Giants ace Logan Webb entered Fenway Park with an MLB-best streak of 19 scoreless innings. That stretch quickly ended Tuesday night, and another began: the Red Sox scored a single run in each of the first four innings to chase Webb.
That 4-0 deficit held up as the final score in the Giants’ second shutout loss this season.
So began the Giants’ longest road trip of the season, with upcoming stops in Philadelphia (four games) and Colorado (three games) after this three-game series in Boston, their first visit since 2019.
While the Giants’ bats got silenced by baseball’s best pitching staff, Webb (3-2) appeared to struggle with his grip on the 52-degree evening.
“The changeup was pretty bad. It was either up for a strike or they could sit on it and go the other way, or it was a non-competitive pitch,” Webb told reporters. “It was just one of those nights that was not very good.”
Wilyer Abreu ripped a two-out, RBI triple off the right-field wall in the fourth, marking Webb’s 91st and final pitch of the night. Overall, Webb yielded four runs on nine hits and three walks. His ERA climbed from 2.33 to 2.98, and he exited without a winning decision for a third consecutive start.
“I wouldn’t say it was his best command today,” Giants manager Bob Melvin told reporters. “It’s really odd when you see something like that. At the end of the day, he still has a 2.98 ERA after a game like that. He was able to get outs when he needed to.”
Webb’s counterpart, Cooper Criswell, retired the first 10 batters he faced. He then issued a full-count walk to LaMonte Wade Jr. in the fourth, but Matt Chapman next grounded into a double play.
The Giants managed just four hits, a pair in the fifth by Michael Conforto and Jorge Soler, then two more singles in the ninth by Wilmer Flores and Chapman.
“You only get four hits, and two of them are in the last inning, so it doesn’t look great,” Melvin said. “But (Criswell’s) stuff was really good and we were kind of caught in between which side of the plate we were looking for pitches.”
Conforto broke up Criswell’s no-hit bid, but then it was Patrick Bailey’s turn to ground into a momentum-ending double play. Soler followed with a two-out single, only for Thairo Estrada to line out and end any perceived rally.
It was that kind of night for the Giants’ bats. Leadoff man Jung Hoo Lee twice hit deep shots caught on the warning track.
An eighth-inning replay reversal erased the Giants’ lone highlight: a potential triple play that would have been their first since 2008. Chapman fielded a three-hop grounder, stepped on third base, threw to Estrada at second base, and an ensuing throw to first was deemed late by half a step.
“Chapman works on that every day, going to the bag and then throwing,” Melvin said, “so at some point in time, he’s going to pull one off.”
After Webb’s exit, the Red Sox managed only two hits against relievers Sean Hjelle, Taylor Rogers and Landen Roupp.
Criswell worked with a quick pace, and Giants’ batters went down in rapid succession through three innings. He recorded four consecutive strikeouts his initial time through the bottom of the order, including No. 8 hitter Mike Yastrezmski, who made his first Fenway appearance since a 2019 sentimental debut where his grandfather, Carl, played.
Leading off the sixth, Yastrezmski got hit on his left wrist as the first batter to face Brennan Bernardino; Yastrezmski stayed in the game, and Melvin wasn’t aware of any postgame X-rays. Potential injury aside, it was an otherwise welcome pitching change. Criswell allowed just two hits, walked one, struck out four and lowered his ERA to 1.65.
Webb yielded a two-out, RBI single in the first to Rob Refsnyder, who drove a 3-1 changeup up the middle. The ball took a wicked hop over Estrada, then Tyler O’Neill slid home safely for a 1-0 lead. Another two-out, RBI grounder put the Red Sox up 2-0 in the second inning, with Jarren Duran driving in Reese McGuire. Inning No. 3 put the Giants in a 3-0 hole, on another RBI single from Refsnyder after Webb yielded an opposite-field, leadoff double to Abreu.
“Kind of was searching for answers. I was like 2-0 to almost every hitter and that’s not a very good recipe for success,” Webb added. “I tip my cap to those guys. I thought they’d be aggressive. They were in the first and the were aggressive after that.
“It was bad execution all over the place.”
The Red Sox appeared to score a fourth time on a two-out hit, but Melvin won a replay challenge that nullified what would have been Duran’s run-scoring, infield single to end the fifth and keep the deficit at 4-0.
The Giants were shut out only once previously this season on April 6 at home to the Padres. They’ve yet to win three straight this season, and they were bidding Tuesday night to win back-to-back games for only the fourth time this season.
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MEDICAL UPDATES
Blake Snell (left adductor strain) is slated to throw a bullpen session Wednesday in San Francisco, a week after going on the injured list.
Other medical updates from the team: Alex Cobb (right flexor strain) is rehabilitating in San Francisco, while Robbie Ray and Austin Warren continue their recovery in Arizona from left-elbow ligament surgery, both throwing bullpen sessions twice a week. Tristan Beck (vascular injury) will be examined by Dr. Jason Lee at Stanford on Wednesday.