John Hefti-USA TODAY Sports
If this is a make-or-break homestand, the Giants might need some tape to keep from snapping.
The start of a nine-game homestand, the first seven of which come against wild-card contenders, has started ominously. The Giants are neither pitching nor hitting well, a rarity over the last month; the Giants’ staff had been able to compensate for slumps, or vice versa, in July.
August has come and the Giants hope they’re not gone.
The latest loss was 5-3 to the Nationals on Tuesday, dropping the fifth game in six tries this month. There was no Joe Panik, who was DFA’d earlier in the day, and there was little evidence that a Giants void had been filled in front of 31,628 at Oracle Park.
Panik’s fill-in, Scooter Gennett, was not the problem or the savior. A move Farhan Zaidi did not make at the trade deadline – adding a veteran to the rotation – has loomed larger than the Giants’ second-base situation.
Conner Menez, one of the three rookies in a floundering rotation, was less impressive in his encore. After giving up two solo homers but nothing else through five innings against the Mets in July, the Nationals’ more-powerful lineup got to him.
Riding a low-90s fastball that did not fool many batters – he threw 62 and got two swinging strikes – Menez managed to go six innings and surrendered five runs on six hits and three walks. It was rough from the start, with Trea Turner and Anthony Rendon walks and Juan Soto and Kurt Suzuki singles giving the Nationals a 1-0 lead in the first.
The third ended at 4-0, though, with a Rendon sacrifice fly scratching another across before Suzuki – who finished 3-for-4 – hit a two-run shot off Menez for a lead that felt insurmountable against the Giants offense.
San Francisco didn’t get its first hit until the third and its second hit until the fifth. The Giants still managed to score in the third, when Anibal Sanchez threw to first to check on Kevin Pillar and the ball squirted into right, Pillar advancing all the way to third. A Brandon Crawford ground out plated him.
They were quiet until the sixth, when Pablo Sandoval pinch-hit a double and Brandon Belt singled him in. Perhaps Belt has slowly (very slowly) begun to emerge from his slump, his 1-for-4 night resulting in 7-for-26 (.269) start to his August.
The Giants showed some life in the seventh, when Sandoval picked up his second double of the game to knock in Pillar and make it 5-3. Stephen Vogt drove a 360-foot shot to left that fell a couple feet shy of tying the game in the eighth, but that’s as close as they would get.
The Giants’ 1-through-5 hitters finished 2-for-18. And the pitching was not there to compensate for a team that had won seven series in a row, and now has lost three straight.