SAN FRANCISCO -- Logan Webb came within one out of delivering a quality start for the Giants, yet he still came away with the tough-luck loss after being repeatedly let down by his defense in a 4-2 defeat to the Rockies in Thursday afternoon’s series finale at Oracle Park.  

The Giants committed a season-high four errors behind Webb, including three in an ugly fourth inning that allowed the Rockies to score three runs and seize a lead that they would not relinquish. The loss snapped San Francisco’s 18-game win streak in Webb’s regular-season home starts dating back to Sept. 8, 2020, and gave Colorado its first series victory at Oracle Park since June 24-26, 2019.

“I don’t think we played our best defense,” manager Gabe Kapler said. “It’s a really tough league when you’re not converting ground balls into outs. I think we’ve seen consistently a better brand of defense than we played today. It still hasn’t been good enough overall.”

Thairo Estrada’s RBI triple and Austin Wynns’ run-scoring single -- his first hit as a Giant -- gave San Francisco a 2-0 lead in the second, but Colorado erased the deficit by capitalizing on one of the worst defensive sequences of the year for the Giants.  

Charlie Blackmon opened the fourth by reaching on an error by Estrada, who dropped a hard-hit liner from the Rockies' slugger and couldn’t recover in time to record the out at first base. C.J. Cron followed with a single up the middle that shortstop Donovan Walton and Estrada appeared to miscommunicate on.

Blackmon advanced to third on the play, forcing another error from center fielder Austin Slater, whose throw sailed high over the glove of Evan Longoria and allowed Cron to move up to second.

The next batter, Brendan Rodgers, bounced an RBI single to left field, just past a diving Walton to cut the Giants’ lead to 2-1. Webb’s misfortunes continued when Ryan McMahon’s grounder to the right side kicked away from Estrada, knocking in Cron and tying the game, 2-2. It marked the first time the Giants had committed three errors in an inning since Aug. 25, 2010, against the Reds.

Yonathan Daza added a go-ahead single to cap the three-run inning against Webb, who needed 29 pitches to get through the frame and was charged with two earned runs despite his defense’s struggles to make plays behind him.

“It was a weird inning,” Webb said. “We’re all human. Stuff happens. Unfortunately, it was kind of back-to-back-to-back. We couldn’t get back in the game after that. I tried my best to make sure those first couple of guys didn’t score, but I couldn’t do that. It was a weird inning. One of the weirder innings that I’ve been a part of.”

Webb, who uses his sinker to induce a ton of ground balls, was frequently burned by poor defense earlier in his career, and he admitted that a younger version of himself likely wouldn’t have been able to get out of the inning once the miscues began to snowball. He drew positives from his ability to work through the adversity and pitch into the sixth, though he was removed after 5 2/3 innings following first baseman Darin Ruf’s error on a grounder from Sam Hilliard.  

“It’s weird, because you look back and today was probably the best my stuff has been probably all year, to be honest,” Webb said.

Defense has emerged as a glaring weakness for the Giants, who rank 27th in the Majors with -19 Outs Above Average and 29th with -25 Defensive Runs Saved, according to FanGraphs.  It’s a significant decline from last year, when they ranked fifth with 27 OAA and 11th with 32 DRS.

“Openly, I think one of our struggles on defense this year -- and I don’t think it’s a secret that’s been an area that we need to improve on -- is our range,” Kapler said. “It’s important to be able to move left and right and cover ground. I think we can do everything we can possibly do to position effectively, but I think last year, whether there was a little bit of randomness associated with it or not, we covered a little bit more ground. But a lot of that has to do with a lack of consistent health for us this season.”

The Giants have missed the stability provided by shortstop Brandon Crawford, who has been out of the starting lineup for two consecutive games with right quad tightness, and first baseman Brandon Belt, who has been on the injured list since May 22 with right knee inflammation, but they’re hopeful they’ll be able to get both veteran infielders back for this weekend’s series against the first-place Dodgers.

After losing 12 of their last 20 games, the Giants certainly won’t be able to afford to make as many mistakes if they intend to keep pace in the ultra-competitive National League West. 

“These are never losses that you pin on any one individual or two or three individuals,” Kapler said. “These are team losses. When a starting pitcher goes out there and performs, we always want to reward him with scoring a bunch of runs and making a bunch of plays. It doesn’t always work out that way. We didn’t play good enough today to win the game, and we didn’t play good enough to win the series.”