Giants Conclude Frustrating Week By Reverting To Their Bad Habits

After the sweep of the A's, and winning two of three against the Orioles, it seemed as if the Giants were coming together as a more complete team. The offense was scoring more runs with good situational at-bats and timely hitting, and the pitching staff was continuing its run as one of the best in the game.

It's amazing how quickly things can sour in two weeks, as the Giants just concluded a very disappointing 2-4 week, with series losses at Houston, who the Giants had dominated earlier this year, and at home against the Red Sox. Going back to the series in Toronto, the Giants are 3-6 in their last nine games, and are now 4.5 games behind the Padres, who just completed a 5-1 road trip against the Rays and Marlins.

In rare form, the Giants' starting pitching struggled mightily this week. Barry Zito and Matt Cain turned in their worst starts of the season on Wednesday and Thursday, Tim Lincecum went only 3 innings today, and Jonathan Sanchez, after pitching only 2.2 innings last Sunday, labored through 5.1 innings on Friday. Obviously, the Giants, a team almost too dependent on their starting pitching, are not going to win when they don't pitch. All starting pitchers fall victim to bad outings once in a while, and I'm sure that the starting staff will be back to normal soon.

However, the offense this week reverted back to the terrible play they showed during the games against the Padres and in Oakland against the A's. The Giants could have easily gone 4-2 instead of 2-4 this week, even with the shaky starting pitching, had they not wasted so many opportunities. The Giants did a fantastic job setting the table, but were atrocious in bringing runners in scoring position home. In the six games this week against Houston and Boston, the Giants stranded 42 runners, and went 9-51 with runners in scoring position, which is almost as bad as the 5-54 stretch with runners in scoring position they had in late May. Once again, it's hard to fathom that a team could be that comically incompetent with runners in scoring position.

Also hurting the Giants are the continued struggles of many of the key cogs of the offense, namely Pablo Sandoval, Bengie Molina, and Buster Posey. Posey, after his torrid start, is now mired in a 7-42 slump, the type of slump that all young players new to the big leagues go through. Pablo Sandoval hasn't shown any signs of breaking out of his prolonged funk. Sandoval is suffering from Randy-Winn-Syndrome, hitting only .219 against left-handed pitching this year. His at-bats with runners in scoring position have been awful, and in his last 13 games, he's gone 10-42 with only 4 extra-base hits. Molina in his last 10 games went 8-32 with only 1 extra-base hit. We can keep saying that it's only a matter of time before these guys heat up, but they're not showing any signs of working out their problems.

The Giants have a crucial 14-game stretch before the All-Star break: 3 at home against the Dodgers, 4 in Denver, 4 in Milwaukee, and 3 in Washington DC. The Giants must at the absolute minimum go 8-6 during these next couple of weeks to keep themselves in good position for the 2nd half of the season. It's time for this team to wake up and rise to the occasion against quality opponents.