SAN FRANCISCO — The comeback efforts were ultimately for naught.
The Giants scored two runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to push Wednesday night’s ballgame to extras but ultimately lost, 8-5, to the Miami Marlins and are now in danger of being swept at home by one of baseball’s worst teams.
San Francisco entered the bottom of the ninth inning trailing 4-2, but the Marlins’ Calvin Faucher gifted the team a free rally by plunking Dominic Smith and Casey Schmitt with back-to-back pitches, then walking Jung Hoo Lee to load the bases with no outs.
Willy Adames shrunk the deficit to 4-3 with a sacrifice fly to the left-field warning track that just missed being a walk-off grand slam. Along with scoring Smith, Schmitt advanced to third and Lee moved up to second.
Patrick Bailey then tied the game at four apiece with an opposite-field single to left field that easily scored Schmitt. Third base coach Matt Williams aggressively waved home Lee, but Stowers threw out Lee by several feet. Christian Koss followed Bailey with a sharp line drive that he hit right at third baseman Connor Norby, sending the game to extras.
For Williams, it was his second very aggressive send in as many days. In the bottom of the fifth on Tuesday, Williams sent home Rafael Devers on Heliot Ramos’ double down the left-field line, and Devers was thrown out by several feet at the plate. Manager Bob Melvin defended Williams’ aggressive send, noting that San Francisco’s offense had been struggling and that the team needed to take a risk.
Closer Camilo Doval entered for the top of the 10th, and Miami began the inning with Nick Fortes as the automatic runner on second base. The Marlins took a 5-4 lead when Otto Lopez flipped a one-out single into center field to score Fortes, then expanded their lead to 7-4 on designated hitter Heriberto Hernandez’s two-run double. Norby’s sacrifice fly scored Hernandez and ballooned the Marlins’ lead to 8-4.
Facing a four-run deficit in the bottom of the 10th, the Giants’ offense could only muster one run on Heliot Ramos’ RBI single.
Logan Webb allowed a fair amount of hard contact — Kyle Stowers’ two doubles at 113.7 and 112.5 mph were the two hardest-hit balls of his career — but the right-hander ended the night with a standard line: six innings, six strikeouts, two runs. Through 17 starts, Webb’s ERA now sits at 2.52 over 107 1/3 innings.
Prior to Sunday, right fielder Mike Yastrzemski hadn’t homered since April 30. With a leadoff home run in the first inning, Yastrzemski now has two home runs in his last three games.
Miami took a 2-1 lead in the top of the fourth inning on Otto Lopez’s two-run double to left-center field, but San Francisco tied the game at two apiece in the fifth on Christian Koss’ sacrifice fly.
The Giants had an opportunity to put together a big inning in the sixth when Rafael Devers led off the inning with a single and Heliot Ramos followed with a walk, putting runners on first and second with no outs. San Francisco let the opportunity go to waste. Smith and Schmitt flew out, then Jung Hoo Lee struck out to end the inning.
The Marlins had their own chance to plate runs in the eighth, an opportunity they would not waste. With two outs and runners on second and third, Hernandez lunged at a slider out of the strike zone and shot a two-run single into center field, giving Miami a 4-2 lead.