No longer any sweetness in Giants’ torture

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — This is torture, but there is no sweetness. The Giants are coming apart, greatness slipping away. Even on a day of blue skies there is gloom, foreboding, a sense of inevitability that runs counter to what we have seen, what we expected.

Sport is so bewildering, at times so demoralizing. A baseball team that for weeks seemingly couldn’t lose, a team that a month ago had the best record in the majors, is now a team that can’t win. Literally.

The Giants dropped another one Wednesday, this time to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-5. Or maybe that should read "again," this time to the Pirates. Three games against Pittsburgh at AT&T Park, three defeats.

The team that was 57-33 at the All-Star break, the team that had an eight-game lead in the National League West two weeks earlier, has lost 21 of its last 30 — nobody in baseball has done worse than that — and is now in second, behind the hated Dodgers.

There have been momentous shifts before. The Giants, the New York Giants, trailed the Brooklyn Dodgers by 13 games in August 1951, ended up tied and won the playoff on Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard 'round the world.”

There’s no sure thing. Except these days that the Giants will lose.

“We’re in a funk,” said Bruce Bochy, the San Francisco manager, before Wednesday’s game. And then, as if to prove him correct, the Giants blew a 4-0 lead like that, in a half-inning, when starter Matt Cain began the top of the fifth with a hit batsman and three straight walks and closed it by giving up a two-run homer to Andrew McCutchen.

Wham, a blow to left by McCutchen. A blow to the psyche by McCutchen.   

A 4-0 lead after four? Surely this was a game that would end the woes. It wasn’t, and with the New York Mets coming in for four games starting Thursday night and then the Giants going to Los Angeles for three games starting Tuesday, perhaps the woes won't end until the season does.

The Giants are not a bad team, but they are playing bad baseball. When they hit, as they did on Wednesday, they can’t pitch. When they pitch, as they did 11 days ago when Madison Bumgarner threw a two-hitter and lost, 1-0, they can’t hit.

A team built on pitching, the Giants gave up eight runs in consecutive games, first to Baltimore, next to the Pirates. They lost both, of course.

There was an eerie quiet in the Giants' postgame clubhouse. The few players in sight sat and checked their  phones. Not until Cain, as required, showed up for his interview, did anyone talk above a whisper.

Earlier, Bochy, the onetime catcher, had said in another room that Cain “lost his release point,” meaning that the place in his delivery where the ball is fired had changed. Like that.

Four batters, no hits, one run. Then a single for two more runs. Then a sacrifice fly for another run, and the game was tied, 4-4. But not for long. After another out, McCutchen hit one into the left field bleachers. Javier Lopez replaced Cain. Too late.

Bochy was thinking about his bullpen, which has been used far too much, and about Cain’s confidence, trying to save his relievers, trying to save Cain’s self-belief. Another time, that would have worked. Now, nothing works.

“It didn’t play out the way I thought,” said Bochy, when asked if he were second-guessing himself about the tactic. “I saw some good things. That one inning got away from us.

“Then their bullpen did a good job. The way we were swinging the bat, I thought we could come back.”

They nearly did, if anyone cares about possibilities along with results. With the bases loaded and no one out in the bottom of the ninth, Buster Posey — who already had three hits, despite that back pain — stepped up to the plate. But he hit into a double play, with the final run scoring, and so it goes.

“We’re taking some blows,” agreed Bochy. “We’ve lost some of our mojo. But we’re resilient. This is a tough club.”

A tough club that has found out how tough baseball can be.