Darin Ruf’s 2 homers aren’t enough for SF Giants in loss vs. Padres

SAN FRANCISCO — A pair of home runs from Darin Ruf and a ninth-inning rally that forced extra innings weren’t enough for the Giants to start their homestand on a positive note.

The Giants got two Ruffian blasts off Padres starter Sean Manaea and a season-high six innings from their own hurler, Jakob Junis, but lost the battle of late-inning rallies in an eventual 8-7 defeat to the Padres.

Here are our takeaways.

Rally time

Without the services of closer Taylor Rogers, the Padres sent Luis Garcia out for the ninth inning to try to close out a 6-4 lead, after San Diego took the lead off Taylor’s twin brother, Tyler, in the top of the eighth.

For the first time all game, Giants hitters not named Darin Ruf came to life.

Ruf had already homered twice, then took ball four from Garcia in the ninth. His walk was preceded by a single from Mike Yastrzemski and followed by another walk to pinch-hitter Joc Pederson.

Wilmer Flores, who singled in the second and scored the Giants’ first run of the game, lofted a soft line drive over the outstretched glove of shortstop Ha-Seong Kim and just in front of left fielder Jurickson Profar, allowing Yastrzemski and Ruf to chug home.

Tommy La Stella struck out with the winning run on second base to end the inning but started the 10th by scoring as the Giants’ ghost runner on a base hit by Brandon Crawford. Both teams were able to drive in their free runner in extra innings, but it was the Padres’ ability to plate one more that won them the game.

Flores’ heroics were upstaged as Manny Machado led off the 10th inning against Camilo Doval by driving in the ghost runner on second base, then scoring what proved to be the decisive run when Profar ripped a single off Doval’s foot — only the second and third runs allowed by Doval over his past 15⅔ innings.

Rogers led off the eighth by plunking Cronenworth, then allowed Profar to reach on a softly hit infield single with two outs. Wil Myers made the first solid contact of the inning, sending a ball off the brick wall in right field that brought home both runners and gave San Diego a 6-4 lead.

Do it all, Darin

Few players seemed as snakebitten as Ruf over the first month of the season, but the Giants stuck with him, seeing the underlying data behind his frustrating start. Through his first 23 games, Ruf was batting .172/.280/.195 — a .475 OPS — but nonetheless ranked among MLB leaders in average exit velocity, portending better things to come.

Those results have come over the past two weeks, with Friday night acting as an exclamation point.

Manaea gift-wrapped a middle-in sinker and a middle-middle changeup for Ruf in his second and third at-bats, and the powerful right-hander put both pitches in the left field seats for his second and third home runs of the season. Neither ball traveled 400 feet, but they left the bat with respective exit velocities of 103.8 and 105.7 mph. The only other multi-homer game of Ruf’s career came almost a decade ago, before his three-year stint overseas, on Oct. 2, 2012, with the Phillies.

Ruf’s two-run shot in the third pulled the Giants within 4-3, and his solo shot in the fifth tied the game at 4. But that’s where the Giants lineup stalled.

Besides Ruf (2-for-3, 2 HR, 2 BB), the rest of San Francisco’s hitters combined to go 8-for-36 (.222) at the plate. A double from Luis González, in his first game back after a short stint at Triple-A, was their only other extra-base hit, and the closest they came to scoring until their ninth-inning rally.

Even before his two-homer night, Ruf had batted .412/.533/.588 since May 4, raising his OPS nearly 200 points. Add in his double dose of dingers Friday night, and Ruf’s OPS now stands at .736.

In addition to his contributions at the plate, Ruf kept a run off the board with his play in left field. San Diego was threatening to add on after scoring four runs the previous inning, with speedy shortstop Ha-Seong Kim on second, when Trent Grisham lined a fast-sinking line drive toward Ruf in left. Kim had his eyes on home plate, but Ruf charged, slid and snagged the ball for the third out of the inning.

Two-pitch Junis

Junis gave the Giants his longest outing yet and, outside of a one-inning blip, looked like the same pitcher who has stepped in so effectively for injured starter Anthony DeSclafani. However, those four Padres runs in the third inning did amount to the most Junis has allowed in five appearances this season.

An ultra-efficient Junis needed only 17 pitches to retire the first six Padres of the game, but San Diego got four off him in the fourth with a single that ricocheted off second base, a double down the left field line and a home run over the arcade in right field by Jake Cronenworth.

The four runs were all the Padres would get off Junis, who blanked them for his remaining five innings, aided by Ruf’s sliding catch to end the fourth and a couple snazzy plays by the double-play duo of Brandon Crawford and Thairo Estrada.

Junis was probably just happy to be facing a team other than the Cardinals, his opponent in his only previous two starts this season. On Friday, he was working with the same two-pitch arsenal he used in his second outing against St. Louis. Junis had briefly gotten his changeup working, but he’s ditched the pitch his past two outings in favor of an almost exclusive diet of sliders and sinkers.

On Friday, Junis threw 38 sinkers, 34 sliders and only four changeups. With four runs on seven hits over six innings, his ERA rose to 2.70, still the lowest mark of anybody in the Giants’ rotation.

Neither started factored in the decision, as both Junis and Manaea exited a 4-4 ballgame.

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