Giants are struggling – and in first
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — Their No. 1 starter, Madison Bumgarner, has lost three in a row. Their No. 2 starter, Matt Cain — who used to be their No. 1 starter — hasn’t won a game this early season. Their corner infielders can’t hit, can hardly make contact.
And yet the San Francisco Giants are in first place. If barely.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do (Tuesday),” said the man trying to make sense of this confusion, Giants manager Bruce Bochy. He meant as far as his starting lineup. In another sense, he always knows what to do, keep pushing and pulling.
Baseball is a funny sport. There are so many games. If you lose 60 of them, you’ve had a great season. But if a team loses the last game it played — as did the Giants on Monday night, losing 6-4 at AT&T Park to the San Diego Padres — then it’s as if the world has ended.
Players tread silently through the clubhouse. Reporters are doubly careful to be similarly silent, as if the slightest bit of noise, loud talking or, heavens, a chuckle would be irreverent. That the Giants came in with a four-game winning streak doesn’t help the situation one bit.
Mad Bum was 2-0 not all that long ago. Now he’s 2-3. The first two losses could be attributable to the Giants' hitters. Well, call them batters, because if they had hit, Bumgarner and San Francisco would have won each, instead of losing each, 2-1. Monday night was different.
“I didn’t have my command,” said Bumgarner. And so the Padres — mainly Rene Rivera, a catcher who was hitting .200 before the first pitch — commanded Bumgarner.
Rivera drove in the first five San Diego runs with a double in the fourth and home run in the fifth.
“He made a few more mistakes than we’re accustomed to,” said Bochy of Bumgarner. “He didn’t get the ball where he wanted.”
No pitcher is going be effective in every game. Even Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson were off occasionally. So before piling on Bumgarner, it might do well to stand clear.
The trouble is the Giants are a team built on pitching, so the temptation is to panic quickly when the pitching isn’t there.
Cain, who is scheduled to pitch Thursday, has been baffling. He’s 0-3 with a 4.35 earned run average in five starts, the worst start of his career. That perfect game seems 20 years ago, not two.
“We’re really spoiled,” was Bochy’s remark. He said it specifically about Bumgarner, but it could apply to Cain. Or Tim Lincecum. For so many years, they’ve been, if not perfect — well, Cain was — then dominant.
Now, even with the addition of Tim Hudson, who has been the star, the team ERA is 3.41. As a comparison, the Padres, who have won three of four from Los Gigantes in 2014, have a 3.17 ERA.
“Give them credit,” Bochy said of the Padres, whom he managed before the Giants. “You really have to credit one guy.”
That would be Rivera, whose five RBIs not surprisingly were a career high and the most ever by a Padre at AT&T.
Bochy, as is his style, did mention the almosts and could-haves. Buster Posey’s long shot to left in the sixth hit a few inches below the fence instead of clearing it. Michael Morse’s second of three singles could only bring Posey to third where, because third baseman Pablo Sandoval then struck out, Posey remained.
“Buster’s ball just missed going over,” said Bochy, which was true. “It was a strange night. I thought we had some good at bats at times.”
Sandoval, the third baseman, had some bad at bats.
He’s a free agent, playing as much for a big contract as for the Giants and seemingly a mess. Monday night he hit into a double play, flied out, struck out with the tying run on third and one out in the sixth and then flied out.
That left him batting — yikes — just .172.
The first baseman, Brandon Belt, has a better average, .255, but he was 0 for 3.
“Our corner guys are going to have to get on track for us to have success,” reminded Bochy, stating the obvious.
Your first and third basemen not only are supposed to hit but hit with power. Belt at least has seven home runs. Sandoval has two.
“We’ve got to get them going.”
No one had the audacity to ask how.
Buster Posey, Giants, Pablo Sandoval Email Article