Game Wrap 7/26/2018: Brewers 7 Giants 5

An exhausted bullpen, some BABIP bad luck and a bad strike zone by the home plate ump all contributed to losing a winnable game.   Key Lines:

Chase d'Arnaud 2B- 1 for 4, SF.  BA= .286.  Another injury fill-in player who contributes.

Austin Slater 1B- 0 for 2, 2 BB.  BA= .300.  With Brandon Belt hitting the DL, Slater got the start at 1B agains the lefty Wade Miley.  He showed good plate discipline in drawing 2 walks which led to 2 runs score.  He also took a bad hop off the chin in the 8'th inning to start a 2-run Brewers rally.  That ball was ruled a hit.

Buster Posey C- 2 for 3, BB.  BA= .286.  Buster has become pretty much a singles hitter with an OBP of .394.  He was in a 3 for 24 slump coming into this game.  Buster made a rare and understandable baserunning mistake in the 4'th inning as the lead runner in a 1'st and 2'nd with no outs situation.  He read basehit on a line drive by Brandon Crawford that was caught by Christian Yelich who threw to 1B too late but the first baseman had plenty of time to throw on to 2B to double up Buster.

Evan Longoria 3B- 2 for 4.  BA= .250.  Longoria returns from the DL with a 2-hit night.

Brandon Crawford SS- 2 for 4.  BA= .286.  Crawford is hitting just .181 for the month of July, but is now 4 for 12 over his last 3 games.   In addition to the 2 hits, he hit another ball hard that was caught in RF in the 4'th inning.

Steven Duggar CF- 2 for 3, 2B, BB.  BA= .286.  Duggar is starting to look pretty comfortable at the plate and so far is hitting lefties better than righties.  He contributed to 2 Giants rallies in this game.

Dereck Rodriguez RHP- 6 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 2 BB, 5 K's GO/AO= 9/2.  ERA= 2.75.  This should have been the lead story of the night as Young Dereck pitches his 5'th consecutive Quality Start.  He had a scoreless 3-inning relief appearance just before the All-Star Break to boot.  No matter what happens to the rest of this season, witnessing Young Dereck's rookie season has been a joy.  Up to now, he has been neutral on ground ball tendency, but had the BrewCrew killing worms in this game.

Reyes Moronta RHP- 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 K's.  ERA= 1.76.  Dominant inning for Moronta who had a 98 MPH FB with command paired up with a wicked hard breaking ball.  It looked like more of a hard curveball than a slider.

Mark Melancon RHP- 0.2 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 0 K's.  ERA= 3.57.  Melancon had some pretty serious bad BABIP luck as the first hit was the bad bounce off Slater's chin.   The second found a hole where Brandon Crawford was standing before he moved to cover 2B on a hit and run.  Gotta say, though, all 4 balls were hit hard and Melancon still does not seem fully healthy out there.

Chris Stratton RHP- 1.1 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 1 BB, 2 K's.  ERA= 5.14.  Stratton got out of Melancon's bases-loaded jam with a dominant strikeout of Eric Thames in the 8'th inning but let the game get away in the 9'th turning a 4-3 deficit into 7-3 which the Giants 9'th inning rally could not overcome.

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The Loss dropped the Giants 5.5 games behind the NL West leading Dodgers.  The D'Backs also lost to drop 1.5 games behind while the idle Rockies dropped 2 games back.

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Madison Bumgarner tries to even the series tonight facing Chase Anderson.