One bad inning can rot the whole barrel

A few minutes before the San Francisco Giants JV squad hosted the Los Angeles Dodgers in a fight so unfair that even Nevada would not have sanctioned it, I wrote a tweet. It wasn’t a special tweet, per se. Perhaps not even a good one.

But it was an accurate one. Here it is, framed and hung for all to see.

If you missed what happened on Tuesday, you surely had a good reason. That reason, I’m guessing, is that you were hiding, taking an “if I can’t see it then it didn’t happen” approach to the Giants. Forget the poor play and maddening inability to get clutch hits. I’m not even talking about those.

I’m talking about a very brief stretch of games in which the Giants lost starting catcher Patrick Bailey and then backup catcher Tom Murphy, got Bailey back just to lose him to a suspicious illness, lost designated hitter Jorge Soler, lost shortstop Nick Ahmed, lost left fielder Michael Conforto, lost fourth outfielder Austin Slater, and lost center fielder Jung Hoo Lee.

That’ll make you hide. I, myself, explored places in my apartment to hide, trying first the bookshelf and later the washing machine, before my boss informed that I must still come to work even on the scary days.

And then I learned what happened on Tuesday. It started with the Lee update, which was predictably awful: his shoulder is separated. We won’t have a timeline until Lee has a second opinion on Thursday, but right now it would be a massive win if we see the Giants spark plug play a game before Spring Training.

Next we got a Bailey update: the illness that has kept him out of the last three games is, it turns out, the flare-up of concussion symptoms that landed him on the Injured List to begin with. Back he goes to the IL, and it’s hard to even care about the team when brains are in play.

A crap ass day. And it wasn’t even done. The Giants had spent a week making a poop pie, and on Tuesday they sprinkled it heavily with salt and took a torch to it, intent to brûlée the wrong tiny white morsel of seasoning.

Soler was finally taking on-field batting practice! That’s good! He was feeling good! That’s good! He hit a ball straight up that ricocheted off of the bar atop the cage and punched him in the dome, sending him off the field with the trainers.

That’s bad.

We’ve reached the point in the misery and the misfortune where you have to laugh. Not because it’s so grim it’s funny, but because one’s body lacks the requisite energy to perform any other function. Laughter is a survival skill, even when it’s dishonest. Especially when it’s dishonest.

And so no, a Giants win would not salvage a crap ass day. A 20-0 win to stop the run differential bleeding, in which Shohei Ohtani marched off the field in the 5th inning to declare his retirement would not have salvaged a crap ass day.

But a crap ass game would certainly add to the crap ass day. And a crap ass game is precisely what transpired.

It was Keaton Winn’s turn on the mound, and as a gift to help him recover after a two-start streak that had turned his ERA from glamorous to terrifying, he got to face the Dodgers.

All pitchers struggle from time to time, and usually those struggles can be chalked up to one of a few common ailments. Sometimes they can’t find the strike zone. Sometimes they can’t find anywhere but the strike zone. Sometimes the breaking balls are hanging as if dropped in on a parachute. Sometimes the pitches are predictable. Sometimes they’re predictable because someone is banging on a trash can, or sending signs from second base. Sometimes the ball just isn’t moving correctly to fool a right-hander, or perhaps a left-hander, or maybe even both.

But Winn has a struggle so unique that the pitch doctors still need to name it before they can even think about diagnosing it. I’ll give it a placeholder moniker. He has a severe case of big inningitus.

Winn is excellent. Truly excellent. Except when he isn’t excellent, at which point he’s awful. Truly awful.

Through nine starts this year, here’s how many times Winn has pitched an inning and allowed the following number of runs:

0 runs: 32 times
1 run: 6 times
2 runs: 1 time
4 runs: 2 times
5 runs: 1 time
7 runs: 1 time

It’s wilder still when you consider that he didn’t even make it through a whole inning for the two worst frames. His unsightly 6.17 ERA is the result of 29 earned runs in 42.1 innings. 20 of those 29 runs have been scored in 3.1 of those 42.1 innings.

I don’t really know how to properly emphasize just how absurd that is, so I’m going to default to the tried and true toddler tactic and just repeat myself: 20 of his 29 runs have been scored in 3.1 of his 42.1 innings.

The optimist will say that he’s so close. 90% of the time, it works every time. But a 90% win rate still sends you home from the casino deep in debt when your wins are worth $5 and your losses worth $50.

I’ve avoided talking about the actual game, a 10-2 Dodgers win (so close), but by not talking about it I’ve effectively talked about it. You know what happened. You know exactly what happened, whether you watched the game and remember each detail, watched the game and drank away your memory, or didn’t watch the game at all.

Winn was fantastic until he wasn’t. And then the Giants lost in the blink of an eye.

His first inning was spectacular; a day after Mookie Betts began a game by smashing a home run, he looked horribly uncomfortable striking out to get the party started. Winn then retired Ohtani and even worked around a three-bag error by Luis Matos (who, I report with an exceedingly heavy heart, really does not appear to be a center fielder) to escape the inning unscathed.

With a little help from some delightful LaMonte Wade Jr. defense, he set down the side in order in the second inning, endearing himself to the Giants faithful by striking out Max Muncy.

And in the third inning he blended the first two frames, relying on his defense to work around the obstacle created by that very same defense. After issuing a one-out walk to James Outman, who advanced to third after stealing second base while Blake Sabol threw the ball roughtly 35 feet away from the bag, Winn got Betts to hit a groundball right at Matt Chapman, who proceeded to show the kind of defensive wizardry and creativity that almost allows you to forget that he’s one bad game away from an OPS that starts with a “5.”

But the fourth inning was one of “those” innings. You don’t need long, flowery descriptions to know the innings of which I speak. You need just a few words. Coors Field. Rain and illness. Jurickson Profar.

Winn entered the inning with a no-hitter, and exited it with the look of a man who woke up naked in a corn field with a six-pack sampler of Mountain Dew.

It took one pitch for the dam to break. One pitch, and one swing. One swing that you almost had to smile at, with Ohtani yanking his whole body into a slider, hitting the ball to the part of the park specifically designed to break the hearts of prospective home runs. One swing that launched a ball so deep into the night that it hung in the air long enough to defy time and gravity, but not art, so long that you drifted into a daze and thought maybe you were watching Barry Bonds. One swing that sent a ball further beyond the fence than any player had done at Oracle Park in two years.

One swing that, if technology allowed, Farhan Zaidi would bottle, take back in time to November, and present in his pitch to Ohtani. See?! Zaidi would yell, arms flailing in a failed attempt to contain his excitement. You can totally hit here!

Believe me when I say my hatred for the Dodgers runs deeper than the roots of the redwoods I grew up surrounded by, but ... come on. How can you not marvel at this?

And just like that, the game was over. No, not because of those grumpy tweets I received so many of, saying the Giants can’t overcome a 1-0 deficit. It was over because Ohtani had entered the matrix of Winn’s pitching showcase. His ball launched not just through the crisp Bay Area air, but also through the facade of Winn’s dominance, inviting others to follow.

Like dutiful lemmings, they followed. Freeman walked on five pitches, then Will Smith did the same. Teoscar Hernández scored a second run with a double, and even when Winn finally recorded an out, it came on an RBI sacrifice fly by Muncy. Winn struck out Andy Pages, but the champagne poured in honor of a strikeout with a runner on third and less than two outs was still foaming when Gavin Lux roped a two-strike hanger into aptly-named triple’s alley, scoring a fourth and final run.

The disaster inning had occurred, and yet the worst was still ahead of Winn. With the Giants playing their 15th game in as many days, and a heavily-taxed bullpen, Bob Melvin took the long-term view and let Winn come out for the fifth. In all likelihood, the Giant were going to lose regardless. Might as well soak up some of the sauce with the bread before the waiter takes the plate away.

Winn gave up back-to-back singles to Betts and Ohtani to begin the outing, and if you think that’s the bad news, it’s not. The bad news is that when the brigade came from the dugout to end Winn’s night, it wasn’t Melvin leading the charge; it was trainer Dave Groeschner.

And so Winn left the game, flanked by manager and trainer, ego bruised and forearm tight. Winn is set for an MRI on Wednesday, and said after the game that he’s “not overly concerned,” but unhappy arms make for unhappy pitchers. It would be cruel for the baseball gods and goddesses to deal the Giants another injury, but cruelty has been the manager’s special for the last month.

The Giants would never get close. That one bad inning was more than enough to crater their chances, but just for good measure they added a second one, when the Dodgers put four hits and three-extra base hits on Nick Avila’s ninth-inning ledger, inking him for four runs in what I can only assume was an extremely rude and arrogant response to Avila setting the side down in order in the eighth.

In between Winn and Avila, Randy Rodríguez was electric. Absolutely electric. And we should not forget that, even if it’s a mere footnote in a story you won’t be reading twice.

The offense at times excited you, but excitement was merely a vessel for disappointment. This was not a game where the Giants looked like a putrid and feckless ball club; it was a game in which they made you want to check out the hours at your local rage room. They put together quality at-bats, logging nine hits, drawing four walks, and striking out a mere three times. But in 14 at-bats with runners in scoring position, window-dressing RBI singles by Heliot Ramos and Luis Matos were the only hits they could muster.

This is not to say the Giants would have won with better sequencing. They may have struck out three times to LA’s 12, but the Giants’ nine hits were matched by the Dodgers’ nine extra-base hits. 10 of the 14 hardest-hit balls this game were smacked by the team in blue.

It was one of those days. A day where Winn’s bad inning was compounded by an injury. A day where Avila’s excellent inning was negated by an awful one. A day where Blake Sabol hit a ball that, per statcast, would have been a home run in 29 of MLB’s 30 ballparks. A day where I don’t need to tell you which ballpark is the 30th.

One of those days. One of those weeks. One of those seasons. Hopefully not forever.

Hopefully.