Mason Black #47 of the San Francisco Giants throws a pitch in the bottom of the first inning against the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park on May 6, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)
PHILADELPHIA — Everything about Mason Black’s major-league debut was, as the 24-year-old right-hander put it a day earlier, “storybook.”
Everything, that is, except for the final score.
Phillies 6, Giants 1. Sweep, complete.
In the ballpark where he grew up attending games, with scores of friends and family from his nearby hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, in attendance, Black mowed through the powerful Phillies twice. He had three strikeouts by the end of the second inning, making victims of J.T. Realmuto and Bryce Harper.
Sent out to face the order a third time, that is where Black’s storybook debut took a twist. He faced six batters in the fifth inning and retired only one of them. Having seen Black’s full complement of pitches his first two trips to the plate, Harper had all the intel he needed by the time he stepped in with two on and nobody out.
Ambushing the first pitch of the at-bat, Harper sent a belt-high sinker into the right field seats, providing Black one moment from a memorable day that he’d like to forget.
Until the fifth, Black had been doing his best impression of Roy Halladay, the Phillies pitcher he admired most growing up.
Through four innings, Black had limited the Phillies to one run, added a fourth strikeout victim to his ledger and had yet to allow a single piece of hard contact (defined as an exit velocity of 95-plus mph). He had thrown 68 pitches, three shy of the most he had thrown in six starts at Triple-A to begin the season.
With the top of the order due up to start the fifth, Melvin sent the rookie right-hander back out there, anyway.
Harper’s home run was his second of the series, driving in six runs between them. In 14 trips to the plate this series, Harper reached base nine times and scored five runs. It should catch your eye, then, that Black caught him looking to end the first inning by painting the inside corner with a changeup. Catcher Jakson Reetz tossed the ball aside after the previous batter, Realmuto, who fouled back a four-seamer in Reetz’s glove for Black’s first career punchout.
The debut of one Giants pitching prospect coincided with former member of San Francisco’s farm system firing on all cylinders.
Already scuffling, the Giants’ reeling offense faced one of its toughest tests to date in Zack Wheeler and produced the expected results.
Traded away for Carlos Beltrán when he was 21 years old, the perennial Cy Young contender flummoxed his former organization for seven innings. The only run the Giants were able to manufacture came when shortstop Bryson Stott airmailed a throw that allowed Thairo Estrada to reach and later score on a sacrifice fly.
Wheeler rung up five Giants looking, powered his four-seamer past another four empty swings and coaxed a couple chases on breaking balls for 11 strikeouts. Tacking on two more against the Phillies bullpen, the Giants struck out at least 10 times in three of their four games in Philadelphia.
Over the four-game series, the Phillies scored 29 runs, or two more than the Giants have scored since April 23 — 12 games ago.
Up next
The Giants face a long flight and a quick turnaround before beginning a three-game series at Coors Field at 5:40 p.m. PT.
LHP Kyle Harrison (2-1, 3.79) flew ahead of the team and will get the ball in the first game Tuesday against RHP Dakota Hudson (0-5, 5.93).
Originally published at Evan Webeck