Padres 6, Giants 5: Osleivis Basabe Tied It Off a 103-MPH Fastball, and the Ninth Inning Threw It Away

A man playing in his third game of the season, in the lineup only because Luis Arraez cramped up, homered and then tied the game in the eighth against the hardest thrower in baseball. And this team still found a way to lose it in the ninth, because of course it did.

Twenty-four hours after two hits, they scored five and it did not matter

I want to be fair here, and being fair is getting harder every night. The Friday game was an unwatchable two-hit shutout. Saturday was actually a baseball game. The Giants scored five runs, came back twice, tied it in the eighth against a guy throwing 103, and had every reason to believe they were walking out of Petco Park with a split. Then the ninth inning came, and this team's ninth innings have a personality, and that personality is bad.

Xander Bogaerts doubled to lead it off. Fernando Tatis Jr. got the intentional walk. Jake Cronenworth dropped a single into shallow center off Dylan Smith and that was the game, 6-5, Padres win, seventh time in eight games they have won. San Francisco is 47-64 and 21-36 away from Oracle Park, which is a number I would like everyone to sit with for a moment. Twenty-one and thirty-six. You cannot be a real baseball team and lose that many road games.

Osleivis Basabe was the entire offense, and nobody planned it

Here is the part I keep turning over. Luis Arraez was scratched with cramps. Into the lineup goes Osleivis Basabe, who had played in two games all season. He hit a two-run homer to left in the third that scored Drew Gilbert and tied it 2-2. Then, with the Giants down 5-3 in the eighth and the game basically over, he doubled to deep left off Mason Miller — a 103-mph four-seam fastball, and Basabe put it just in front of the wall — scoring Willy Adames and Rafael Devers to tie it at five. Four RBIs. From a guy who was not supposed to be in there.

I am thrilled for him. I am also asking the obvious question, which is: what does it say about how this roster is being used that the best offensive night in a week came from a player who got in the lineup by accident? The Giants have spent this season telling us they are managing at-bats, managing matchups, managing workloads, managing everything. And then a cramp gives a bench guy four at-bats and he outproduces the entire everyday lineup from the night before by himself.

Tyler Mahle deserved better and did not get it

Mahle went 5.2 innings with nine strikeouts. Nine. He also gave up five runs on five hits, which is the kind of line that tells you the damage came in bunches rather than in a steady leak, and it did. The Padres got two in the first when Jackson Merrill doubled home Ty France and Manny Machado. Freddy Fermin took Mahle deep for a two-run shot in the fourth to put San Diego back in front 4-3, and then singled home Bogaerts in the sixth to make it 5-3. Keaton Winn came on in the sixth to finish that inning.

Mahle has been one of the few genuinely good things about the last two weeks of this season. He shut out the Brewers for six innings on July 27. He struck out nine here. He is pitching like a guy who wants to be somewhere that matters in October, and the deadline is Monday, and I would not blame him one bit.

The eighth-inning rally was real, and it deserved a better ending

You do not tie a game in the eighth inning against Mason Miller by accident. That is one of the hardest at-bats in baseball and the Giants won it, and Adames and Devers both came around, and for about fifteen minutes on a Saturday night in August this team looked like it cared a great deal about the outcome of a game that means nothing in the standings. That is the version of them I want to watch. Fight, come back, make somebody's closer sweat.

And then the ninth, and Bogaerts standing on second before anybody had settled in, and the intentional walk to Tatis that everybody in the ballpark saw coming, and Cronenworth flaring one into center. Ballgame. That is four different ways this season that a good night has turned into a loss, and I have watched all four of them more times than I can count.

Monday cannot get here fast enough

The deadline is Monday. This team is seventeen games under .500 with a road record that belongs in Triple-A and a lineup that produces runs only when somebody unexpected happens into the batting order. Sell. Please, genuinely, sell. Move the veterans on expiring deals, get real prospects back, hand the at-bats to Basabe and Gilbert and Eldridge and whoever else is going to be here when this is worth watching again, and stop pretending the current arrangement is one adjustment away from working.

Osleivis Basabe had a night I will remember. The Giants lost anyway. That has basically been the season. Go Giants.

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