SAN FRANCISCO — Hayden Birdsong’s rapid rise hit a speed bump in recent weeks.
But with a couple days of extra rest, the rookie right-hander got over the hump Thursday, even if it wasn’t enough for the Giants (72-75) to pull out a win in their rubber match against the Brewers (84-62).
Birdsong, 23, completed five innings without allowing a run, but the Giants’ offense gave their bullpen no room for error in a 3-0 loss. They lost for the seventh straight time Birdsong has taken the mound, but for the first time no blame can lay at his feet.
“He really needed that,” manager Bob Melvin said of Birdsong, who hadn’t gone five innings since July 27, the last time they won a game behind him.
“It was nice to actually just be in the (strike) zone from first pitch to last pitch,” added Birdsong, who matched a season-low by issuing only one free pass.
Just two weeks ago, the same opponent tagged him for five runs and knocked him from the game in the fourth inning in an outing representative of most of Birdsong’s second half. He issued four walks in 3⅔ innings, one of five outings since July 27 that he walked three or more batters and one of six shorter than five innings.
It was a different story Thursday in front of 22,184 — the smallest crowd of the season — as Birdsong worked efficiently through five innings. He was at only 68 pitches when he handed a scoreless tie to the Giants’ bullpen, starting 11 of the 17 batters he faced (64.7%) with first-pitch strikes.
“You could see that he was dotting his fastball away in the zone,” Melvin said. “Good downhill plane, good velo. As he went along, he gained even more confidence. So that was a huge outing for him to give us five like that.”
While posting a 2.45 ERA through his first six major-league starts, Birdsong was throwing first-pitch strikes at a 60.7% rate. Pitching to a gaudy 8.76 mark over his previous six starts, Birdsong was finding the strike zone on only 46.7% of his first pitches.
It made a substantial difference. Entering Thursday night, 24 of Birdsong’s 35 walks had come after falling behind 1-0 and batters had a .910 OPS. When Birdsong got ahead in the count, opposing hitters’ OPS dropped to .642. Funny enough, his one walk Thursday came after a first-pitch strike to William Contreras.
“Obviously I had a walk,” Birdsong said. “But it didn’t bother me at that point because I was in the zone for the whole game. It’s all I really wanted to do. I want to keep doing that, keep showing that I can pitch through five (innings) and beyond. Today, I was really happy with what I did.”
In a perfect world, the rookie right-hander’s progress would have been rewarded with a win.
Instead, the Giants got the full spectrum of the Camilo Doval experience in the seventh inning.
Doval got ahead of the first batter of the inning, Willy Adames, but then missed the strike zone four times to put him on base. He flashed his strikeout stuff to put away Gary Sánchez to lessen the threat. But then he missed the glove of Curt Casali entirely not once, not twice, but three times.
Doval allowed the Brewers to score the first run of the game without putting the ball in play, instead using a walk and three wild pitches. Jackson Chourio extended their lead the next inning with a two-run homer against Spencer Bivens that landed on the concourse in right field and made it 3-0.
“It’s just about command for him,” Melvin said of his former closer. “If he throws it over the plate, he’s tough to deal with. That’s been his issue. The other day, he hung a slider, so maybe he’s trying to be a little bit fine with that. But there’s still good life on his fastball. When he hits his slider well, it’s still plus. Just having a tough time doing it consistently.”
The Giants, meanwhile, were stumped by Brewers starter Frankie Montas — a former player of manager Bob Melvin’s with the A’s — for six shutout innings and struck out 15 times while being held to five hits one night after exploding for three homers and 17 hits in a 13-2 win.
They advanced only five men in scoring position and went hitless in six opportunities, stranding eight runners in total.
Jerar Encarnacion lined a double down the left-field line off Brewers closer Devin Williams to give the Giants runners at second and third with one out in the ninth inning, but Grant McCray went down swinging and Patrick Bailey grounded out to end the game.
The shutout loss was the Giants’ sixth of the season and prevented them from stringing together series wins for the first time since the first week of August. It was the first time this season the Giants dropped a home series to an NL Central foe, after taking at least two of three from the Reds, Cubs and Pirates.
SS Tyler Fitzgerald left the game in the third inning with lower back tightness, the club announced.
The Giants welcome the Padres (82-65) to town for three games to wrap up their penultimate home stand of the year, starting Friday at 7:15 p.m., however they have not announced their pitching plans for the weekend series. Their next loss or the Dodgers’ next win will mathematically eliminate them from NL West contention.
