Samardzija Has Shortest Outing of the Year, Duffy Banged Up, Giants Lose 5-3

Unbeknownst to everyone in the world of sports, the 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee, which initially ended in a tie between Jairam Hathwar and Nihar Janga, resumed today.

The annual event did not take place at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, where the competition initially took place, but at Turner Field.

Instead of spelling words such as "Gesellschaft" and "Feldenkrais," the competitors were to spell the last names of Jeff Samardzija from the San Francisco Giants and Mike Foltynewicz, A.J. Pierzynski, Nick Markakis, and Jeff Francoeur from the Atlanta Braves.

Neither competitor had a chance.

All joking aside, on a beautiful Memorial Day afternoon in the battle of the complicated last names, everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

Foltynewicz outshined Samardzija, leading the lowly Braves to a 5-3 win in the first game of a three-game series.

From his performance in the first inning, it looked like that the Giants would be in for another great Samardzija start. His fastball touched 94 and 95 MPH, his cutter hit 92 and had nice, sharp bite, and, most importantly, he got the ball down.

The wheels fell off in the second inning, when the Braves' taxed him for three runs. Samardzija hit the inside part of the zone with a couple of lively fastballs, but table setters Adonis Garcia and Markakis made solid contact to set the table for Mallex Smith's bases-clearing three-run triple. His start could best be summed up in the bottom of the fourth inning, in which Samardzija walked Foltynewicz on four pitches. It was the ominous signal that he, plain and simple, wasn't as sharp.

It didn't help that there were a couple of 50/50 pitches that didn't go his way and that Brandon Belt committed his second error in his second consecutive day.

All in told, Samardzija finished the day by giving up five runs, four of which were earned runs, over five innings in his shortest outing of the season to date.

One of the few bright spots for the Giants that was Chris Stratton, the 20th overall pick in the 2012 draft, made his major league debut in front of friends and family.

The 25-year-old out of Mississipi State struck out two batters in his scoreless inning of work, and it should come as no surprise that his family had nothing but smiles even in the loss.

Derek Law also had a great outing, pitching two scoreless innings while striking out two. With his performance, he lowered his ERA on the season to 2.25.

On the other side of the ball, life wasn't any easier.

Not only did the San Francisco offense have to pick up a bat after arriving in Atlanta in the middle of the night and head straight into this afternoon's game without taking batting practice, but they had to go up against the flame-throwing Foltynewicz, who touched 97 and 98 MPH.

Not only was Foltynewicz able to reach the mid-to-high 90s with his fastball, but he complimented the heat with a crisp curveball in the 70s, which kept the Giant batters off-balance.

The only person in a camouflage San Francisco uniforms who had any success against Foltynewicz was Belt, who pulled an inside 94 MPH fastball a couple of rows back into the right field bleachers for his fifth home run of the season.

Belt and Hunter Pence finished the day with a pair of two-hit games, but it wasn't enough to spark the rest of the offense. Belt and Pence's batting averages now stand at .294 and .308, respectively.

At the end of his six innings of work, Foltynewicz only allowed three hits and the one run, containing the hot San Francisco offense which scored 18 runs in 18 innings in the final two games of the Colorado series.

Despite looking flat at the plate all game, the Giants made some noise in the top of the ninth, scoring two runs via a Brandon Crawford RBI single and a Kelly Johnson error, but the deficit proved too much to overcome for the orange and black.

To add insult to injury, Matt Duffy exited today's game in the sixth inning after being hit in the left hand with a 96 MPH two-seam fastball that ran into him.

The San Francisco training staff checked on Duffy's hand via an X-ray in the middle of the game, and the X-rays came back negative, and there was no fracture, only a contusion. He is listed as day-to-day.

It has already been a tough sophomore season for Duffy, who currently has a slash mark of .245/.307/.342 with only two home runs and twelve RBIs. He is struggling to find success at the plate, and a possible injury due certainly is not going to help his cause.

Kelby Tomlinson and Conor Gillespie will be the main candidates to fill in for Duffy short-term.

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