SF Giants’ run of shutouts ends in 6-4 loss to Reds

CINCINNATI — There was no way Kyle Harrison was going to one-up what his veteran rotation-mates, Blake Snell and Logan Webb, had accomplished the past two days. It wasn’t realistic to expect him to come close. Two teams in the past 40 years had strung together three consecutive shutouts from their starting pitchers, and neither incorporated a fresh-faced rookie.

It wasn’t Harrison who briefly had Great American Ballpark on no-hitter alert for the second straight evening.

For as dominant as Snell was Friday night, Reds third-year All-Star Hunter Greene was nearly as electric while handing the Giants a 6-4 loss.

Greene punched out 11 batters while blanking the Giants (55-57) for six innings. The only batter to muster a hit off Greene was Michael Conforto, whose two-out single in the fourth broke up Greene’s no-hit bid and who later contributed one of three homers off Cincinnati’s bullpen that cut the final margin to two.

“You’re down, what, 6-0, and all of a sudden they’ve got their closer in the game,” manager Bob Melvin said of his team’s late push that came up short. “It’s something we’ve done all year. We just refuse to quit in those types of games. Look, when you walk away from a game like that — you’re down 6-0 — you take something from it, it was the fight that we had.”

Newcomer Jerar Encarnacion, who took over for Heliot Ramos in the seventh inning, added a solo shot in the eighth, his first home run since being called up from Triple-A Sacramento before Friday’s game. But the Giants were held to four or fewer runs for their fourth consecutive game and the 15th time in their past 21 games.

“It was special because I started the year in Mexico, so I’m excited to be back here,” said Encarnacion, who slugged 19 homers in 26 games for Oaxaca in the Mexican League before the Giants picked him up after getting no major- or minor-league offers over the winter. “I believed in me the whole time and believed in God first.”

At the Giants’ recent pace, it would have taken a multi-day scoring output to overcome the hole they were put in by Harrison, who allowed more hard contact in his first inning than in the entirety of Snell’s outing the previous night. Benefitting from a pitch out that allowed Patrick Bailey to prevent Elly De La Cruz from swiping his 56th bag, Harrison escaped the inning unscathed but it proved to only be a sign of things to come.

Cincinnati tagged him for four home runs, including two from catcher Tyler Stephenson, and chased him from the game with two outs in the fourth inning. The six runs he allowed matched a career-high, in 6-1 loss to the Padres last September, the only other occasion he surrendered four home runs.

When Jonathan India belted a hanging slurve into the second deck of the left field seats in the second inning, it marked the first run allowed by a Giants starter since Tuesday’s loss to the A’s, 19 innings ago. After Webb’s complete game shutout Wednesday and Snell’s no-hitter on Friday, Harrison said, “I definitely want to live up to the expectations of the guys who pitched so good the previous days.

“Going into it, it was definitely in the back of my mind. But I wasn’t thinking about their games because it’s different. You want to go good and make it late in games like they have been, so definitely frustrating that I didn’t do that today.”

Harrison allowed six total runs in four July starts and had reeled off 16 innings his previous three times on the mound while limiting opponents to two runs. His strong run came after lasting only 3⅓ innings in a July 6 loss at Cleveland, the only other time this season he has failed to complete five innings.

In his last start, Harrison came one out away from matching the longest start of his career while striking out 11 over 6⅔ one-hit innings. Before Saturday’s game, manager Bob Melvin mentioned the 22-year-old rookie had pitched more efficiently lately while saying he was “on his way to pitching a little bit deeper in games.”

Given an extra day of rest entering Saturday’s start, though, Harrison showed signs of wear and tear from the very beginning. In addition to the hard contact, Harrison’s fastball registered multiple sub-90 mph readings and by his last batter had recorded the three slowest fastballs he’d thrown this season.

It didn’t concern Melvin, who chalked it up to just an off night.

“He pitches with better velo sometimes and at times he’s been able to pitch when it hasn’t been great,” he said. “He was just behind a lot today, and I don’t think his breaking ball was as sharp as we’ve seen it, either. Some days you just don’t have your best stuff.”

The Giants placed their postseason hopes in the hands of a five-man rotation that showed the previous two days it could live up to its billing as the best in baseball but that also features two rookies in Harrison and Hayden Birdsong nearing career-high workloads.

Harrison threw 102⅓ innings last season between all levels, a total he will surpass the next time he takes the mound.

Asked if he has another six weeks in him, Harrison said, “100%. …

“I felt so good my last start and like I was trending upward. Really just a bad start today. Not a lot of things I can say I did well. … In the ‘pen, I threw some that weren’t coming out quite as well, but I didn’t think about it too much. It wasn’t the best day in terms of feeling good, but I can still compete when I’m out there and I didn’t compete as much as I’d like to today.”

Every game matters with the Giants’ precarious position in the National League wild card race, and the loss sent them 4½ games back of the Mets (58-51), who hold the final of three spots and were still in progress against the Angels in Los Angeles. In between them in the standings, the Cardinals (57-54) already won, and the Padres (59-52), Pirates (55-54) and Diamondbacks (59-51) were still in action at the final out.