What we learned as Winn, Giants roughed up in loss to Phillies

What we learned as Winn, Giants roughed up in loss to Phillies originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

BOX SCORE

The Giants have played 21,432 games as a franchise. It's hard to imagine the list of games worse than Saturday's is very long.

The game was delayed more than an hour by rain, and within a few minutes of the first pitch, it became clear that a rainout would have been the best thing to happen to San Francisco. Starting pitcher Keaton Winn got knocked out in the bottom of the first, the Philadelphia Phillies sent 18 runners to the plate in the first two innings, and the Giants lost a catcher to injury for the second straight day.

They lost 14-3, and that doesn't at all sum up how rough a night it was.

Pitching in the rain, Winn threw 39 pitches in the first before he was pulled. The Phillies kept piling on against long man Mitch White, and they led 9-0 after two innings.

To add injury to insult, San Francisco lost catcher Tom Murphy to a left knee injury during the four-run second. Murphy went to his knees on a spiked curveball in the dirt and immediately went back to the dugout, where Patrick Bailey was sitting in a hoodie a few hours after he went on the 7-day concussion IL.

Murphy had been dealing with knee soreness before Saturday's game, and if he needs to join Bailey on the IL, the Giants are going to be in an incredibly tight spot. They already recalled Blake Sabol, the only other catcher on the 40-man roster, and he took over for Murphy after taking a red-eye from California to get to Philadelphia in time.

Jakson Reetz, a 28-year-old who has just two big league appearances, is the next man up in Triple-A, but he is not on the 40-man roster. The Giants already may need to open a 40-man spot if they choose Mason Black as Monday's starting pitcher.

It's a mess right now, and not just because of the rain.

Here are three things to know from the wettest night of the year:

One to forget

Keaton Winn went exactly six innings and allowed just one run in each of his three previous starts. He was starting to look like a workhorse, but it was clear early in Saturday's game that he wouldn't be around long.

Winn had no feel for his go-to splitter and opened the bottom of the first with back-to-back walks. Bryce Harper's single loaded the bases and Winn drilled Alec Bohm, getting the Phillies on the board. When Brandon Marsh ripped a splitter into right for another run, White started stirring in the bullpen. Winn did get a double play, but that was followed by two more singles, which ended his night. Bob Melvin wasn't going to take any chances with a rookie who was coming up on 40 pitches.

Winn was charged with five earned runs in two-thirds of an inning, raising his ERA from 3.15 to 4.41. He had made 11 previous starts and four relief appearances in the big leagues and gone at least three innings in all of them.

Offensive

Really, the only thing the game was missing early on was the Giants loading the bases with no outs and not scoring. They did it in the fourth inning, when Tyler Fitzgerald struck out and Nick Ahmed hit into a double play after Ranger Suarez loaded them up. In the eighth, they loaded the bases with one out but Ahmed hit into another double play.

San Francisco entered the game batting just .206 over their previous eight, with a total of 19 runs over that span. They have not scored more than three runs since a 5-1 win over the New York Mets on April 23. The last time the Giants went nine consecutive games without scoring more than three runs was 2018, when they did it in 11 straight games in September.

Welcome to the show

Randy Rodriguez took over for White in the bottom of the fourth, making his MLB debut after six seasons in the minor leagues, including parts of three seasons in Triple-A. Rodriguez was charged with three earned in 2 1/3 innings of work, but it was a bit of an unfair line for a reliever who was forced to come out for a third inning because the Giants were running out of arms.

Rodriguez was sharper in his first two frames, and his first big league strikeout was one to remember. He froze Harper with three straight fastballs, each harder than the previous one.

The 24-year-old was added to the 40-man roster before the Rule 5 Draft in 2021, joining at the same time as Sean Hjelle and Heliot Ramos. He was coming off a dominant season in A-ball at the time, although he has had trouble throwing strikes in the upper minors.

Rodriguez's arm is as electric as any in the system, but he walked 57 batters in 70 innings last season. This spring, Melvin talked about how nasty Rodriguez was when he was in the zone, and he started filling it up with the River Cats in recent weeks.

If he can keep that up, he certainly has a chance to stick. The four-seamer maxed out at 99.5 mph on Saturday and averaged 97.4 mph.

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