When the Giants mostly stood pat during the trade deadline, they expected a healthier roster in the second half could propel them to a playoff push.
“We know a hot two weeks could turn us around just like a bad two weeks put us here,” president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said.
Instead, injuries have again piled up.
The Giants’ longest-tenured player could be done for the season. Their most promising rookie has a concussion. Their oldest player is gutting through a tight hamstring.
Injuries alone didn’t put San Francisco in this position. The Giants have played exactly one month of winning baseball in 2022. But health didn’t save them, and here they are: losers of six straight and effectively out of the playoff hunt with 34 games remaining.
“We haven’t played good baseball for quite a bit now,” manager Gabe Kapler said postgame. “We have to play better. Haven’t had a chance to really look at standings — it’s not something that is really front of mind right now. And mostly because it really doesn’t matter. We’ve just got to play better baseball.”
With Brandon Belt and Joey Bart on the injured list, and Evan Longoria relegated to designated hitter duty while he battles a hamstring injury, the Giants resorted to playing Yermín Mercedes at first base. Mercedes didn’t cause them all, but four errors — tied for a season-high — followed.
Logan Webb struck out seven in 5.2 strong innings, but it didn’t matter as three of San Diego’s four runs were unearned. Joc Pederson’s ninth-inning homer came too late and after too many miscues. With the 4-3 loss, the Giants (61-67) are a season-high 9.5 games out of the playoffs and own the same record as the Diamondbacks. They’re a lifetime away from being two hot weeks away.
“Every game seems like something different,” Webb said postgame. “It’s frustrating for all of us. We all want to win more than anybody. It’s not very fun right now.”
For much of this year, the Giants have turned every ball in play into an adventure — they’ve been the worst fielding team in Fangraphs’ catch-all metric for the majority of the season.
The offense hasn’t slugged enough to overcome their defensive ineptitude — and not nearly as much as they did last year. That’s forced the bullpen — already registering on the Richter Scale — into tough situations over and over again.
Extended losing streaks have followed brief winning spurts. They’ve won 17 of 40 one-run games. Division rivals Padres and Dodgers are now 20-8 against the Giants.
Through it all, it feels like SF has never been at 100%. Tuesday, Austin Slater became the newest member of the walking wounded.
Slater tried to steal second in the first inning and dislocated his left pinky finger sliding into the base. He remained in the game for an inning after popping it back into place, but quickly got replaced by Mike Yastrzemski when he realized he couldn’t swing a bat.
Along with their starting center fielder, the Giants were also without Belt (knee) and Bart (concussion). Longoria said he’ll fight through his hamstring injury until it rips off his leg, but can’t play the field just yet. All that forced Mercedes into action at first base, when he’s proven to be a liability anywhere in the field.
“It’s kind of the way the year’s gone,” Webb said postgame.
Mercedes couldn’t scoop two Brandon Crawford throws, both resulting in throwing errors. The second, in the sixth inning, put stress on Webb as he eclipsed 100 pitches and allowed the Padres to break a 0-0 tie.
Webb had dealt 5.2 scoreless innings and had struck out the previous two hitters — Jurickson Profar and Juan Soto — looking before Crawford’s error.
Crawford now has 15 errors on the season, six more than he committed in all of 2021. Had Belt been there at first instead of Mercedes Tuesday, it’s possible both could have been prevented. When the infield convened at the mound during the pitching change, Crawford lingered alone in his spot, crouching in frustration.
Mercedes also couldn’t stretch for a J.D. Davis cross-diamond throw in the seventh, costing the third baseman a throwing error. That put a man on base for Trent Grisham, who padded San Diego’s lead with a home run off Tyler Rogers.
The Padres committed an error of their own, dropped two catchable balls in foul territory and got caught stealing. Nick Martinez, Josh Hader’s temporary replacement at closer, served up a two-run Splash Hit to Pederson to make it 4-3. But for the second straight night, SF’s late push wasn’t enough.
San Diego is the team the Giants are chasing, and no matter how hard the Padres try, they just can’t give their playoff spot to San Francisco. The Giants are playing like they don’t want it, anyway.
