SAN FRANCISCO — The sun peeked through the upper rafters of Oracle Park and a strong breeze blew out to right field as Keaton Winn fired his first pitches of the evening, and those conditions may well have been the difference in the Giants’ loss Saturday to the Padres.
Winn recovered well after a rocky first inning, but the Giants were never able to climb out of the hole he put them in, falling 4-0 and sapping whatever momentum was gained from Friday’s walkoff win in their home opener.
By the time they came to bat in the bottom half of the inning, the swirling winds had shifted direction, and if Jurickson Profar had stepped to the plate with the bases loaded only 20 minutes later, his fly ball may have died on the warning track. But the high pop fly occurred at just the right time, meeting the jet stream blowing toward McCovey Cove, and rode the wind inches over the brick wall, fair by a few feet.
The one swing from the Padres left fielder, sending a first-pitch fastball on a 43-degree trajectory to the Levi’s Landing concourse, amounted to the only runs scored by either team on a brisk night at the corner of Third and King.
Winn went on to face the minimum for the remainder of his six innings, allowing two base runners that he erased with a pickoff move and a double play, and it’s possible his pitching line would have reflected that dominance had he thrown his first pitch only an hour later.
The first batter of the game, Xander Bogaerts, popped a routine fly ball toward Jung Hoo Lee in center field. But it fell to the grass when Lee, playing his first evening contest at Oracle Park, appeared to lose the ball in the sun setting behind home plate.
Retiring the next two batters, Winn should have been out of the inning without a hit or a run but instead had to square off against Manny Machado, who lined a single, and then was squeezed on a full-count splitter to Ha-Seong Kim that appeared to scrape the outside corner, loading the bases for Profar.
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In their two games at Oracle Park this season, the Giants snapped a streak of seven straight games with a homer in Friday’s home opener win, then were shut out for the first time this season by Padres starter Michael King on Saturday.
Facing King for the second time in less than a week, the Giants had a different experience the second time around. They took seven walks and forced the 27-year-old right-hander from the game after four innings last Sunday in San Diego but allowed him to breeze though seven scoreless on Saturday.
Starting the season 0-for-11 with seven strikeouts, Mike Yastrzemski got his first hit with a single up the middle in the second inning and advanced to second on a passed ball but was stranded there when catcher Tom Murphy went down swinging. Nick Ahmed was the only other Giants hitter to make it to second base, after working a walk to lead off the eighth, and the Giants failed to advance a single runner any further.
Up next
The Giants have Logan Webb on the mound Sunday afternoon in the rubber match against the Padres’ No. 5 starter, Matt Waldron. Webb is seeking to rebound from his second start of the season, failing to make it out of the fourth inning Tuesday at Dodger Stadium.
