“It’s tough, because he has been that fixture,” catcher Buster Posey said. “That first game in Cincinnati, we got trounced, and I believe his spot would have been the second game. Sometimes that can really change the momentum of the series if you have your guy come in and be that stopper. So it’s hard not to think about that.”
The Cincinnati series was historically bad: The Giants lost by 13-3, 14-2 and 4-0. The last time they had been outscored by 26 runs in a series of any length was in 1922, against Pittsburgh at the Polo Grounds.
There is no single cause of the Giants’ misery. Their E.R.A. before Monday was 4.81, ranking 28th of 30 teams in the majors. Their offense was averaging just 3.28 runs per game, the lowest in the National League. They had also made eight errors in their last seven games.
“You never lose your sense of optimism,” Manager Bruce Bochy said. “You’ve got to keep believing, and there’s a lot of baseball left. At the same time, you want to avoid having complacency set in to where you go, ‘Well, there’s a lot of baseball left,’ and you lose that sense of urgency. A lot of things have to happen, to be honest with you. We have to pitch better. We have to swing the bats better. We just have to play better all-around ball.”
The Giants seemed a safe bet for the playoffs before this season. After Bumgarner’s wild-card shutout, the Giants lost a hard-fought division series to the eventual champion Chicago Cubs. The Giants swiftly fixed their most pressing weakness by signing a star closer, Mark Melancon.
But they are also among the older teams — only two N.L. clubs, the Mets and the Atlanta Braves, have an older average age among position players than the Giants’ 29.8 years — and have lately been without shortstop Brandon Crawford and center fielder Denard Span, who are injured. Christian Arroyo, 21, was promoted to hold down shortstop while Crawford recovers from a groin strain (he is on a rehabilitation assignment now), but otherwise there is not much the Giants can do to alter the team’s makeup.
“We can see the issues; we can see the challenges we’re facing,” General Manager Bobby Evans said. “We’ve brought in Arroyo, and we have some options with extra players and the bullpen, but when it comes to the core part of your lineup and the rest of your club, there’s not really so much you can do — other than let them get back into the groove.”
The Giants are committed to several of their headliners; their 2020 payroll already includes more than $88.5 million for Belt, Crawford, Posey, Melancon and starter Jeff Samardzija. Another starter, Johnny Cueto, could make $21 million that year, but he could also opt out of his contract after this season.