SAN FRANCISCO -- No matter how much you want to dive into the meat of a story, don’t ever skip the prologue. Sometimes it tells an even bigger tale.
The story: Anthony DeSclafani, just off the injured list, inherited the bases loaded in the sixth inning of a tie game and surrendered a two-run double, a sacrifice fly and a two-run homer in the span of four pitches -- five runs that keyed Monday night’s 11-5 Giants victory.
The prologue was the maddening way in which the Giants loaded the bases, with three more Diamondbacks gifts that a team hunting a playoff spot can ill afford to present, especially to a team ahead of them in the standings.
With Brandyn Garcia pitching, the Giants’ sixth began with a Matt Chapman grounder to which shortstop Gerardo Perdomo threw into the dirt and past first base for an error. Garcia then walked pinch-hitter Luis Matos.
Jung Hoo Lee was ready to give himself up with a sacrifice, but catcher Gabriel Moreno could not grab the ball off a bounce and Lee was credited with an infield hit due to his speed.
The sequence had manager Torey Luvollo expressing the same frustrations that peppered his postgame news conference after the Diamondbacks lost Sunday’s game against the Red Sox with a similar batch of mistakes.
“I would say my frustration right now is us giving a good team extra outs and extra opportunities,” Lovullo said. “I think the walk to Matos was as big a play as the error. So you’ve got first and second and a bunt situation.
“We’ve got to execute and get outs. When we collect outs and do it in the right way the game runs smoothly and very efficiently and we come out on the positive side of things. We didn’t do that.”
As a result, the Diamondbacks returned below .500 at 72-73 and remained 4 1/2 games behind the Mets for the final Wild Card, with the Giants and Reds ahead of them.
DeSclafani made his first appearance since a thumb injury that landed him on the IL. A starter for most of his career, DeSclafani could not recall another time in the Majors he entered with the bases loaded and nobody out.
He seemed the right man for the job given his heavy sinker. Had he gotten Christian Koss to hit into a double play, a run might have scored but he could have limited the Giants to a 5-4 lead.
Instead, Koss reached across the plate and swatted a double down the right-field line to make it 6-4 San Francisco. After Patrick Bailey’s sacrifice fly, Heliot Ramos hit a sinker that moved over the heart of the plate into the left-field seats for a 9-4 lead.
DeSclafani finished the game and allowed two more homers, to Chapman and Bailey, the Giants’ fourth and fifth of the game. Lee and Dom Smith each hit two-run homers off starter Nabil Crismatt.
DeSclafani said the thumb was not an issue that bothered him, but his performance did.
“We’re in a big race here,” he said. “They put their faith in me to come in with the bases loaded and no out and I didn’t get the job done. It’s a thousand percent on me.”
The game started well for the D-backs, who tagged Logan Webb for four runs by the third inning. Arizona also got a bases-loaded gift in the second when Webb walked Moreno and Alek Thomas, and Koss booted an Ildemaro Vargas ground ball that should have ended the inning.
Jake McCarthy got all three runs home with Arizona’s first hit of the game. He smashed a rare hanging changeup from Webb off the base of the center-field wall for a triple and a 3-0 Arizona lead.
Singles by Ketel Marte, Moreno and Blaze Alexander pinned a fourth run on Webb, who bore down to pitch three scoreless innings before he left after his 110th pitch.
The Diamondbacks, who got three hits from Marte and stolen base No. 26 from Corbin Carroll, did not score again until Moreno’s solo homer in the eighth.