There is being good. There is being bad. And then there is whatever the San Francisco Giants are.
For the first time since April 11 — the fourth game of the season — the Giants sit at .500. With a 6-3 loss to the San Diego Padres, San Francisco is in danger of having a losing record for the first time this season, a week before as the All-Star break arrives.
They have lost 14 of their last 18 games, and now have the same number of wins as the Baltimore Orioles (41-44), a team which has won six-straight games, three of which came on walk-offs.
It’s a Giants loss that only further spurs questions over what the immediate future of this team looks like. Will they be sellers at the deadline? At this point, it feels almost irresponsible not to get value back for the likes of Joc Pederson and Carlos Rodón.
There’s not a whole lot of reasons to be feel optimistic about this team right now. They do not have enough star power to lean on, nor enough MLB-ready youth to feel like blowing it all up is the right call.
Watching them right now feels a lot like gnawing a piece of gum you’ve been chewing too long. You want to get rid of that taste, but you can’t quite seem to find a spot to dispose of it.
It’s too dull to make you want to pull your hair out. It’s just been lifeless baseball.
To add insult to injury, they played their rice cake-flavored brand of ball while the Padres beat them in their City Connect jerseys that looked like Miami Vice meets 90s Taco Bell.
The absolute worst portion of this game were the Zach Littell innings in the fifth and sixth. You ever watch a youth baseball game the first year they get rid of parents pitching?
It felt like that. Four-pitch walk after four-pitch walk. You look around, praying to whoever will listen that the kids just start hacking. Luckily, for the Giants, the Padres did enough of that to at least prevent Littell from walking any runs in, but it was no less torturous to watch.
Littell put in a four-walk, four-strikeout performance that, at the very least, probably helped some parents put some kids to bet at a reasonable hour on a Friday night.
It wasn’t like the Giants got completely outclassed. Sammy Long’s opener act got off to a horrendous start, by giving up a three-run, no-out homer to Manny Machado, but the Padres were stifled after that.
The problem was the Giants’ bats just remained stale. This is a team that’s averaged 2.91 runs per game over the last 11, and that’s including their seven-run outing a few days ago.
Until the ninth, San Francisco’s only offensive output was David Villar’s first career blast, which didn’t feel like all that much of a point to take solace in.
There were, of course, opportunities. There usually are with this team, even when they’re in the doldrums like they are now.
In the fourth, there was a bases-loaded, one-out opportunity with the Giants trailing just 3-0. Thairo Estrada flew out. Then Brandon Crawford struck out to end the inning.
Villar’s blast followed in the fifth, but from there on, every runner remained stranded, with a variety of ground outs or strikeouts.
That was until Brandon Belt pinch hit in the ninth, for the Giants’ second pinch-hit home run of the season, and the second in three games, following Darin Ruf’s on Wednesday.
But it was too little, too late. It cut the deficit to three runs, but with two outs. After Belt’s blast, Lamonte Wade Jr. promptly struck out, ending things, mercifully.
If you wanted to see the Giants’ best player this season, Pederson, who was named an All-Star starter, well, you had to wait. It was a lefty day. When he did come in as a pinch hitter, he walked in four pitches. A moment later, Wilmer Flores grounded into a double play.
The 3-1 San Diego lead was expanded by a few runs in the sixth and eighth innings, courtesy of a pair of Nomar Mazara singles, then a Jake Cronenworth single.
The last couple of runs were relinquished by Jake McGee, who, boasting a 7.17 ERA, continues to look wretched this season.
He gave up four hits, a walk and a couple of earned runs in the eighth inning.
If you were hoping for a quick reprieve, that was not on offer. It was a slow, longer than three-hour game with 10 combined walks, 7 of which came from Giants pitchers.
Joey Bart, who had a foul ball nick his thumb in the seventh, didn’t seem to be loving that pace in the eighth.
At the end of the day, the Giants still remain in theoretical contention, but they look hapless, and desperate for the All-Star break to arrive. They won’t have a single off day until that break arrives.
The highlights of Friday night’s game were Villar’s first homer, Belt’s too-little, too-late homer, a hard-hit near-double from Yermín Mercedes which was robbed, but followed up with a single, and a few nice innings of work from Tyler Rogers.
That doesn’t exactly get the heart racing, though, does it? This team plays another couple games against San Diego before heading to Arizona, then Milwaukee, before the break.
