The Giants Blew a Six Run Lead in the Ninth Inning and the Game Isn't Even Over Yet

Nine to three going to the ninth. Then Eugenio Suarez hit a grand slam. The same Eugenio Suarez that Tony Vitello got himself ejected screaming about in the first inning. I'm writing this while it's still going because I can't sit here quietly.

Nine to three going to the ninth inning.

Six runs. Three outs. On a Wednesday afternoon against a Cincinnati team that had scored one run in two days at this ballpark. I had it on in the other room and I wasn't even watching anymore, because who watches the ninth inning of a six run game in the last week of August.

Hector Rodriguez hits one 423 feet. Fine, whatever, that's his third of the day, the man was locked in, nine to four, get the next guy.

Then Eugenio Suarez hits a grand slam.

Eugenio Suarez. The exact hitter Tony Vitello got himself run over in the top of the first, when he stood on that top step and screamed at Ben May about a check swing until Ryan Blakney threw him out of a baseball game with two outs in the first inning. That was the moment he chose to spend his afternoon on. Eight hours later the same guy empties the bases and the lead is one, and the manager is not in the dugout to do a single thing about it, because he decided in the first inning that his energy was better spent on an umpire.

Then a sacrifice fly. Then Stephenson singles somebody in.

Dylan Smith got exactly one out and gave up four hits doing it. Four hits, one out. The lead is gone and I'm typing this with the game still on, and I genuinely do not know what the score is going to be when I hit publish, and I want to be very clear that I do not care anymore.

Fuck this whole year.

I mean it. Fuck this entire season. Not the sad, tired version of that where you shrug and say wait till next year. The angry one. This team has found a new way to make me feel stupid for caring roughly every nine days since April, and today they outdid themselves, and I want that on the record before somebody smooths it over in a postgame quote about how the guys competed.

Because they will. That's the part I can't stand. Somebody is going to stand at a podium in about forty minutes and say the effort was there. The effort is always there. It was there when they got walked off at Fenway four days ago, and when the bullpen set fire to a lead against the Rockies, and in San Diego and Kansas City and Seattle, and none of it means anything because nobody in that building can protect six runs for three outs.

And Vitello. Let's talk about Vitello.

I wrote a piece this morning saying I kind of liked the ejection. I said it showed a pulse. I'm taking it back. All of it. Take the whole thing and throw it out.

You do not get to torch your afternoon in the first inning of a getaway day game over a two out check swing and then be unavailable when your bullpen is handing away a six run lead in the ninth. That's a man who found the cheapest possible way to look like he cared and then wasn't there when caring actually cost something. He's been the manager for five months and he has managed exactly one memorable thing all season and it was yelling at a first base umpire in the first inning of a game his team went on to lose the lead in.

Four ejections. Fifty five wins. Whatever the record says at the end of tonight, this is the résumé. And Buster already told everybody he's back next year, which means we get to do this again in April, and again in May, and again next August, and I'm supposed to just make my peace with it.

Logan Webb threw six innings and gave up two runs today. Rafael Devers hit his 29th, third day in a row he's gone deep, and he's been the only thing worth watching on this roster for two months. Jonah Cox hit one 421 feet. Shay Whitcomb hit one 410. Drew Gilbert came off the bench and cleared the bases with one swing.

All of it. Every bit of it. Handed back in about fifteen minutes by a group of relievers this front office assembled on purpose.

That's what makes me the angriest, if I'm honest. Not the loss, if it's a loss. It's that five guys did something genuinely good today and it went straight into the woodchipper, and it's the eleventh or twelfth time that's happened this summer, and at some point a season stops being unlucky and just becomes what the team is.

This is what the team is.

The game's still going. I'm going to go do something else.

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