SAN FRANCISCO – Dean Kremer had the Giants beating the ball into the ground tonight in the first inning.
That’s usually good.
Six of the first seven batters reached base after the Orioles took an early lead. The Giants kept finding holes in the infield and kept forcing Kremer to throw pitches until his count reached 39.
He would have been excused for also throwing a fit.
Bad luck led to bad results and harder contact, and the Orioles began their West Coast trip with a sloppy 15-8 loss before an announced sellout crowd of 40,043 at Oracle Park.
This wasn’t the intended response to a 1-7 homestand. Ryan Mountcastle had three hits and four RBIs by the fifth inning and Coby Mayo homered, but the Orioles fell to 60-75, their most games below .500 since May 31. They committed three errors in the seventh that led to four unearned runs off Grant Wolfram.
Kremer lasted a season-low three innings and was charged with seven runs and nine hits. A 1-0 lead disappeared after the Giants loaded the bases with no outs in the first and scored four times. The constant jabs left marks.
Mountcastle had a two-out RBI single off Robbie Ray in the top of the first after Jackson Holliday’s leadoff walk and stolen base, but the Giants answered right back. Kremer issued two walks around Willy Adames’ grounder into left field. Gunnar Henderson backhanded Matt Chapman’s bouncer but didn’t have a play, allowing the tying run to score, and Dominic Smith followed with a sacrifice fly.
Casey Schmitt poked a sinker into right field at 79.6 mph and Luis Matos grounded a cutter into left for a two-run single.
Jung Hoo Lee, Adames and Rafael Devers strung together consecutive singles and Chapman had a sacrifice fly in a two-run second. A double play limited Kremer’s workload to 12 pitches, but the Orioles trailed 6-1.
Asked about the ground ball hits, Kremer said, "You know that’s a part of the game. Some days they find the fielders and some days they don’t. Today was not one of those days where they find the fielders and we got beat through the six hole quite a few times and the four hole a few times and it kind of kept happening."
Mountcastle delivered another two-out, run-scoring double in the third after walks to Alex Jackson and Jeremiah Jackson, and Emmanuel Rivera dumped a two-run single into left to cut the lead to 6-4. But Drew Gilbert doubled off the right field wall to score Matos in the third, and Kremer’s 25-pitch inning left him at 76.
“He created a little bit of a problem for himself with the two walks," said interim manager Tony Mansolino. "I think you walk the leadoff guy and then you walk Devers on the 3-2 count right there on a non-competitive pitch. It’s just gonna create holes in the infield because guys go into double play depth, they’re not gonna cover as much ground because of what the position becomes. Now, I don’t think he deserved the fate that he got. There was a lot of soft contact that was just hit in the right spots tonight, unfortunately. I thought the stuff was sharp and good. I didn’t think the stuff was bad, I didn’t think the location was all that bad. I just thought in a lot of ways it was a little bit unlucky.”
Mansolino didn’t bring him back for the fourth and the bullpen parade began with Corbin Martin, who surrendered a two-run homer to Smith – a slider landing in McCovey Cove. Matos homered to lead off the fifth.
Six batters reached against Wolfram after Yennier Cano retired the first batter in the seventh. Rivera and Dylan Beavers had throwing errors and Holliday committed a fielding error on a ball that took a weird bounce. The Orioles failed to cover home plate during one wild sequence.
Another runner crossed against Wolfram in the eighth and the Giants finished with 18 hits. They scored in seven of eight innings and won their sixth game in a row.
“You play so many games, it’s bound to happen," Mountcastle said. "We’ll clean it up a little bit and go back out there tomorrow and play well.”
Kremer allowed seven runs (six earned) over five innings in his last start and the offense bailed him out. It tried to do the same tonight but the Giants wouldn't let up.
Back-to-back ineffective outings raised Kremer’s ERA to 4.52. He’ll keep working on extra rest with the Orioles switching to a six-man rotation.
"These guys have a slightly different approach than some of the other ones," he said. "Whether it’s approach or execution, we’ll have to go back and look."
Said Mansolino: "I thought that he went on a pretty good roll where it felt like seven, eight good starts, and now it's two kind of ugly ones. He's just got to kind of floor it from the get-go, for me. I think when Kremer is good, he floors it, he presses down on the gas pedal right away, and he goes and he attacks. I think when Kremer gets in trouble he feels for things a little bit and tries to find the solutions instead of maybe force the solutions a little bit. I think that's kind of where those couple walks showed up tonight and created some holes in the infield and some bad contact that was unlucky for him."
Jeremiah Jackson had an infield single in the fifth to extend his hitting streak to nine games. Gunnar Henderson doubled, and both runners scored on Mountcastle’s single, giving him the most RBIs he's had in a game since July 28, 2024. Ray was done after 4 1/3, a season-high six runs raising his ERA from 2.93 to 3.18.
Mayo hit a 420-foot home run to left field in the eighth at 107.8 mph. Of course, the Giants retaliated again, as they did all night.
"The ball was not going our way," Mountcastle said, "but I thought we put together some good at-bats and battled the whole game.”
"We just couldn’t hold them down," Mansolino said. "Every time we’d score they’d answer back and it was tough.”
* Albert Suárez tossed 1 2/3 scoreless innings with one hit and one strikeout for Triple-A Norfolk as he nears a return. Carson Ragsdale allowed one run and two hits in five innings.
Double-A Chesapeake’s Luis De León allowed two unearned runs and struck out eight in 5 2/3.
Braylan Tavera had four hits for Class A Delmarva. Carson Dorsey allowed one run and three hits in 5 2/3 innings.