SF Giants surrender nine runs in fourth inning of 9-4 loss to White Sox

SAN FRANCISCO – Trevor McDonald hustled his way through three perfect innings Friday night, pitching like the stopper the on-again, off-again Giants desperately needed to open their homestand.

Then the Chicago White Sox struck for nine runs — in the fourth inning, alone — to trigger a 9-4 Giants loss before an Oracle Park crowd of 37,524.

A funny thing happened on the way to defeat No. 31 in 51 games, however. As the White Sox mounted an eighth-inning rally, dozens of fans, then perhaps a couple of hundred, took off their shirts and twirled them in the air. Sure enough, Chicago failed to pad its lead and stranded two baserunners.

Orange Friday had turned into a tarps-off, shirts-and-skins exhibition rather than just more dismay in May.

“It was kind of hard to not pay attention to what was going on, or at least see what was going on in the stands,” Giants manager Tony Vitello said. “… When things maybe click for us, or we can fight our way in a game like this into a situation where we’re knocking on the door, it might be the difference of the game, where (fans) can put us over the edge a little bit.”

The "Tarps Off" trend began last college football season at Oklahoma State, then was revived this month at a St. Louis Cardinals game before spreading to other ballparks, including Seattle's where the White Sox witnessed it earlier this week.

There was still no way of erasing Chicago's nine-run uprising in the fourth, the most runs allowed in an inning by the Giants since 2020 (also nine, by the then-Oakland Athletics).

Get this: all of Chicago's nine runs and five hits came from that fourth-inning fury.

McDonald entered with a 2-0 record and 2.37 ERA in three starts this month as a Triple-A callup. He was gone before he could finish the fourth, charged with seven earned runs on just three hits through 66 total pitches.

Ryan Borucki relieved him, the White Sox scored twice more, and the Giants faced an unconquerable deficit as baseball's lowest-scoring team.

Nos. 3 and 4 hitters Casey Schmitt and Rafael Devers each went 0-for-4, as did designated hitter Bryce Eldridge in the No. 6 hole.

The Giants broke through for three runs in the fifth, once they loaded the bases with the bottom of their order (via a Drew Gilbert double sandwiched between walks by Jesús Rodriquez and Harrison Bader.) There was no major, comeback-inspiring hit, however, as two runs came home on groundouts while a Luis Arraez single supplied the other.

The Giants scratched across another run in the sixth as Matt Chapman led off with a double and scored on a Jesus Rodriquez groundout. It was Chapman’s fourth extra-base hit in six games, after four in his first 25 games.

Too much damage had been done by Chicago's nine-run rally.

McDonald's perfect-game bid – if you can prematurely label it that through three innings – ended once he hit the first two batters he faced in the fourth, Sam Antonacci and Munetaka Murakami, neither of whom did little to avoid his inside pitches.

“Inevitably, when you give up some free bases, that’s when maybe things can spiral,” said Vitello, who opened his press conference by noting Antonacci’s propensity to get hit by pitches.

The "no-hitter" ended on Colson Montgomery's one-out, infield single to third baseman Matt Chapman, and the “shutout” sheepishly died on a bases-loaded walk.

“I don’t really believe in the whole ‘good luck, bad luck’ thing,” McDonald said. “If I don’t put three free bases runners on, those two balls on the infield are probably out … I put blame on myself, not good or bad luck.”

Andrew Benintendi followed with a first-pitch, two-run double to center, and the deficit grew to 4-0 on Arraez's late throw home from an Edgar Quero grounder. Once No. 9 hitter Derek Hill delivered an RBI single on a two-out, two-strike offering, McDonald got pulled.

“Benintendi kind of had the big hit that turned it into a (rally). So it unraveled for him pretty quick,” Vitello said.

It was a tectonic shift for a pitcher who seemed worthy of a regular spot in the rotation, one that could soon welcome back Logan Webb, who made a rehabilitation start Friday night at Triple-A Sacramento (62 pitches, 34 for strikes).

The Giants' immediate response to the White Sox's nine-run nightmare? A 10-pitch, 1-2-3 frame consisting of a Devers strikeout, followed by Chapman and Eldridge groundouts.

Eldridge came up from Triple-A with McDonald the last time the Giants opened a homestand (after getting swept in back-to-back road series). This time, the Giants limped in after a sweep in Arizona, and outfielder Victor Bericoto came up from Sacramento for his Major League debut, which amounted to a three-pitch strikeout as a pinch hitter to end the eighth inning.

JT Brubaker finished things with three scoreless innings out of the Giants’ bullpen, after Erik Miller worked the sixth.

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This story was originally published May 22, 2026 at 10:22 PM.