Sanchez gets loss after fine outing

Henry Schulman - San Francisco Chronicle(SFGate.com)

Baseball has an evil way of balancing its ledgers, as Jonathan Sanchez learned in a 5-1 defeat Tuesday night. One start after winning a game he deserved to lose, he lost a game he deserved to win.

Adding to the wickedness was the fact that Sanchez was beaten not by one of Detroit's high-salaried thumpers, but a .219-hitting scrub named Ryan Raburn, who pinch-hit for Kenny Rogers in the eighth inning and broke a 1-1 tie with a homer three-fourths of the way up the left-field bleachers - Andres Galarraga territory.

"I could have done that," Rogers told Raburn when he returned to the dugout.

The Tigers added a run in the inning, and Marcus "Homer or Nothing" Thames took Vinnie Chulk way out in center field - Barry Bonds territory - in a two-run ninth that sealed a Tigers win and ensured the Giants will leave San Francisco after today's game having lost three consecutive homestands.

The Giants were heartbroken for Sanchez after he took a no-hitter into the sixth inning and struck out eight in seven-plus innings only to have his win streak snapped at four. Sanchez did not allow a ball out of the infield until Edgar Renteria busted the no-hitter by slapping a leadoff single to left in the sixth.

"His first five innings could be the best any of our starters have thrown all year," Rich Aurilia said. "That's the positive thing. That why the loss is so hard to swallow."

Manager Bruce Bochy said Sanchez threw "a great ballgame" and bemoaned another bad offensive game against a left-handed pitcher, in this case Rogers, the 43-year-old whose career dominance in Oakland (25-4) appears to work on the west side of the bay.

The Giants scored once in seven innings against Rogers on a Bengie Molina sacrifice fly in the sixth that scored Fred Lewis, who had two hits.

The Giants have a gem in Sanchez, who won his previous start in Colorado on Thursday when he picked a good day to allow seven runs in five innings. The Giants gave him eight runs in a 10-7 victory.

"He's filthy," Thames said of Sanchez. "I was talking to Pudge (Rodriguez). He's been playing for 18 years and said that kid is nasty. He has a nasty slider. He pitched great."

Rodriguez even made a point of asking Sanchez what pitch he threw to get him to ground into a seventh-inning fielder's choice. That meant something to Sanchez, a fellow Puerto Rican, who said, "That's one of the greatest. He's going into the Hall of Fame."

Most impressive was the way Sanchez dominated a modern-day murderer's row of Tigers who batted right-handed, including the first seven in the lineup.

Sanchez has proven he can foil right-handers as long as he throws strikes, and he threw lots of them. He struck out two Tigers in each of the first three innings, including righties Placido Polanco, Carlos Guillen, Miguel Cabrera and Thames.

The third run charted to Sanchez might have been preventable. With runners on the corners and nobody out in the eighth, Guillen hit a comebacker to Billy Sadler, who, in Bochy's words, "had a mental drift there" and failed to look Renteria back to third. When Sadler threw to second for a force, Renteria raced home.

The play upset Bochy because he had just convened the infield on the mound and reminded everyone to make sure to cut off that third run. Bochy also was not pleased with the fastball down the pipe that Chulk threw in the ninth to Thames, who is having the streak of a lifetime.

All of his last eight hits have been home runs. He also tied a Tigers record by homering in his fifth straight game, blasting the ball way over the center-field fence and onto the roof of the concession stand beyond.

When told that Bonds was just about the only player to hit that structure, Thames smiled and said, "That's good company. That's all right. I used to love to watch him hit them here. He was one of my favorites."

This game featured a bizarre moment of baseball jurisprudence. In the eighth , Cabrera flied out to Aaron Rowand, who threw to first in a bid to double off Magglio Ordoñez. Simultaneously, second-base umpire Brian O'Nora called the runner out while home-plate ump Paul Nauert called him safe. They conferred, and the safe call stood.

On the next pitch, Ordoñez was thrown out trying to steal to end the inning.