Chris Haft
MLB.com
Starting pitching, which the Giants typically use to great advantage, became a great equalizer Tuesday night as they dropped an Interleague decision to Jake Arrieta and the Baltimore Orioles, 4-1.
Possessing the Major Leagues' worst record (18-47) mattered less for the Orioles than Arrieta's presence on the mound. Fresh off defeating the Yankees in his Major League debut last Thursday, the right-hander delivered an impressive second act by limiting the Giants, who entered the game with the National League's second-highest batting average (.267), to three hits in seven-plus innings.
Arrieta not only halted the Giants' four-game winning streak but also their momentum in the National League West race. San Diego and Los Angeles both won, thrusting the Giants back into third place after they had enjoyed a second-place tie with the Dodgers, a half-game behind the division-leading Padres, for one fleeting day.
Right-hander Joe Martinez made his season debut for the Giants and did his job too well, if anything. Coaxing ground balls is what Martinez does best, and he did exactly that against the Orioles. Unfortunately for Martinez, too many of the bouncers traveled a little too far out of range. He allowed all of Baltimore's runs in 6 1/3 innings, and five of the eight hits he yielded were infield singles or grounders that infielders deflected.
That didn't count the run-scoring groundouts Baltimore's Ty Wigginton hit in the first and third innings, or Wigginton's bases-loaded, double-play grounder that generated the Orioles' final run in the fifth.
"It's going to happen to everybody," said Martinez, who replaced injured Todd Wellemeyer in San Francisco's rotation. "You can make great pitches and get hit; you can make terrible pitches and they hit it right at people. Today they kind of found some holes on me. Guys are laying out all over the place trying to knock them down and get outs, but it didn't happen, unfortunately.
"Another day, maybe they're hit at people and it's a closer game."
That last remark applied to the Giants' offense.
While Pablo Sandoval's third-inning homer accounted for the Giants' lone run, they made solid but fruitless contact on other occasions. Andres Torres hit promising drives to right field in the first and sixth innings. Freddy Sanchez lined out to third base in his initial at-bat. Pat Burrell opened the seventh inning with a rocket to center field that Adam Jones reached for to catch. And in the ninth against Orioles closer David Hernandez, Juan Uribe launched an opposite-field drive to the right-field warning track before Sandoval ended the game by hitting a scorcher to third baseman Miguel Tejada.
"We had a little bit of buzzard's luck tonight," Giants manager Bruce Bochy said, employing one of his most familiar lamentations. "We hit some balls right at them, they played well and they got the ground balls that just went through."
Buster Posey, who went 0-for-3 against Arrieta, offered mostly praise.
"He's deceptive," Posey said of Arrieta. "We hit some balls hard right at people, but he located his fastball well and had good movement on it."
Hernandez implied that after subduing the Yankees on three runs and four hits in six innings, Arrieta was ready for any challenge.
"No offense to the Giants, but they don't have the Yankee firepower," Hernandez said. "I think that enabled him to go out there and pretty much pitch his game. He definitely has the quality stuff to do that."
The 162-game season enables even the lowliest of teams to enjoy nights of redemption. This was one of those respites for the Orioles.
The club that had lost 16 of its previous 18 games, including nine in a row on the road, bested a San Francisco team that had won five consecutive decisions at AT&T Park and was tied for second in the Major Leagues for most home victories (23).
Baltimore had allowed opposing pitchers to record quality starts in 17 of 18 games entering Tuesday, but avoided that fate against Martinez, who still approached the minimum standard (three earned runs or fewer allowed while pitching six innings or more).
Having mustered three home runs in their last nine games, the Orioles supplemented their offense with a leadoff fourth-inning long ball from Jones.
The Giants will enter Wednesday's series finale filled with the hope that starter Tim Lincecum always brings. The Orioles will again try to persevere, as they did to secure this victory.
"It's big and it's not because we're going to face Lincecum tomorrow. It's because we needed it," Tejada said. "We've been losing too many games, and to win today gives us energy to come back tomorrow and win another game."
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