MILWAUKEE — A month since Farhan Zaidi declared the Giants’ rotation the best in baseball, those dreams have fizzled out along with their playoff hopes.
In the ideal scenario, Logan Webb and Blake Snell would have given them a two-headed monster at the top, Robbie Ray would look more like the 2021 Cy Young winner than a grizzled veteran coming off major surgery, and their pair of promising rookies would continue to build on strong first impressions.
On their most pivotal trip of the season, with their playoff hopes hanging in the balance, no San Francisco starter even threw a pitch in the sixth inning or later.
Hayden Birdsong walked off the mound Thursday afternoon with an out left in the fourth inning, and by the time the frame was over the Giants were in a six-run hole. They were shut out, 6-0, dropping two of three to the Brewers and finishing 2-4 on the road trip that started with another series loss in Seattle.
The right-hander born about four hours south of here, in Mattoon, Illinois, who celebrates his 23rd birthday Friday, was the lynchpin to the Giants’ pitching plans down the stretch. Understanding that he and Kyle Harrison would both surpass previous career-highs in innings, the Giants determined that Birdsong had pitched well enough to earn a full-time rotation spot and traded away a more known quantity in Alex Cobb to clear the decks.
Birdsong has taken the ball five times since the trade deadline, and the Giants are 0-5 in those games. The latest loss sent them seven games back of the Braves for the final wild card with 27 games to play, dealing another blow to their playoff chances that stood at 1.7% entering the day, according to FanGraphs.
After going 3-0 with a 2.45 ERA while completing five innings four times in his first six big-league starts, Birdsong hasn’t made it out of the fifth once in his past five starts. The six runs he surrendered Thursday raised his ERA since the trade deadline to 9.16.
In all but one of his 11 starts, Birdsong has walked multiple batters, and all four of the free passes he issued Thursday came around to score.
Garrett Mitchell got the scoring started with a solo shot in the second — the Brewers’ fourth home run of the series — and Joey Ortiz doubled home the first free pass issued by Birdsong to open a 2-0 lead. It got out of hand in the fourth as Birdsong issued back-to-back walks after retiring the first two batters of the inning and wouldn’t make it out of the inning, requiring 92 pitches to record 11 outs.
The Brewers plated one more in the third after Birdsong walked William Contreras and allowed him to reach third on a single from Willy Adames, setting up a double-steal that was misplayed by the Giants and allowed Conteras to score from third, credited with a steal of home.
Adames broke for second, and catcher Patrick Bailey — in his first game since a 10-day stint on the injured list with a strained oblique — threw through to Tyler Fitzgerald. With Contreras threatening to go home, Fitzgerald threw behind him, to third baseman Matt Chapman, who bobbled the ball as the catcher scored without a play.
As a group, the Giants’ rotation has been far from the best in baseball, even with Webb (1.70 ERA in seven starts since the deadline) and Snell (6 starts, 1.72 ERA) holding up their end of the bargain. Both the 128⅔ innings and the 4.27 ERA they have gotten from their starters in August rank in the bottom half of the league.
Their beleaguered bats meant that even the smallest crack in the armor of their pitching staff could have fatal consequences.
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They were stymied by another starting pitcher, Aaron Civale, who held them to no runs on two hits over seven innings after they mustered only three hits and couldn’t crack the scoreboard in seven frames against Freddy Peralta a night earlier.
The Giants went down quietly against the Brewers bullpen and, likewise, into the void of low-stakes September baseball.
Up next
The Giants return home and begin a three-game series Friday against the Miami Marlins, where former manager Gabe Kapler is an assistant general manager. They will have LHP Blake Snell (2-3, 3.76) on the mound against RHP Adam Oller (1-1, 5.23) in the series opener, then face a decision on how to fill LHP Robbie Ray‘s vacant rotation spot Saturday. When the series wraps up, the Giants begin a stretch of 22 straight games against teams in playoff position.
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