SF Giants’ playoff hopes take another hit in drubbing by Braves

SAN FRANCISCO — The Giants’ playoff hopes aren’t dead, but they’ve made their jobs much more difficult.

Needing to secure at least a split of this four-game series against the Braves to capture a potentially important head-to-head tiebreaker, the Giants did themselves no favors by dropping the first two contests and by the time they came to bat Wednesday could pretty much kiss those hopes goodbye.

A game that was about as must-win as they come began with a clunker of epic proportions from Robbie Ray and ended, 13-2, with another left-hander — outfielder Mike Yastrzemski — having about as much luck finding the strike zone to the amusement of the 27,460 who stuck around for the drubbing.

“This is one we really needed to come back and try to win,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Tomorrow, I don’t want to say anything is a must (-win) game, but we need to get back to .500 tomorrow and then have an offday to regroup.”

Dropping their fourth straight game, the loss guaranteed that no matter the outcome of Sunday’s series finale the Giants will have an extra game to make up by way of losing the season series and the potential determining factor should they to catch Atlanta in the win-loss column, where the gap grew to 4½ games.

“Not ideal,” said Yastrzemski, who made the first pitching appearance of his career. “Today’s just a tough one to swallow. Obviously we’ve been going out there and giving it our all, but it looks like we’ve got a little bit of fatigue. We’re going to just really mentally lock back in and try and forget about the aches and pains. … Just keep the optimism as much as you can.”

Ray walked off the mound after his 39th pitch sailed wide of the strike zone and issued his third free pass of the first inning. He also hit the first two batters he faced, spiking Jorge Soler in the foot with a slider and running a fastball in on Austin Riley’s hands, and served up a knuckle curve on a such a shiny silver platter that Michael Harris II, in his first major-league at-bat since June, sent it on a 107.3 mph line directly into McCovey Cove.

Ray’s second walk of the inning, to Orlando Arcia, forced in the Braves’ first run and Harris made it 5-0 with his grand slam, the second home run to reach the water this season and the first by an opponent. The five runs represented the most Ray has allowed in an outing as a Giant, while the two outs matched the shortest start of his career, but the way it took place put it in an entirely different dimension.

“I don’t know if I’ve completely processed everything from what happened yet,” Ray said. “It was just kind of a weird outing. … I don’t really have an answer for it, but I’m sure I will in the next couple days.”

Harris’ grand slam was the only hit Ray allowed, making him the third pitcher in Giants history and the first since 1951 to allow five or more runs on one or fewer hits. So erratic and short-lived was Ray’s outing that it put him in the company of only 17 other pitchers (six starters) to walk at least three batters and hit at least two in an outing of an inning or less.

The Braves continued to pile on with another six runs on three home runs against Sean Hjelle, Erik Miller and Taylor Rogers.

“He was just struggling with his command,” Melvin said of Ray, whose ERA in seven starts since Tommy John surgery rose to 6.00. “Coming off a long time off, you’re going to have some tough ones. I couldn’t let him go anymore than that. I couldn’t let him throw more than 40 pitches with what he’s been through. Sometimes there’s going to be some soft spots and today it was more about his command.”

Leading off the bottom half of the first, Tyler Fitzgerald began cutting into the deficit as soon as he could, connecting on the first pitch he saw from Atlanta starter Grant Holmes and sending it into the left field bleachers for his second home run in as many games. But Atlanta’s onslaught proved too much to overcome for an offense that had failed to eclipse four runs in any of the first five games of the home stand.