Another frustrating loss

Giants' 4 homers not enough to overcome Reds

Henry Schulman - San Francisco Chronicle (SFGiants)

If the frustration of an entire season can be depicted in a single pose, Fred Lewis nailed it. With two outs in the top of the ninth inning Saturday night, running between first and second, he grabbed his helmet in disbelief and ripped it off his head.

The Giants hit four home runs for the first time in more than a year and everyone wearing a San Francisco uniform gleefully started to celebrate what looked like the fifth.

Lewis' drive to center field would have tied the game, but in a stunning development at the driving range known as the Great American Ball Park, the ball settled into the glove of Reds center fielder Corey Patterson, whose tush was scraping the fence 404 feet from home plate. With that, a grating 7-6 loss to Cincinnati was complete.

"Off the bat, there was a lot of screaming that it was a home run," said Randy Winn, who homered from each side of the plate for the second time in 2008, "but it was a foot short."

Good thing nobody lit a match in the clubhouse after the Giants fell to the foundering Reds for the fourth time in five games this season. The flame might have ignited the noxious vibes oozing from every corner of the room.

The Giants were angry because they clambered back from a 5-1 first-inning deficit and tied the game 6-6 on Aaron Rowand's two-out, eighth-inning homer, only to lose on Patterson's RBI triple against Jack Taschner in the bottom half. Nobody indulged in more self-loathing than Taschner, who has let eight of his last nine hitters reach base.

"I'm f - horse -, flat-out," Taschner fumed. "Obviously I must be throwing beach balls out there. It's embarrassing when we go out and score that kind of runs and we can't get a win."

For the second game in a row, too. The Giants have scored 13 runs in the series without a win while allowing 18 to a Cincinnati offense that had scored three or fewer runs 16 times in August before San Francisco rolled into town. Thanks to the Giants, the Reds own back-to-back wins for the first time since July 22-23.

Winn homered on the game's fifth pitch, a fine how-do-you-do for Ramon Ramirez in his first major-league start, but the 1-0 lead was eviscerated when the Reds batted around against Kevin Correia in the bottom of the first and scored five times. Correia said his arm felt "a little tired" and his slider had "no snap." That is bad news for Correia. The slider is his money pitch.

Correia did a swell job thereafter, keeping the Giants in the game through six innings, and the hitters used the long ball to roar back. Eugenio Velez hit his first as a major-leaguer with a man aboard in the second inning. Winn homered right-handed against reliever Bill Bray to open the eighth and cut the Reds' lead to 6-4.

Winn is befuddled by his ability to homer from both sides of the plate. He said, "I'm not a home run hitter. For me, it's tough enough to get hits from both sides of the plate."

The Giants scratched for another run against Bray, on a Lewis walk, Pablo Sandoval's second single and a Bengie Molina double-play ball. With Mike Lincoln on the mound, Rowand tied the game by driving a ball to right-center for his 13th homer of the season.

Rowand mostly was happy for tying the game, but confessed that "to hit a ball out there and not make an out is nice, too."

Lewis had to feel unlucky that his potential game-tying fly in the ninth did not go out. Actually, he looked angry when he walked away from a group of reporters without saying a word. Two words would have sufficed: "That's baseball."

"I think Freddie hit it to the wrong part of the park," said Rich Aurilia, who played here for two seasons. "It just goes to show you if you play in a different place what effect it has on a game. I'm proud we battled back and tied it up in the eighth, but we let it slip away again."