SF Giants drop second straight in loss to Brewers; St. Mary’s alum dominates

SF Giants vs. Milwaukee Brewers: Giants held off by St. Mary's College's Corbin Burnes.

SAN FRANCISCO —  The San Francisco Giants returned home from a three-city road trip and dropped the first game of a crucial four-game series against the Milwaukee Brewers, 3-1, on Monday night.

The Giants’ loss and a Los Angeles Dodgers win on Monday puts San Francisco’s National League West rival 1.5 games back of first place in the division.

With Johnny Cueto placed on the injured list with an illness hours before the game, Jose Alvarez got the short-notice call to start — turning a big ticket pitching match-up into a Giants’ bullpen game against one of the National League’s best starters in Corbin Burnes.

Burnes, a St. Mary’s College alum, dictated the night. He held San Francisco to two hits in six scoreless innings, collecting nine strikeouts with a high-velocity backdoor cutter and an eye-popping 16 swing and misses.

“I thought I was getting away from him coming over here,” Kris Bryant, the former Chicago Cub said. “He’s one of the best in the game. He has five plus pitches and throws strikes. When he’s not throwing strikes, it looks like its going to be a strike.”

With some key, longer at-bats — particularly from Brandon Belt — the Giants were able to run up his pitch count and Burnes cracked in the seventh inning. Working with a two-run lead, Burnes gave up back-to-back hard-hit singles to Belt and Kris Bryant hit to put runners on the corners with no outs and Burnes was pulled with no outs.

Brandon Crawford chopped a single off reliever Brad Boxberger into right field to score Belt and cut the Giants’ deficit to one run, but Mike Yastrzemski and Alex Dickerson hit into first-pitch outs. Darin Ruf smoked a 107mph lineout to left field to end the threat.

“It could have ended with a bang,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler said. “I think that’s the thing I’ll remember, is Darin up there with a chance to put us in a really good spot that game. He turns up underneath that ball a tiny bit and it’s in the seats. He put a really good swing on it and we weren’t able to capitalize.”

It was the second run the Giants have scored against Burnes in two match ups this season — he held them to seven innings with five strikeouts and four hits in Milwaukee on Aug. 6. The Brewers’ bullpen cleaned up from there, and they threw out some of their best. Devin Williams walked a batter, but pitched a scoreless inning and Josh Hader retired the side in the ninth to erase a leadoff double by Bryant.

“We faced three of the better relievers in baseball and the bottom line is they just shut us down,” Kapler said. “We weren’t able to get anything going, and when we were able to get a rally here or there, we weren’t able to capitalize at the end.”

The Brewers tagged him for two runs, one in the first inning and one in the second, on four hits and two walks over his 1 2/3 innings pitched. The Giants have scored one run in their last 18 innings played.

Jarlin Garcia both kept the Giants in striking distance and prevented potential to over tax the bullpen for this crucial stretch against the Brewers and Dodgers right after with 3 2/3 innings of scoreless ball.

“It was a pretty impressive performance by Jarlin and the expectation is when he comes in after Alvarez, we need him to throw up zeroes. Alvarez, we expect him to throw up zeroes too. He wasn’t able to do that so you really need to stretch the next few guys in a bullpen game and Jarlin did just that for us.”

Alvarez was yanked after 1 2/3 innings after giving up a run in each of the first two innings.

In the first inning, Christian Yelich hit a one-out double down the first base line and Omar Narvaez hit a first-pitch RBI single to score him. Brewers starter Corbin Burnes helped his own cause in the second inning with an RBI knock and Alvarez was pulled with two outs in the second inning with runners on the corners. Jay Jackson got the final out and Garcia entered the game as a pinch hitter

The Brewers added an insurance run in the eighth inning against Dominic Loene. Avisail Garcia drew a walk, Rowdy Tellez singled to put runners on the corners. Luis Urias hit a ground rule double to put runners on the corners, and Leone forced a ground out to limit the damage.

Despite also using Zack Littel, Tony Watson and John Brebbia — called up along with second baseman Jason Vosler in the transaction that sent Alex Wood to the COVID-19 IL and Cueto to the IL — Kapler said the bullpen “is in fine shape” for Tuesday’s game.

Cueto’s start still up in the air

Cueto was scratched from his scheduled start on Monday hours before first pitch with an illness with a Tuesday start still a possibility. Cueto tested negative twice for COVID-19, but came to park for treatment including IV fluid bags and medications to sleep comfortably, Kapler said. They’ll know if he can make his Tuesday start on the day of.