On Monday evening at AT&T Park, the San Francisco Giants will begin a stretch that was supposed to catapult them into the thick of the National League playoff race.
When the Giants host the Cleveland Indians –a team fresh off of winning an American League pennant– this week, it will mark the first three games of a 10-game homestand, and a stretch that features 18 of San Francisco’s next 23 games at home.
In fact, all but two of the Giants’ next 23 games take place in the Bay Area, as two of their road contests come fewer than 20 miles away against the Athletics at the Oakland Coliseum.
The next time the Giants will play a game outside the Pacific Time Zone is August 11, when San Francisco travels to Washington to take on the Nationals, and follows up a three-game set in the nation’s capital with three in Miami against the Marlins.
It’s hard to imagine a more favorable schedule for a team that began the season with visions of a title chase, but at this point in the year, it hardly matters. The Giants are out of the playoff hunt, and to make matters worse, they were out it by the end of May.
For a team that won three World Series titles at the beginning of the decade to field such an incredibly non-competitive unit is stunning, but it’s become reality around China Basin. So instead of using the gift from the scheduling gods the Giants received to cement themselves in the playoff hunt, they’ll spend the next few weeks searching for their identity.
“We just want to get back to winning baseball and that’s on the pitching side, that’s on the offensive side, get back to who we are,” manager Bruce Bochy said on Monday.
For years, that identity has been founded in pitching. At times, Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and Madison Bumgarner enjoyed stints in which they weren’t just the face of the Giants, they were the face of an entire league. Lincecum and Cain each started an All-Star game wearing the orange and black, while Bumgarner turned in one of the greatest individual performances in postseason history back in 2014. Today, the rotation is lost.
Over the next three games, San Francisco will start Matt Moore, Ty Blach and Cain, a trio of starters who’ve watched their earned run averages balloon beyond expectations. Moore and Cain, in particular, have experienced the greatest struggles, as they sport the two highest ERAs of any qualifying pitchers in the National League.
“Our starters, they’re going through a tough time right now and that’s not our game,” Bochy said. “Our game is pitching and defense and those guys have been so good at giving us quality starts. We need to get these starters back.”
The Giants thought they’d have a chance at regaining that lost identity when Bumgarner returned from a near-three-month absence on Saturday in San Diego. But when the team activated its ace, it placed right-hander Johnny Cueto on the disabled list with a blister issue that’s been a recurring problem for one of the team’s anchors.
At the plate, San Francisco hasn’t had it much easier. The Giants’ identity has never been built from an offense that launches three-run home runs, but San Francisco has always relied on timely hits. In the past, the key for the organization was finding a way to scratch across four runs per game. For a franchise that plays its home games at AT&T Park, that’s a wonderful mission. But this season, the problem has been getting to four.
Through the team’s first 93 games, San Francisco has scored three runs or fewer 50 times. The Giants’ record in such contests? 7-43.
“Same with the offense,” Bochy said. “We’ve got to just get consistent with it, I mean, sure we got beat pretty good yesterday but we only scored one run. We had numerous chances to get back in that game. So that’s what we’re hoping to do.”
When the season began, San Francisco could circle July 17 on the calendar with the goal of staying alive until this date. Had the Giants navigated through some ups and downs to play .500 ball, a stretch of 18 at 23 at home was supposed to provide the medicine that might cure any sickness –be it a June swoon or a dry July.
Heck, any time a team can play seven games in a two-week period against a tanking Padres club is enough for a schedule to be considered favorable. The home dates were just the icing on the cake.
Yet after the type of season the Giants have struggled through, they can at least take comfort knowing that they won’t fall 30 games back of the Dodgers on Monday evening. That’s because Los Angeles, which began the day 29 games ahead of San Francisco, has the night off.
Monday was the day the Giants were supposed to start their late summer run. Now, it’s just another game in which the Giants will play for pride, in search of an identity they just can’t seem to find.
“There’s so much pride involved at this point,” Bochy said. “We always say tough times reveal character and that’s where we’re at right now. We need to show what we’re made of, and hopefully have a good homestand.”