Just A God-Awful Week

Things were looking brighter after the sweep of Houston at home. But then the Giants left their bats and brains in San Francisco and posted a 1-6 record on a disastrous road trip that ended with being swept in Oakland. Splitting the two games in San Diego wasn't bad, since we now know that San Diego is for real. But the most aggravating thing about this week was being swept by Arizona and Oakland, two teams that in all honesty are not very good.

The six losses on this road trip featured everything that could have gone wrong for the Giants: shaky starting pitching (Todd Wellemeyer and Tim Lincecum), shoddy defense (Aubrey Huff/Freddy Sanchez), bullpen meltdowns (2nd game in Arizona), and our favorite, a NON-FUNCTIONAL offense. And even better, as was evident in the series against the A's, a non-functional offense that wastes great starting pitching.

The overall stats for the Giants' starting pitchers this weekend in Oakland: 21.2 innings, 17 hits, 8 earned runs. That adds up to a 1.13 ERA, and that includes Barry Zito's not-so-hot start on Friday. Matt Cain and Jonathan Sanchez did not at all deserve to pick up their fourth losses of the season.

A normal major-league team would have won two of three games, but not these Giants. They scored only 1 run in the whole span of 27 innings against the A's. ONE RUN IN THREE GAMES!!!! Seriously, a Division III college team could have done better than that. Trevor Cahill, Gio Gonzalez, and Ben Sheets are good, but they're not Ubaldo Jimenez, CC Sabathia, and Roy Halladay. The Giants have now been shut-out for 20 straight innings going back to the 7th inning of Friday night's game. They were 0-19 with runners in scoring position, lowering their league-worst average with runners in scoring position to below .230.

Perhaps the most embarrassing development over the weekend was that Bruce Bochy was thoroughly out-managed by Athletics' Bob Geren, who is in my opinion the most dispirited manager in all of baseball. I've defended Bochy in the past, but his managing this weekend was horrible. Case and point: the 4th inning in today's game. Bochy finally got the message and dropped Aaron Rowand and his .281 OBP out of the leadoff spot and replaced him with Andres Torres, a legitimate leadoff hitter. In the 4th inning, Torres coaxed a leadoff walk from Ben Sheets and then stole 2nd base. Up next was Freddy Sanchez, who had struck out against Sheets in the 1st inning. Bruce Bochy's melon-sized head was somewhere in the clouds as he did not put down the bunt sign for Freddy Sanchez to move Torres to 3rd base. Sanchez subsequently struck out, swinging and missing at a fastball on the inside corner. The next hitter, Pablo Sandoval, hit a fly ball to very deep right field that would have scored Torres had he been at 3rd base, thus giving the Giants a 1-0 lead. Yes, Sanchez when 100% is a very capable #2 hitter with great bat control. But he had already struck out in the 1st inning and being only his first week back from injury, he's still getting up to speed. Plus at that point, the Giants hadn't scored a single run in 14 consecutive innings. Maybe the Giants would have lost the game anyways, but who knows what that run would have done mentally for the offense and for Jonathan Sanchez? In that scenario, bunting Torres to 3rd should have been a no-brainer, and Bochy was asleep at the wheel. On the other hand, in the bottom of the 7th inning, Bob Geren had Mark Ellis sacrifice Adam Rosales to 2nd base to put him in scoring position with one out. The next better, Jake Fox, cashed in with an RBI double down the left-field line.

Many people have been clamoring for Buster Posey, who's hitting .327 with 5 HR and 28 RBIs with a .422 OBP and a .929 OPS, to come up to the big club. They're absolutely right; Posey should be in the majors instead of Matt Downs or Ryan Rohlinger. But it's naive to think that he's the answer to the Giants' offensive woes. He'll surely help, but the Giants' problems offensively go way beyond a quick band-aid solution like Posey. For better or worse, this offense is built around veterans and as Duane Kuiper said today on the post-game wrap, it's time for them to produce as the numbers on the back of their baseball cards indicate. I hope they have a meeting before Tuesday's game to get on the same page. It's time for this lineup to play smart team baseball and take quality at-bats. If not, all they'll end up doing is continue to waste the best starting pitching staff in the majors in its prime.