The Miami Marlins swept the San Francisco Giants over the weekend, but don’t worry: It was much worse than it sounds.The games themselves were close enough. The Giants lost 4-3 on Friday night, 6-3 on Saturday night and 2-1 on Sunday. Those are objectively lousy results, but they were competitive games against a team that’s been the hottest in baseball this month (14-4). If you grade on a curve, it wasn’t awful.Except it’s only possible to be apologetic and sanguine about it by looking at the final scores. Watching the actual baseball, it becomes clear that this team is a collection of mistakes and unforced errors stacked on top of each other and wearing a trench coat, trying to look adult enough to get into an R-rated movie. They’re trying to do this while locked in the bathroom of a Greyhound bus, mind you, miles away from a movie theater. Let them pretend.Here’s how the first loss started going downhill: While trying to protect a one-run lead, reliever Sam Hentges hit the leadoff batter with an 0-2 count:
https://sporty-clips.mlb.com/SzRCNWVfVjBZQUhRPT1fQndVQUIxMEFCRmNBREFCV0J3QUhWMVJWQUFBQkJnSUFWMVVCQXdRTkFBVURBd3RV.mp4Here’s how the series sweep ended: After Rafael Devers drew a gritty, much-needed walk to lead off the ninth inning, he got extremely weird when he was pulled for pinch-runner Jonah Cox.
