{"id":694969,"date":"2026-05-10T05:21:44","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T05:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/694969\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T05:21:44","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T05:21:44","slug":"what-we-learned-as-bryce-eldridges-first-mlb-homer-overshadowed-in-giants-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/694969\/","title":{"rendered":"What we learned as Bryce Eldridge’s first MLB homer overshadowed in Giants’ loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

What we learned as Bryce Eldridge’s first MLB homer overshadowed in Giants’ loss<\/a> originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area<\/a><\/p>\n

BOX SCORE<\/a><\/p>\n

SAN FRANCISCO \u2013 The Giants had hoped to rattle some cages and shake things up by making a big trade early Saturday<\/a>. What they got on the field at Oracle Park, however, was a lot of what fans have seen all season.<\/p>\n

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An offense that had very little to highlight beyond Bryce Eldridge<\/a>\u2019s first career home run, starting pitching that was inconsistent, and a bullpen that couldn\u2019t keep the barn door closed.<\/p>\n

It added up to a 13-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates<\/a>, preventing the Giants from clinching their first series at home since late April.<\/p>\n

At least for his sake, Patrick Bailey<\/a> wasn\u2019t around to witness any of it. The veteran catcher was traded to the Cleveland Guardians<\/a>, a move that the Giants\u2019 brass had hoped in many ways would breathe life into San Francisco\u2019s offense.<\/p>\n

Instead, Pittsburgh starting pitcher Braxton Ashcraft<\/a> did a stellar job of keeping the Giants\u2019 bats silent.<\/p>\n

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San Francisco had two on and one out in the first but failed to score. Ashcraft retried the next nine Giants<\/a> batters he faced, four by strikeout.<\/p>\n

Ashcraft did it again in the sixth after the Giant got runners on the corners with one out. He got Rafel Devers to strike out swinging then retired Eldridge on a long fly ball to left.<\/p>\n

Devers<\/a>, who had homered in each of his previous two games, went 0-for-3 to end his eight-game hitting streak.<\/p>\n

Conversely, Giants starter Landen Roupp<\/a> had his recent stretch of strong starts interrupted.<\/p>\n

Roupp pitched out of jams in two of the first three innings then gave up a run in the fourth before manager Tony Vitello pulled him.<\/p>\n

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The night got so bad that when shortstop Willy Adames<\/a> muffed a Joey Bart<\/a> grounder for an error in the seventh, the Oracle Crowd unleashed a chorus of boos.<\/p>\n

Had it not been for a brief uprising in the ninth, the booing likely would have gotten a lot louder.<\/p>\n

Here are the takeaways from Saturday:<\/p>\n

Eldridge Gets His First<\/p>\n

For the past two years there\u2019s been plenty of speculation and hype about Eldridge\u2019s abilities with a bat. On Saturday, he showed exactly what the buzz has been about when he belted the first home run of his career.<\/p>\n

Eldridge hammered a first-pitch fastball from Ashcroft that ended up in the waters of McCovey Cove. The ball had an exit velocity of 101 mph and went an estimated 364 feet.<\/p>\n

It was the first real sign of life from San Francisco\u2019s offense and gave a definitive lift to the Oracle Park crowd.<\/p>\n

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Not The Roupp Stuff<\/p>\n

With the exception of his previous start against the Tampa Bay Rays<\/a>, Roupp had seemingly gotten better with each outing. Facing the Pirates, he took a step backward in his development.<\/p>\n

Pittsburgh\u2019s hitters were extremely patient against Roupp and forced the right-hander to throw 94 pitches in four innings. The Pirates had three hits but benefited most from the three walks that Roupp gave up.<\/p>\n

On the flip side, Roupp had stuff that was flat-out dominant at times. He had a season-high eight Ks, one shy of his career best, and got whiffs off his fastball, cutter, curve and sinker.<\/p>\n

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Like the rest of the Giants starting pitchers, Roupp will have to shoulder more of the load now that ace Logan Webb<\/a> is on the Injured List.<\/p>\n

Bullpen Blues<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just the starting pitching that was a problem for the Giants. Vitello repeatedly went to his bullpen and didn\u2019t get the desired results, a big problem that gets magnified when the starter can\u2019t get through five innings.<\/p>\n

Ryan Borucki<\/a> and Ryan Walker<\/a> retired two batters apiece but neither worked a clean inning. Borucki allowed two hits and a run while Walker, the Giants one-time closer, got hit up for two runs in his brief stint.<\/p>\n

It got real rough in the seventh when JT Brubaker<\/a> and Gregory Santos<\/a> got lit up for six runs (five earned) while combining to get three outs.<\/p>\n

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The situation got bad enough that infielder Christian Koss<\/a> pitched the ninth inning<\/p>\n

Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What we learned as Bryce Eldridge’s first MLB homer overshadowed in Giants’ loss originally appeared on NBC Sports…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,15154,710,7885,51,5727,162,351,4680,2287,2005,112,4,1792,7661,64,12423,946,378,4341,68,852,103],"class_list":["post-694969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-braxton-ashcraft","tag-bryce-eldridge","tag-christian-koss","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-devers","tag-giants","tag-gregory-santos","tag-joey-bart","tag-jt-brubaker","tag-landen-roupp","tag-logan-webb","tag-mlb","tag-oracle-park","tag-patrick-bailey","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-ryan-borucki","tag-ryan-walker","tag-san-francisco","tag-sf-giants","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-the-giants","tag-willy-adames"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116548605330229178","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}