MILWAUKEE — The Giants got a taste of what they gave up, and it had to be a bitter pill to swallow with the way Kyle Harrison mowed through their meager lineup Tuesday night.
San Francisco had no answers for its former top prospect in an 8-3 loss to the Brewers.
Facing his former team for the first time since he was traded last summer for Rafael Devers (and again this winter, to Milwaukee), Harrison held the Giants scoreless for 5 ⅔ innings and departed to a standing ovation after matching a career high in strikeouts.
Besides a solo shot from Willy Adames with two outs in the sixth, the best piece of contact the Giants put on any of Harrison’s pitches might’ve been a foul ball from Jonah Cox that landed in the second deck — only on the wrong side of the foul pole.
Cox came up empty on his next swing, going down as Harrison’s 11th of 12 strikeout victims.
It proved to be quite the contrast to the performance the Giants got from their starting pitcher.
By the time he took the mound for the second inning, Harrison had already been spotted a three-run lead by Trevor McDonald, his former minor-league teammate.
McDonald walked the first two batters he faced and, after getting two outs, served up a 412-foot home run off the batter’s eye in center field to Jake Bauers that scored all three.
That was more than enough support for Harrison, who hasn’t allowed three runs in any of his 11 starts this season. He hadn’t surrendered any for 23 consecutive innings until Adames snuck a line drive over the left field wall.
His 1.57 ERA is the second-best in the majors.
What it means
Starting pitching problems have plagued the Giants all season, only becoming more glaring in contrast to Harrison. McDonald became their first starter in three games to complete five innings, but still buried them in a hole they couldn’t climb out of after just the first inning.
San Francisco fell to 9-29 when allowing its opponent to score first.
President of baseball operations Buster Posey made the bold move to trade away Harrison, but didn’t replenish the pitching depth — and it has shown.
The Giants’ 4.94 ERA from their starters is the second-worst in the majors — ahead of only the Rockies, who have to play half their games at Coors Field. It doesn’t help that their bullpen, which lost Tyler Rogers, Camilo Doval and Randy Rodriguez, has surrendered 13 runs to the Brewers the past two games, including a four-spot in the eighth inning after the Giants had rallied to cut the deficit to one.
Who’s hot
Hardly anybody right now for the Giants, who fell to 5-14 over their past 19 games, tied with the Cubs — who lost 10 straight at one point — for the worst record since May 13.
The highly paid left side of their infield is at least showing signs of life.
Adames’ homer was his second in the past three games, and he’s batting .294 with an .852 OPS since the start of May after reaching base three times Tuesday night.
A night earlier, third baseman Matt Chapman ended the longest homerless drought of his career with his second long ball of the season — after slapping doubles the previous two games.
Who’s not
Let’s call it for what it is: Tony Vitello.
With the lefty Harrison on the mound, the manager removed two of the team’s hottest hitters from the lineup, opting to go with journeyman utilityman Buddy Kennedy over Bryce Eldridge as the designated hitter and rookie Victor Bericoto over Jung Hoo Lee in right field.
Vitello explained that the decisions had to do with matchups.
But Eldridge has never had dramatic left-right splits, and Harrison has even exhibited reverse splits with lefties posting an OPS 50 points higher against him than righties.
Kennedy, a career .177 hitter, was a non-factor with two strikeouts and a weak pop-up in three at-bats. Bericoto, at least, contributed one of the Giants’ nine hits.
Eldridge and Lee each contributed pinch-hit RBI singles in a two-run rally in the eighth, but Drew Gilbert flew out to end the threat, which proved to be too little, too late.
The questionable lineup decisions come on the heels of back-to-back games where Vitello allowed his starting pitcher to exhaust 96 pitches over just four innings.
Up next
Losers of seven of their past eight, the Giants still have two more games against the NL Central-leading Brewers. On the bright side, they won’t have to face Jacob Misiorowski.
The schedule doesn’t get any lighter: San Francisco’s opponents for the rest of the month have a combined .562 winning percentage, the toughest slate for the month of any team in MLB.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
