SAN FRANCISCO — About halfway into a top of the first inning that lasted nearly half an hour, Alex Cobb turned away from the rubber, took a couple strides toward second base and smacked his glove in frustration.
He was reacting to balking in another run — the fourth of five the Nationals would score in the first — but it was a culmination of tough luck and hard contact that ultimately spoiled his return to the rotation before he could record three outs in an eventual 11-5 loss that resulted in San Francisco dropping only its second series of the season.
By the time manager Gabe Kapler came to get him, after 10 batters and 40 pitches, with the bases loaded and two outs in the first inning, Cobb stared at his manager striding toward the mound and stoically handed him the ball without saying a word.
This was not how the 34-year-old right-hander envisioned his return to the rotation after missing almost two weeks with a mild groin strain, as evidenced by his body language and his pitching line: 2/3 innings, four hits, five runs, three walks — and the balk.
The five-run hole was too much for the Giants’ patchwork lineup to overcome against Nationals starter Josiah Gray, who held San Francisco hitless for 4 2/3 innings and blanked them for all six of his frames.
The Giants’ first hit of the day was 11 years and 4,012 minor league at-bats in the making. Jason Krizan, the 32-year-old who made his MLB debut Friday, ripped a single to right field with two outs in the fifth to break up the no-hitter and record his first major league hit (his minor league total: 1,104).
The two-out knock helped the Giants load the bases in the fifth, but it wasn’t until Gray left the game and they loaded them again in the seventh that they were able to turn a rally into runs. The big hits in a five-run seventh inning came from two newcomers — center fielder Luis Gonzalez and first baseman Mike Ford — to a lineup that was missing three of its members from opening day and three other starters who haven’t played a game this season.
The loudest cheers prior to the Giants’ five-run rally came when the Warriors’ final score from Game 1 in Memphis came across the jumbotron. Fans started heading for the exits in the top of the eighth, after the Nationals responded with three more runs to make it 11-5.
No opponent had recorded at least 28 runs and 45 or more hits during a three-game series against the Giants since the Padres scored 37 runs on 45 hits during a three-game sweep in 2004.
Five of the Giants’ six matchups with the Nationals this season were decided by at least six runs, with losses of 11-5 and 14-4 and wins of 7-1, 12-3 and 9-3. Sunday marked the first time in 10 games this season the Giants have lost when scoring at least five runs — all but guaranteed after the five runs Washington scored before the Giants came to the plate.
It’s impossible to know how Cobb would have fared Sunday if Jason Vosler had fielded the soft-hopping ground ball off the bat of Nelson Cruz on the third batter of the game. Vosler could have tagged third, fired to second and on to first — a surefire double play if not an inning-ending triple play — but the ball skipped under Vosler’s glove and into shallow left field, allowing Cruz to chug into second base and Cesar Hernandez to score the Nationals’ first run of the game.
At the time, Cobb had thrown seven pitches. He would fire 33 more and wouldn’t make it out of the inning.
Cobb was the victim of some tough luck, even beyond the four unearned runs resulting from the fielding error.
Cruz’s would-be double-play ball had an expected batting average of .100; Hernandez’s leadoff single that snuck past a shifted Vosler is expected to result in an out 84% of the time. Extending the inning and driving in Washington’s fifth and final run, Lucius Fox’s first big-league hit was a softly hit ground ball to the hole at shortstop that Brandon Crawford had to chase down from his position behind the second-base bag.
Besides the misfortune, Cobb suffered from some rust making his first start since April 19, 13 days ago, when he strained his right groin covering first base and left hit start against the Mets in the fifth inning.
When he’s on his game, the sinker-baller is working the bottom third of the strike zone — and below — inducing ground balls and strikeouts. Entering Sunday, Cobb was inducing ground balls on 70% of balls in play against him and swinging or called strikes on 33% of his pitches, both career highs (career averages of 51.5% ground balls and 27.9% called/swinging strikes).
But too often Cobb couldn’t find the strike zone — 18 of his 40 pitches were called for balls while issuing three walks — and when he found the zone, his pitches were too often in the middle or upper half. Juan Soto and Yadiel Hernandez each lined hits off sinkers or splitters left in the upper half of the strike zone.
Soto’s hit, on the second batter of the day, was sent directly back at Cobb — at 102.3 mph off the bat — and made him jump to avoid taking a comebacker off his leg. Cobb’s leap figured to be a good test of his recently healed groin, but that proved to be the least of the Giants’ concerns Sunday.
