There’s no other explanation for it.
After experiencing the highest of highs in three separate seasons as the Giants’ manager, Bruce Bochy is being tested with the lowest of lows.
On Sunday, San Francisco was once again blown out, this time by the fourth-place New York Mets, who completed a three-game sweep of Bochy’s ballclub with a dominant 8-2 victory.
The Mets entered the weekend at AT&T Park 10 games below .500, and outscored the Giants by 16 runs over three games that were hardly competitive.
After charging out with the best record in baseball through the first three months of the 2016 season, the Giants have been dreadful over the past calendar year, and Bochy knows it. Following a series sweep that pushed his team 24 games below .500, Bochy said he’s never been through such a challenging stretch of baseball in his career as a manager.
“These are tough times, there’s no getting around that,” Bochy said. “I’ve been through some tough stretches here and this is as tough as any stretch I’ve ever seen or met and for some reason the baseball gods, I mean, they’re really testing us here and this group.”
The Giants have now lost 12 of their last 13 games, marking their worst 13-game stretch since 1992, the season before Barry Bonds joined the franchise. It’s been 10 years since Bonds last swung a bat for the orange and black, and you’d have to go back to the season before he began his professional career to find a Giants team that was this bad.
The 1985 Giants set a franchise record by losing 100 games, and Bochy is well aware that this year’s club is on pace to rewrite the record books. For the second straight day, Bochy admitted no one within the Giants’ organization expected the team to reach such epic depths this season, and said at this point, enough is enough.
“It’s not that they’re not coming out here ready or trying, but enough is enough and at some point, we’ve got to find a way to get this thing turned around,” Bochy said. “I talked to a few players before the game here and we’ll keep working. That’s all you can do but with what’s happened here, I don’t think anybody expected or predicted.”
San Francisco returns to action at AT&T Park on Monday evening against the Colorado Rockies, a team that has already won 10 of the 11 games it has played against the Giants this season.