Giants lose to Rockies. Again. This is fun.

The San Francisco Giants lost yet again to the Colorado Rockies tonight, 5-2. In doing so, they were officially eliminated from the NL West and watch any remaining hopes of a wild card spot slowly slip away.

So much of this game was incredibly frustrating, because it was avoidable.

Case in point, I want to talk about Patrick Bailey in the third inning. We’ll get into the rest of it later but this moment really stuck out to me. I try pretty hard not to single any players out as a cause of a loss and I want to clarify I’m not doing that here. Just using this as an example of the overall vibes of this game.

In the third inning, Ezequiel Tovar (official Rockies menace of the day) had singled, and a wild pitch gave him a strong jump to steal second. There was no way Bailey was going to beat him with a throw, but that didn’t stop him from trying. Wildly. The throw went way offline, past a perplexed looking Thairo Estrada (who was roughly 15 feet to the right of where it whizzed past him) and shot into center field. This gave Tovar third base in the process and earned Bailey his 10th error of the season.

And the worst part is that another wild pitch later in the inning allowed Tovar to score before they could get the last out of the inning.

If Bailey holds onto that ball, the Giants don’t lose 90 feet. The Giants don’t lose 90 feet, Tovar can’t score on a wild pitch. If Paul DeJong’s error didn’t allow Tovar to reach in the first, then he doesn’t score on Kris Bryant’s double. If Tovar weren’t on the Rockies, maybe the Giants win both of these games.

I’m just saying. It was frustrating.

Okay, let’s get into it now. Opener Scott Alexander struggled from the jump. Tovar reached in the first inning on the fielding error by DeJong before stealing second and getting knocked in by the double from Bryant. That ended Alexander’s night and brought in Jakob Junis, who immediately gave up a single to Elehuris Montero that scored Bryant.

The Giants had a small rally of their own in the bottom of the inning though. With two outs, Bailey, Luis Matos and Mike Yastrzemski hit consecutive singles, with the latter driving in Bailey for the first run of the game for the Giants.

But then, well, the third inning happened. It started with a triple from Charlie Blackmon. It was a weird night with balls hit along the lines by the Rockies. At least three hit directly down the line and rolled all the way to the wall, causing the Giants outfielders some trouble. As was the case here with Blackmon’s triple. Tovar knocked him in with his single, and we’ve already been through the rest of this inning, which ended with the Rockies up 4-1.

I want to give a shoutout here to Taylor Rogers in the bottom of the fifth. Junis got two outs and had allowed a double to Tovar (seriously, that guy did everything, I’m kind of sick of him). At this point, Gabe Kapler decided to bring in Rogers to face Nolan Jones, specifically, basically undermining the three-batters rule because it would end the inning. Essentially bringing him in as a lefty specialist.

Rogers was not, in fact, able to get Jones out, walking him instead to bring up hot-hitting Montero. Whom he struck out. Baseball, man.

Anyway the sixth inning saw the rest of the Giants’ offensive success. Estrada and Wilmer Flores kicked things off with two singles to lead off the inning, before Michael Conforto was brought in to pinch hit for Mitch Haniger. Conforto hit a sac fly that scored Estrada and might have scored Flores as well if Jones didn’t have such a good arm. They wisely opted not to send him. Unfortunately, Bailey hit into a double play to end the inning. Rough night for the rook.

Bryant knocked in the Rockies’ fifth run of the night with a single, after Blackmon doubled to lead off the seventh inning. Really great to see him bouncing back just in time to face his former team. So fun.

The Giants wouldn’t score again after the sixth inning, though it was not for lack of trying, I’ll give them that. The ninth inning saw a rally, of sorts. Exactly the kind of infuriatingly frustrating rally that one would expect from this game. Bailey and Joc Pederson hit consecutive singles and both advanced on a wild pitch. With two outs, Brandon Crawford battled out a walk to load the bases for Blake Sabol, who stayed alive with a 1-2 count only to pop out to end the game.

Earlier today, the Giants were 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position. Tonight, they were 2-for-8. So again, it’s not the throw from Bailey that cost them the game. It’s not the error by DeJong. It’s hard to win games when you can’t hit with runners in scoring position. And it’s extremely hard to win games when you have both defensive mistakes and quiet bats with runners on.

And unfortunately, my friends, that is exactly how you set yourself up to potentially get swept by the worst team in the National League.