Non-win seals non-winning season

A 6-3 loss to St. Louis was San Francisco’s 81st of the 2024 season

Well, for the third year in a row the San Francisco Giants will end the season without a winning record.

Friday night’s 6-3 loss dealt by the Cardinals handed San Francisco its 81st loss of the season, meaning if they won the final two games of the season, the team’s best possible winning-percentage would be that dubious mark: .500.

The game felt like the season in a nutshell: a promising starting pitching bogged down and eventually unseated by inefficiencies; a brief encounter with a lead that goes unsupported by the offense.

Landen Roupp had given up just 2 runs over 15 innings in his previous three starts, including back-to-back scoreless outings against San Diego and Kansas City, but St. Louis proved to be a peskier critter. The Cardinals chased him in the 4th after forcing him to throw nearly 100 pitches while collecting 9 hits and eventually plating 6 runs.

Imagine a squirrel slowly gnawing its way around an acorn. The ridiculous portion in the animal’s hands patiently reduced to something manageable, and something delicious. This is what St. Louis hitters did to our friend Landen. They held him in their squirrelly little squirrely paw-hand-claws and nibbled and gnawed and nibbled and gnawed, deflecting pitch after pitch until they got one to square up. St. Louis hitters swung at Roupp’s sinker 17 times, fouled off 10 of those and put the rest in play. They swung and missed at Roupp’s curveball only 3 times, fouled off 8 pitches and put 8 others in play. On the night, San Francisco arms threw nearly 200 pitches, almost 60 pitches more than St. Louis.

While opponents floundered against the curve in previous outings, batting just .198, the Cardinals seemed to hunt for the pitch.

Nolan Arenado blooped an 0-2 curve for an RBI single in the 1st. Not a resounding drive but a tone-setter, the barrel scraping the ball off the top of his cleats like he knew it’d be there. The first nibble of what would be very long and very short outing.

In the 3rd, again in an 0-2 count, Lars Nootbar lifted a below-the-zone curve over the wall in center. Not a bad pitch location wise, just one that Nootbar saw coming from a mile away.

This is the downfall of the Tom-and-Jerry mix. No matter how stuff-y the two pitches are, there’s only so many combinations and scenarios you can come up with to surprise the hitter, especially facing them for a second or third time. This is unchartered territory for Roupp who is new to the starting game. He has a slider. He has a change-up. He threw 13 of them (mostly to lefties) but it’s still a work-in-progress. It’s a pitch with no presence. The offspeed doesn’t occupy any of a hitter’s brain space when at the plate, which is what Roupp needs to get more swing-and-miss from his best weapons.

It felt like every other Cardinals hitter dug their heels in on a 2-strike count and just fought off his offerings until they got a pitch to square up. Masyn Winn fouled off 7 straight pitches in a 13-pitch at-bat in the 4th that ended with a game-tying double to left. Each sinker pinged and each curve ponged until one caught too much of the barrel. That at-bat broke Roupp. He even malfunctioned on the mound during it, glitched after coming set, balking the runner on first into scoring position.

The Cardinals would take the lead after Alec Burleson rolled a 2-out, 2-strike single into the outfield. The very next pitch Nolan Arenado lined a breaking ball to left that skipped over the wall for a ground-rule double. Not the best feeling for a fledgling starter—ending the season with the scent of his curveball’s singed seams in his nostrils. Both runners would eventually score on Nootbar’s triple against reliever Taylor Rogers.

As for the Giants’ brief encounter with a lead—that came on the back of Jerar Encarnación’s 2-run shot off Miles Mikolas in the 2nd.

Encarnación is large. The slug he put on a mistake over the plate might even make one excited for the prospective stitch-busting of 2025… The chase on elevated fastballs he couldn’t check in subsequent at-bats, however, certainly dulled that spike in heart rate.

Up 3-2 in the 3rd, San Francisco had runners in scoring position with no one out. A prime opportunity to pad a slim lead by putting a ball in play…well, you know how this goes. Three unproductive outs later and the built-up energy and momentum of those brief early opportunities had succumbed to a greater force, and flowed across the diamond into the visiting dugout.