Weekend Wrap: Giants Experience the Pure Hell of Losing a Series to a Historically Bad Team

Aug 7, 2023 | 2023 Season, Latest Post, Weekend Wrap

by
Johnny Black

“To get where you want to be, you have to beat the teams you’re supposed to beat, acknowledging the Giants’ consistent struggles against non-contenders. “Letting two games go like that … hopefully it’s not going to cost us at the end of the year. But it definitely has the potential to.”

-Alex Cobb

This was not a good weekend, Giants fans. The Giants lost both games of their series in Oakland against an Athletics team that may end up losing 120 games. The Athletics now have a winning/losing percentage of .286 after sweeping our Giants on Saturday and Sunday. I don’t know about you but that just burns my bagel!

Yesterday’s Game

I stopped watching the condensed game after the second Nick Allen homer. The Athletics shortstop had one home run coming into the game. Against Alex Cobb he did his best Mark McGwire impersonation. Cobb was pretty terrible most of the game. He kept leaving sliders and other stuff above the belt and the A’s kept hitting them. Cobb went 5 1/3 innings in total and allowed five runs on seven hits. The two homers were killers. The Giants need better from their number 2 pitcher going into a game like this. This was perhaps Cobb’s worst outing of the season considering the circumstances and I am sure he will bounce back. He’s too good not to. It’s just that it hurts real bad to lose two in a row to this Oakland team, especially because it’s been a looooong time since the Giants hitting attack pushed across six runs. To see them score that many in a six weeks long dry spell and come up empty, well, I just want to cry in my Wheaties.

Did I tell you about the miscues on defense? How about the leaky Giants bullpen?

The Giants had leads of 1-0, 2-1, 4-3, and 6-3 and they could not stop Oakland. LaMonte had three hits. Bailey had two.

Maybe the most galling part of this loss was that the Oakland bullpen shut the Giants out for the final four frames.

EEEEEEW!

Saturday’s Game

I don’t know which loss was more painful, yesterday’s or Saturday’s. On Saturday afternoon the Giants lost 2-1 on a Seth Brown single in the bottom of the eighth inning. The San Francisco team had three hits total. With their 1-0 win on Thursday in which they had two hits that makes five hits total in their past two games. If “putrid” is not the right word I don’t know what is. It would be beneath me to recap this entire game other than to say it looked like the entire hitting attack was playing with a hangover after a weird and rare Friday off day in the Bay. I just cannot explain it.

Desclafani Likely Out for the Season

The Giants issued a statement on Sunday explaining that it will be at least two months before Anthony Desclafani pitches again, at the earliest. He is likely out for the season. Should we laugh? Should we cry? I don’t know. Maybe it’s time to move on from the Anthony Descalfani era in San Fran.

Casey Not at the Bat

Casey Schmitt was mercifully demoted to AAA Sacramento and Mark Mathias was called up to replace him. Schmitt had an electric debut but in the past month or so could not hit a baseball with Cricket stick. He was struggle. He is too talented to be gone for long and I hope to see him soon.

The Weekend Wrap

Our Giants team has been winning with black and orange magic. I do not see how this roster achieves this level of success. One has to accept one’s fate. The Giants are a team that has some big moments, plenty of fight but simply not enough tools to compete against the likes of the heavy hitters like… the Oakland Athletics????

Stop…..

No…

If anything this 2023 season has taught me not to write off the Giants. They could peel off another six-game winning streak just like that. Who knows? I still believe Gabe Kapler and Co. have their hands full with the limitations of the pitching staff and the prolonged slumps of Casey Schmitt, Michael Conforto, Brandon Crawford, LaMonte (until yesterday) and other players. A hot Wilmer is not enough to counter-balance all those empty at bats. Neither is a solid bullpen.

I don’t know what else there is to write about, really. I just don’t want to go all negative on you. If you want to see something funny: Watch Lance Lynn pitch for Dodgers. The dude has a belly the size of two kung fu pandas and he still beat the Padres in San Diego yesterday. But watching the LA-San Diego game tells me neither of those teams is going to sniff the World Series this year, ladies and gents. At least our boys are not overpaid bums. So there’s that.