Giants commit 4 errors, cant find strike zone in ugly loss to Marlins

MIAMI — There is no shortage of competition for the ugliest, most bumbling display of baseball the Giants have put on in this disastrous start of a season.We might have a new front-runner.Sure, the scoreboard may have only read 6-3 in favor of the Marlins on Saturday.The Giants even pounded out 10 hits, including five for extra bases, to Miami’s six.But consider this: A bases-loaded walk that was the third of the inning.

Three hit batsmen in three-plus innings from their starter, plus another from the reliever who took over for him.A cascade of errors, in the field and on the basepaths.And, to boot, all of this before the Giants had even batted for a fifth time.That’s to say nothing of the uncompetitive at-bats that ended in Matt Chapman and Rafael Devers staring at strike three, or the soft ground ball that Devers didn’t hustle down the line.Drew Gilbert did some good with a line-drive single that drove in a run, but then almost immediately negated it with an ill-conceived and poorly executed attempt to steal second, despite the Giants having a runner at third with one out.It was a redux of all the tropes that left the Giants 14 games below .500 after the loss.Even down to the positives, the little of them that there were, provided almost exclusively by Casey Schmitt, whose emergence has been one of the Giants’ few bright spots.Schmitt launched his team-leading 16th homer of the season and came inches away from his 17th, instead settling for an oddity of a double that set up Gilbert’s RBI single.Center fielder Jakob Marsee came close to robbing Schmitt’s near-homer but trapped the ball against the wall, flipping it to himself.

The confusion meant Jung Hoo Lee, who doubled to lead off the inning, had to play it safe and only made it to third, though he was quickly singled home by Gilbert.That got the Giants on the board, and Schmitt’s homer tied the score at 2 in the top of the fourth.Schmitt and Lee added a second round of two-baggers to make it ...