SAN FRANCISCO — A pair of lousy sliders from Taylor Rogers sank the Giants in extra innings on Saturday night.
Rogers replaced closer Camilo Doval in a tie game in the 10th inning, then allowed back-to-back home runs on back-to-back hanging sliders to Bryan Reynolds and Ke’Bryan Hayes as the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the Giants, 4-3, in front of 34,841 at Oracle Park.
Jorge Soler blasted a two-run shot in the bottom of the 10th to give the Giants hope, but they couldn’t get the tying run across against Pirates closer David Bednar.
It was an anticlimactic loss for the Giants, who fell to 13-15 and wasted a magical performance by Jordan Hicks.
The first inning foreshadowed a fascinating evening as Hicks struck out each of the Pirates’ first three batters on the same pitch, a splitter that evaporated from midair and reappeared in the catcher’s mitt.
The splitter was his pitch all night long. He threw splitters low beneath the zone to induce poor swings. He threw them up in the zone to change the hitters’ eye levels. Sometimes, he threw them right over the middle.
In the fourth inning, the Pirates finally hit one. Hicks had struck out Bryan Renolds on an 85-mph splitter, then fanned Ke’Bryan Hayes on a 96-mph sinker. With two strikes on Connor Joe, Hicks left a splitter down the middle and Joe muscled it to left field for a double.
Unsurprisingly, he struck out the next batter, Jack Suwinski, on a splitter beneath the zone.
In the fifth, Hicks struck out two more batters on, you guessed it, two more splitters.
And when first baseman Wilmer Flores made two errors in the sixth inning, Hicks essentially recorded five outs to get out of the inning unscathed.
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In the seventh, he allowed a leadoff single before the Giants replaced him with reliever Luke Jackson. Hicks finished six innings of one-run ball while striking out a career-high nine batters and lowering his ERA to 1.59. He walked off the mound to a standing ovation.
Flores made up for his two-error inning with an RBI double to put the Giants on the board in the sixth inning, but when Jackson replaced Hicks in the seventh, he coughed up a run and with it, Hicks’ chance at the win.
The score stayed tied, 1-1, until the 10th inning, when Rogers allowed back-to-back home runs.
Soler’s two-run shot in the bottom of the inning was his fifth home run of the year.
Thairo Estrada legged out a one-out infield single to put the tying run on base, but LaMonte Wade Jr. and Mike Yastrzemski struck out swinging to end the game.
Next up: RHP Keaton Winn (2-3, 3.54 ERA) takes on RHP Jared Jones (2-2, 2.79 ERA) at 1:05 p.m. on Sunday.
