PHOENIX — The Giants understood the stakes at hand in this two-game series against the Diamondbacks. Win both and 2½-game gap in the wild card standings would be almost entirely erased; a split would clinch the season series and secure a potentially important tiebreaker.

That factored in as much as the added days of rest for Alex Cobb’s troublesome hip when they chose to push his scheduled start back from Saturday in Colorado to Tuesday’s series opener in Arizona. It’s hard to imagine the decision backfiring worse.

In an 8-4 loss, Cobb walked off the mound after throwing two pitches in the third inning Tuesday night, clearly bothered by the impingement in his left hip. He seemed to labor through all 52 of his pitches, put base runners on in each of his two innings and left having allowed five runs.

“The one day you have the ability to put your presence on making the postseason and you aren’t able to, it’s a letdown,” Cobb said. “There’s really no other way to put it. You talk about the highs and lows of the season, when you see the playoff picture get further away from you in a game that you can kind of contribute and you don’t, it definitely feels like the lowest part of the season.”

The loss was the Giants’ 24th in 29 road games since July 18 and their fourth in their past five contests. This one dealt a serious blow to their postseason chances.

With 11 games left, the gap between them and the D-backs grew to 3½ games, while three games and three teams separate them from the third and final National League wild card, with Wednesday’s series finale here marking their last remaining chance to make up ground in a head-to-head matchup.

“Nobody’s giving up hope,” Cobb said. “Obviously you knew you needed to come in here and try to win both. You look around the league and see that other teams kind of took care of business, you walk off that mound with your team in the position that they’re in, in a must-win game, there’s no worse feeling coming in here.”

Facing Zac Gallen, the D-backs’ ace and a National League Cy Young contender, the Giants opened a 2-0 lead in the top of the first with a triple from LaMonte Wade Jr. and Joc Pederson’s 14th home run of the season. But Cobb gave one run back in the bottom half, and San Francisco lost the lead for good in a four-run second inning.

Cobb hung his head while he grabbed at the hip as he returned to the dugout after the 33-pitch second inning. He returned to the mound to start the third but looked to be in discomfort throughout his warm-up pitches. He was clearly in pain after his second pitch of the inning, prompting manager Gabe Kapler and trainer Dave Groeschner to make their way to the mound. A short conversation ensued, and Kapler called on Alex Wood while Groeschner escorted Cobb back to the dugout.

“We had to get him out of that game. He wasn’t able to finish his pitches. We could see that in both his stuff and the wincing that was going on in his face,” Kapler said. “He gave us everything he had, but … he just wasn’t strong enough, physically, to get through the game today. … It’s something he’s been battling with. He felt good in the bullpen, and then once he got out onto the mound and really had to finish his pitches, it really started biting on him.”

What the prognosis for Cobb is with 11 games left is still to be determined.

He had season-ending surgery to address an impingement in his right hip in 2019 but said last week that doctors told him they don’t believe this will require surgical intervention. The pain didn’t flare up any worse than normal Tuesday, he said, but it still had an effect on his ability to get hitters out.

“The biggest hinderance is not so much the pain, it’s the subconsciousness of not wanting to get on it,” Cobb said. “The pain is definitely something you can tolerate. Just when it starts affecting everything else and favoring it and throwing more with your arm, it’s tough because it feels like something you can overcome but you just can’t.”

The five runs charged to Cobb matched his second-highest total of the season. Four came in the second inning, including two that scored on a double-steal attempt when Patrick Bailey’s throw got dislodged from third baseman Wilmer Flores’ glove, and Flores made an errant throw home. It was the speedy Corbin Carroll who raced home for the second run, and Flores said he was caught off guard by him taking off despite the ball only rolling a few feet away.

“I caught the ball and I was trying to be so quick that he kicked it out of my glove,” Flores said. “From there, everything started. … He’s fast, so he can do anyhing. If I was that fast, I would’ve gone, too. He just makes things happen. But it’s a play that shouldn’t happen. (Bailey) made a good throw. I should’ve put the tag on.”

Cobb had recorded two outs in the second without allowing a run when Geraldo Perdomo lofted a ball down the line in left field. Statcast gave the pop fly a 9% probability of being a hit and Mitch Haniger a 20% chance at making the catch. But Haniger appeared to let up as he neared the foul line and let the ball fall in front of him.

“If I can get to a ball by diving for it, I’m going to dive,” Haniger said. In this case, it was out of range, fell to the grass, and led to four runs.

Against Wood in the fourth, Perdomo bunted himself on base and scored on a two-run single from Ketel Marte. Video replay showed Bailey’s throw from his knees beat Perdomo to the bag, but the Giants lost their challenge on an unsuccessful look at a hit-by-pitch that put Gabriel Moreno on base to start the second inning.

“Obviously we want to get those right as often as possible, and I think we’ve got a pretty solid track record of challenges,” said Kapler, whose 57.8% success rate on challenges ranks seventh in MLB. “In that particular case, I had a chance to go back and review it and talk to our video lead. In the amount of time that he had to make a decision, he saw an angle that looked clearly like the ball just hit the knob and he found another angle where the ball did hit the player. But that was after the fact.”

Of Cobb’s five starts of five-plus runs, four have come since he suffered the impingement in his hip in mid-June. His outing Tuesday raised his ERA to 4.85 in 16 starts since June 8, when he said he first felt the discomfort, compared to 2.71 in 12 starts before.

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Cobb was pitching on seven days of rest for his second straight start, after receiving a cortisone injection before his last start, and had typically performed better on extra rest. When receiving six or more days, he had a 2.63 ERA versus a 4.50 mark on regular four days rest.

The Giants lined him up to face Gallen, and Logan Webb to face Merrill Kelly on Wednesday, pitting the clubs’ top two starters against each other in two games that only grew in importance after they dropped three of four in the series at Colorado.

The Giants chased Gallen after five innings, plating another pair in the fifth with back-to-back two-out walks to Flores and Mike Yastrzemski, but grounded into three inning-ending double plays and went hitless in their one at-bat with runners in scoring position.

Threatening with the bases loaded in the fifth, after the two straight bases on balls, Joc Pederson struck out on three pitches to end the inning. Gallen threw him three fastballs. Pederson swung at the first, then watched the other two clip the inside corner.

“It’s definitely tough, but at the same time today I think we took really good at-bats against Gallen,” Flores said. “There’s nothing we can do about it. Just worry about tomorrow. … We put ourselves in this situation. So we’ve got to win tomorrow and just keep going from there.”