On-Air Now
On-Air Now
Listen Live from the Casino Matrix Studio

Giants get swept away in doubleheader as Padres look awfully imposing

By

/


Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports


The good news of the weekend is the Giants are free of the coronavirus, Alex Dickerson’s test believed to be a false positive, the club healthy and able to play on.

The bad news of the weekend is everything else.

The Giants’ offense, which for so much of the season has had a magical touch especially in late innings, has magically disappeared. The powerful Padres pitching has a way of doing that to opponents.

Entering the series, the Giants had scored 62 runs in eight September games. In three straight losses (albeit two seven-inning contests) against the second best team in the NL West, the third best club in the division scored two runs. A quiet, 3-1 loss to close Sunday’s doubleheader on the wrong end of a sweep means the Giants have lost five of six to the Padres this year, which is trouble come October.

The Giants (23-24) have dropped below .500, but are still in possession of the eight seed, with no other club stepping up thus far. San Francisco has gotten fat — or at least plumped up — on the dregs of the league, particularly beating up on the Diamondbacks, but Gabe Kapler’s crew has not shown it can hang with San Diego, who is trying to threaten the Dodgers for supremacy.

On Thursday it was the Padres bullpen that silenced loud Giants bats. In Sunday’s first game it was the starter — Mike Clevinger — who shut them down, before a combination of the two did the trick in the second game.

Garrett Richards went 4 1/3, one-run innings, the Giants only scoring on a second-inning Mike Yastrzemski RBI double. They didn’t get another hit, though, until a meaningless Donovan Solano single in the sixth, which was quickly erased on an Evan Longoria double play.

After Richards, Tim Hill, old pal Drew Pomeranz and Trevor Rosenthal were barely touched — only Pomeranz allowed even a single, the Giants finishing with three hits and going quietly. If the Giants viewed this series — whose final game will need to be made up, probably in the last series of the year — as a test to see how they fare against better competition, they failed.

Logan Webb was merely good on a day he had to be perfect. Filling in for the scratched Kevin Gausman, who will need an MRI on his tight right elbow, Webb was solid through four innings, allowing just a Wil Myers home run (and which Giants pitcher hasn’t been victimized by Wil Myers?).

The Padres broke through in the fifth against Sam Selman, who couldn’t find the strike zone. He walked two before Jurickson Profar feinted a bunt and made Longoria charge, before pulling it back and driving it past Longoria for the go-ahead run. Longoria made a nice play coming home on a ball Fernando Tatis Jr. hit to avoid further damage, but Manny Machado singled off Tyler Rogers to add the final cushion.

If there were a bright side, it was the play of Joey Bart, who had thrown out just one runner in 10 tries this year. He had a pair of punchouts in the first two innings, the first involving a gorgeous tag by Wilmer Flores, who touched Tatis on the back of the knee a split second before he reached second.

The Jake Cronenworth throw-out was more customary but just as satisfying for the Giants.