SAN FRANCISCO — Since signing with the Giants, most of Alex Cobb’s first season here has been derailed by poor defense or health issues. His expected ERA: sterling. The actual number: not so much.
Opening a three-game weekend series with the Chicago White Sox on Friday, Cobb finally got the results to match. He went five shutout innings in possibly his best start in orange and black, but the Giants were shut out for the fourth time this season and lost anyway.
Camilo Doval’s error when he was late to cover first in the ninth proved costly, as the runner eventually came all the way around to score the one and only run of the game, which was good enough for the White Sox to hand the Giants a 1-0 defeat.
“Camilo got over there a tad late,” manager Gabe Kapler said afterward. “There’s a lot of different places to turn as a reason why we didn’t win that baseball game. … I think it’s a number of things on any given night.”
On a home stand that featured two last-place teams and a third in town now with a losing record, the Giants have lost four of the first six games. Going back to last weekend, when they climbed a season-high 10 games over .500, they have dropped eight of their past 11.
Before first pitch Friday, Kapler regaled the repertoire Cobb has flashed since joining the Giants, even if he doesn’t own the numbers to back it up. His five shutout innings lowered his ERA to 4.71, but the quality of contact he’s been inducing puts his expected ERA more than two points lower, at 2.34.
Sitting at 95 mph, his fastball continued to have the most heat of his career, and he used it twice Friday to tail back on the plate for strikeouts looking of Tim Anderson and Leury Garcia.
“His stuff has been electric all year long,” Kapler said. “Cobber’s stuff has been as good as anybody we’ve had on our staff … some of the best stuff he’s had in his career.”
But while his defense had let him down in previous starts, it was the offense who failed to back him up Friday.
The Giants loaded the bases in the first inning, but Tommy La Stella struck out to end the threat, beginning a string of 12 straight San Francisco hitters sent down by White Sox starter Lance Lynn. Donovan Walton’s two-out double in the sixth broke the streak and served as the only base runner the Giants advanced into scoring position after the first.
“I thought we had a really good plan and approach in the first,” Kapler said. “It’s something we’ve been consistently dealing with. Just one more big at-bat that changes the course of an inning and a game. … We’re just not having that right now.”
The Giants’ defensive misfortune waited this time until Cobb had left the game.
Entering into a 0-0 tie in the top of the ninth, Doval muffed the toss from Brandon Belt while covering first base, allowing Gavin Sheets to reach base. Pinch-running for Sheets, Adam Haseley advanced to second when a bad hop ate up Jason Vosler at third. And he scored the only run of the game on a two-out, two-strike single to right field from Leury Garcia. Mike Yastrzemski may have had a chance to nab him at the plate but fumbled the transfer.
“From a team standpoint, we threw eight shutout innings. Just one mishap in the ninth cost us,” Cobb said. “But those games happen. There’s going to be games where our offense picks us up. It’s just baseball. You hope that it all clicks each night, but you go through stretches like this.
“When the pitching’s there, the next night the hitting might not be there, then the defense might be struggling, then the bullpen might have an off-night. Those are the things you have to all get on the same page again to create that winning streak we’re looking for and stop these skids that we’re currently in. It’ll start clicking again. The guys in this locker room are too good for it not to.”
Lynn and Cobb traded zeros, but both starters were out of the game by the end of the sixth inning. While Lynn’s night was clearly done with 104 pitches through six innings, Kapler went to his bullpen after Cobb had thrown only 67 pitches to complete five shutout frames.
The decision to pull Cobb ultimately didn’t factor in to the final score, but it initially appeared to be an odd choice. Although the White Sox made some hard contact in the fifth, Cobb hadn’t endured a stressful inning and was below the pitch count from his previous start.
Afterward, Cobb and Kapler both described his outing as a “foundation” to build off his next start, which will be his fourth since returning from a stint on the 15-day injured list.
“It felt like the right time given what we saw in the fifth,” Kapler said. “In this particular case, building back up off the IL, giving him the feel that he just had an excellent outing, which he did — he threw up zeros for five.”
“Coming back from injury and not making it through five yet, I just think he thought it was a good place to pause for that outing,” Cobb said. “It was the right call. The bullpen shut ’em down and we had a chance to win it in the ninth inning. It’s frustrating, but I think all the right buttons were pushed tonight.”
John Brebbia, Tyler Rogers and Dominic Leone delivered three relatively stress-free innings, until Doval took over in the ninth.
Cobb, who was the recipient of such poor play behind him that his expected ERA is among the top 5% of starters in the majors despite his pedestrian actual ERA, was the beneficiary of some stellar defense Friday night.
Yastrzemski added another highlight to his Gold Glove reel by tracking down Chicago’s best-hit ball off Cobb. Yastrzemski crashed into the wall, 386 feet from home plate and at least a couple dozen yards from his original position in center field, for the first out of the fifth inning on a long fly ball from Yoan Moncada, which had an 82% hit probability.
As the ball sailed through the cold and foggy summer air, the thoughts racing through Cobb’s mind were: “Is it going to be a double or a triple? And how am I going to weasel out of it?”
Once Yastrzemski reeled it in, Cobb raised both arms in celebration and Joc Pederson came all the way over from his spot in left to celebrate.
“What Yaz did was really game-changing,” Cobb said. “Even though we ended up losing.”
