Before Tuesday’s game, Giants manager Bob Melvin was asked whether he had a philosophy when it came to bunting with the automatic runner at second base while facing a one-run deficit in extra innings.
The Giants elected not to bunt when that situation arose on Monday night, and they were ultimately unable to find a way to score their placed runner in a 10-inning loss to the Braves.
“It’s hard to play for a tie, especially the way our situational at-bats have gone,” Melvin said. “I think there’s no real philosophy other than kind of see how things are going. But we’ve had some trouble with those man at third and less than two outs [situations]. So we were going to try to take three shots at it.”
When the Giants found themselves in a similar spot on Tuesday night, they decided to shift strategies. The result ended up being the same.
For the second consecutive night, the Giants came up short to the Braves in 10 innings, falling 4-3 at Oracle Park to extend their losing streak to three games and slip 3 1/2 games behind Atlanta for the third National League Wild Card spot.
The Braves went ahead on Travis d’Arnaud’s RBI single in the top of the 10th, but the Giants, again, couldn’t come through against closer Raisel Iglesias in the bottom half of the inning. With automatic runner Casey Schmitt at second base, Melvin called for leadoff man Tyler Fitzgerald — who crushed his 13th home run of the season in the third inning — to bunt.
Fitzgerald squared up to try to get Schmitt over to third base, but he ended up being called out on batter’s interference, forcing Schmitt to return to second. The ruling, which was not challengeable, might have actually been a break for the Giants, as d’Arnaud threw Schmitt out out at third after Fitzgerald couldn’t get his bunt attempt far enough away from home plate.
“I still don’t know really what happened,” Fitzgerald said. “I don’t know how I was out. It doesn’t really matter. I didn’t get the bunt down. It’s kind of my loss. I’ll have to figure out the ruling on that, but that’s not really the problem at this point.”
Iglesias went on to induce flyouts from LaMonte Wade Jr. and Heliot Ramos to close out the win for the Braves. The Giants finished 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position and are batting only .154 with RISP since July 30, which likely influenced Melvin’s decision to have Fitzgerald try to lay down a bunt against Iglesias.
“We’re trying to get a guy over to third, trying to get it down the third-base line, with LaMonte up next,” Melvin said. “The guy’s a pretty tough customer to try to string some hits together with.”
Fitzgerald is hitting .305 with a .972 OPS, but he said he didn’t have a problem with being asked to bunt in that situation.
“No, not at all,” Fitzgerald said. “I’m not even really swinging that hot of a bat right now. I have to be able to get a bunt down. I’m a rookie. I’ve known I’m going to be in that spot the whole year. I just wasn’t able to get it down. I kind of deadened it way too much.”
While Fitzgerald couldn’t deliver in the 10th, he supplied the Giants’ lone offensive highlight of the night in the third, when he drilled a solo shot off Braves starter Charlie Morton to cut the deficit to 3-2 and snap the Giants’ five-game homerless drought.
The 425-foot blast marked Fitzgerald’s 15th home run of his career, making him only the second Giants player with 15 or more home runs in their first 59 games. The other one? The late, great Willie Mays, who had 16 homers through his first 59 games for the New York Giants in 1951.
The Giants staged a late rally in the eighth after Wade smoked a leadoff double and Ramos reached on a fielding error by third baseman Austin Riley. Atlanta veteran Pierce Johnson nearly escaped the jam by coaxing a double play from Michael Conforto, but San Francisco still managed to tie the game after Wade scored from third on a wild pitch.
The Giants couldn’t find a way to get the job done in extra innings, though, causing them to fall back to .500 with two more games to go against the team they’re chasing in the Wild Card race.
“Regardless, every game is important now,” Melvin said. “We know where these guys are in the standings. We know where we are. We came in here and had pretty high expectations. … To lose three games in a row and get back to .500 is pretty frustrating, especially in the fashion that we have done it.”
