TORONTO -- On paper, the Giants seem to be built to crush lefties.
Their lineup skews right-handed, and they have a few veterans, most notably Wilmer Flores, who have made their living terrorizing southpaws.
But in reality, the Giants haven’t been able to do enough damage to consistently beat left-handed starters this year.
Willy Adames continued his offensive turnaround by launching a pair of home runs, but the Giants collected only two hits against Blue Jays lefty Eric Lauer en route to a 6-3 loss that sealed a series defeat on Saturday afternoon at Rogers Centre.
After dropping their first two games out of the All-Star break, the Giants (52-47) are now two games behind the Padres for the third and final National League Wild Card spot. While they’ve managed to go 42-30 against right-handed starters, they’re only 10-17 against lefties this year, which has dragged them down in the standings.
“We’ve struggled with lefties all year,” manager Bob Melvin said. “It’s been a little better the last month or so. But it’s been a sore spot for us.”
The Giants are batting an MLB-worst .210 against left-handed pitching this year. They predictably couldn’t get much going early against Lauer, who retired the first 13 batters he faced before Adames finally broke up the no-hit bid with a solo shot to left-center field in the fifth.
San Francisco extended its lead to 2-0 after Luis Matos reached on a leadoff double and scored on a sacrifice fly by Heliot Ramos in the sixth. But the Blue Jays erased the deficit by rallying for four runs against ace right-hander Logan Webb in the bottom half of the inning.
Webb, who was coming off a scoreless inning in his second career All-Star appearance on Tuesday, managed to work around traffic earlier in the game, but Toronto’s contact-oriented lineup broke through by pounding out five hits in the sixth. Bo Bichette led off with a single, and Addison Barger doubled to set the table for Ernie Clement, who followed with a one-out RBI single to left field.
Will Wagner then put the Blue Jays ahead by smoking a 2-0 changeup from Webb to right field for a two-run double. Former Giant Tyler Heineman capped the big inning with an opposite-field shot that popped out of the glove of a diving Ramos in left field and fell for an RBI double, extending Toronto’s lead to 4-2.
“The balls started finding holes,” Webb said. “They were swinging a lot. A lot of contact on balls throughout the game. That inning, I didn’t make any good pitches, really.”
Webb departed after allowing four runs on a season-high 11 hits over six innings, bumping his ERA to 3.08 over 21 starts. The 28-year-old has struggled in each of his three career starts against the Blue Jays, going 0-3 with a 9.00 ERA (16 earned runs over 16 innings).
“They don’t strike out much,” Webb said. “It seemed like they swung at every first pitch I threw. It seemed like they were on every first pitch I threw. It wasn’t fun.”
Adames brought the Giants within one with his second home run of the game -- a solo shot to left off right-handed reliever Chad Green in the seventh -- but the Blue Jays tacked on a pair of insurance runs via Heineman’s two-run shot off Ryan Walker in the bottom of the eighth.
While Adames has started to pick it up at the plate and is batting .314 with a 1.092 OPS and five home runs over 14 games in July, he has only a .554 OPS against lefties this year. The Giants also haven’t gotten as much production from other right-handed hitters like Flores (.629 OPS vs. lefties), Matos (.601) and Ramos (.721), who were expected to be lefty killers this year.
Jerar Encarnacion could provide a boost once he completes his rehab from a left oblique strain, but the Giants want to give him plenty of at-bats with Triple-A Sacramento to ensure that he’s comfortable at the plate once he returns.
“I feel like the lefties kind of stepped up the last few years,” Adames said. “They’ve been doing better against right-handed hitters, I feel like, in general. But I feel like we haven’t been able to do a lot of damage against them. They’ve been executing well against us. We haven’t been the best. Sooner than later, we have to figure it out and start playing better baseball as a whole. Hopefully, we can be better.”