.

Seymour sports a 4.91 ERA, a 5.55 expected ERA, and a 8.11 FIP (which is heavily influenced by homers). Not that he should be shamed and given up on. He has obvious talent—he throws hard and gets a lot of grounders—but with the Giants still on the fringes of contention with almost two months of basbeall left, there seemed to be more reliable options.

Then things got even weirder in the eighth.