Giants open doubleheader with 10-run inning, end it by allowing 6-run walk-off

I cannot think of a better way for the San Francisco Giants to have started their Tuesday doubleheader against the Colorado Rockies.

Similarly, I cannot imagine a worse way for them to have finished it.

Let’s start with the good, because it’s always best to disappoint the reader rather than build them up. I want you to close your computer feeling worse about life than you did a few minutes prior.

And also, you know, chronology and what have you.

Here’s an incomplete list of all the awesome things that happened in the first inning of the first game of the doubleheader:

• The Giants had tallied 4 hits before Germán Márquez had thrown 10 pitches.
• Manager Bud Black made a mound visit just 14 pitches into the game.
• Every hitter with an even number in the lineup slot knocked in a run in their first at bat.
• Mike Tauchman hit twice and had a double and a walk.
• Brandon Belt hit twice and had a single and a grand slam, totaling 5 RBI. His grand slam came a few seconds after Duane Kuiper said the pitcher had to come in to avoid a bases-loaded walk. Probably should’ve taken the walk.

• Buster Posey hit twice and also had a single and a home run, making it back to back dingers. Posey has now matched his 2019 home run total with 7, and exceeded his 2018 total by a pair of homers.

• The Giants knocked Márquez out of the game before the Rockies had a single at-bat.
• The Giants scored 10 runs.

Sure, it was Coors Field, so the 10-spot really only counted as 2 or 3 weighted runs. It was still all kinds of fun. If you had to put up with the monstrosity that is 7-inning games at a demon ballpark, at least have it play out like that.

From there on, the Giants coasted. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt comfortable that the Giants would win a game until there were three outs in the final inning — more on that later — but, with a half inning in the book it felt like the result was already determined.

The Rockies would briefly counter with a grand slam of their own, but a two-run shot by Brandon Crawford shut the door on any rally attempts by the home team and gave the Giants a 12-4 win in Game 1.

That was the start of the day. Now we fast forward to the end of the day.

The Giants led 6-2 with 2 outs in the bottom of the seventh, and a runner on. The tying run was not in the batter’s box or the on-deck circle. The tying run was in the hole and the winning run was in the unnamed thing that comes after the hole (this sentence is weird), and the “we’ll embarrass you by also scoring a run on top of the winning run even though the winning run would suffice because it’s the bottom half of the final inning” run was somewhere deep on the bench thinking about dinner plans and wondering if he’ll ever be able to compete on Jeopardy! or if his ability to quickly access trivial knowledge just isn’t as good as his friends told him it is.

They all scored.

Jake McGee allowed a single, then a 2-run double, then an RBI single, and suddenly it was a 1-run game. Gabe Kapler opted to turn away from his struggling lefty closer and, with a righty in the box, turn to right-handed rookie Camilo Doval.

Doval, in his defense, did his job. Coors Field, unfortunately, did their job even better. The Giants young flamethrower got a pop-up out of C.J. Cron, yet it managed to find that perfect patch of grass that neither Belt, Wilmer Flores, nor Austin Slater could reach.

It had an expected batting average of .100.

It also kept the game alive, and, 8 pitches later, Charlie Blackmon launched one into the stands to end the game.

Rude. Ruthless. And yet almost predictable.

The Giants saw both sides of the Coors Field coin, and while a split in a doubleheader is always the expected outcome, it’s a little rough to land on that when the Giants didn’t spend a single pitch of either game trailing.

It was not fun, but that’s baseball life.

Still, the day was not without its bright side. The Los Angeles Dodgers also played a doubleheader, which also ended with a brutal, come-from-behind, walk-off loss.

The only difference is they lost the first game too.

Good day.