CHICAGO -- The Giants refused to blame each other for their 5-2 loss to the Chicago Cubs in Saturday's Game 2 of the National League Division Series at Wrigley Field. They engaged in finger-pointing only to single out the unlucky plays that hastened their defeat.
Both occurred in the second inning and contributed to Chicago's three-run uprising against Giants starter Jeff Samardzija en route to a 2-0 series lead, with Game 3 set for Monday (9:30 p.m. ET/6:30 PT/FS1).
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First came Kyle Hendricks' bloop single that drove in two runs. Hendricks, the fourth consecutive Cubs hitter to reach base, became the first pitcher to drive in at least two runs in a postseason game since Philadelphia's Brett Myers collected three RBIs in Game 2 of the 2008 National League Championship Series against Los Angeles.
Hendricks' hit was of the broken-bat variety, which seems to always haunt the victimized team.
"Now it's an uphill climb for us," Giants manager Bruce Bochy said as he described the impact of Hendricks' hit, which landed in front of center fielder Denard Span.
"There wasn't anything 'D' could do," Samardzija said. "He came in and it was hit in the right spot."
Hendricks' single was a picture-perfect blooper. It had an exit velocity of 72.2 mph and a launch angle of 24 degrees, according to Statcast™. Batted balls with similar traits were hits 100 percent of the time this season.
Chicago's Kris Bryant singled to drive in the inning's final run on a sinking liner that right fielder Hunter Pence dove for and nearly caught before it trickled out of his glove.
Bryant's single had an exit velocity of 100.7 mph and a launch angle of 18 degrees, according to Statcast™. Batted balls with those traits had a "batting average" of .438 this season. The ball had a hang time of 3.59 seconds and Pence covered 74.8 feet. Had he made the grab, it would have been the farthest he traveled to make a catch all season on a batted ball with a hang time of less than four seconds (the season high was 67.4 feet).

"Unfortunately some of those balls that were hit, were hit in the right spot," Giants catcher Buster Posey said.