PHILADELPHIA — Any momentum the Giants had after the weekend has completely dissolved over two nights at Citizens Bank Park.
Maikel Franco hit a walk-off single in the bottom of the 12th, handing the Giants a 5-4 loss in a game they led 4-0 into the seventh. George Kontos opened his second inning by plunking former Giants prospect Tommy Joseph. After a sacrifice bunt by reliever Luis Garcia and a walk, Jake Peavy replaced Kontos. He got a grounder to third, but Eduardo Nunez couldn’t handle it or get a throw off, loading the bases. Franco lined a pitch into center, ending the long night.
The Giants have lost the first two games of this road trip, and done so with Madison Bumgarner and Johnny Cueto on the mound.
Cueto struck out eight of the first 16 batters he faced and barely broke a sweat through the first six innings. With one down in the seventh, Ryan Howard, who had already singled twice, lined a solo shot the opposite way. Cameron Rupp blasted the next pitch into the bushes in center field, but the back-to-back shots only cut the Giants’ lead in half.
The Giants scored twice in the first on Buster Posey’s single up the middle, and Posey’s double off the wall two innings later brought Hunter Pence racing around from first. Brandon Belt’s sacrifice fly had pushed the lead to four. The second half of it would disappear in the eighth.
Cueto gave up a pair of one-out singles but Bruce Bochy stuck with him as the bullpen got going in a hurry. Conor Gillaspie got the second out of the inning with a diving stop-and-throw, but Maikel Franco followed with a liner to right-center, scoring two. The game-tying single came on Cueto’s 111th pitch. He ended up getting charged with four earned in 7 2/3 innings after taking a shutout into the seventh.
Facing Sergio Romo and Javier Lopez, the Phillies got the winning run to third with one out in the ninth. Santiago Casilla entered and got former Giants prospect Tommy Joseph to fly out to shallow left before freezing Jimmy Paredes with a filthy two-strike curveball.
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Bay Area native Tyler Goeddel reached second with one out in the 11th, but George Kontos induced a 3-6-1 double play.
Starting pitching report: Cueto has 12 career double-digit strikeout games, including two this season. He struck out 11 Padres on April 26 and 10 Phillies on Wednesday.
Bullpen report: Will Smith’s second appearance went much better than the first one. He faced Howard with a runner on in the eighth and struck him out.
At the plate: The Giants didn’t have a baserunner from Denard Span’s one-out single in the fourth to Pence’s leadoff single in the 11th.
In the field: Brandon Crawford started a double play so quickly that the local TV feed didn’t even switch cameras until the ball was already coming out of his hand and headed for Joe Panik.
Attendance: Allen Iverson was in the house.
Up next: Matt Moore makes his Giants debut.
