SAN FRANCISCO -- The most visible portion of the out-of-town scoreboard at Oracle Park can hold updates on eight other games, but during a series against the Chicago White Sox, the two most important scores were somewhat hidden. The Atlanta Braves and New York Mets were on a smaller portion of the scoreboard in Triples Alley, and because of the way that wall is angled, the Giants couldn't really see the Braves score from the home dugout.
That didn't bother manager Bob Melvin, who has done his best to avoid scoreboard-watching. He knows that none of it will matter if his team doesn't stack wins together, and on Wednesday the Giants wasted a golden opportunity to get a needed sweep.
The old cliché is that it's hard to sweep anyone in Major League Baseball, but the White Sox had won just three of their last 29 games coming into Wednesday's finale and been outscored by nearly 100 runs in the second half. They pushed four across in the top of the ninth, though, handing the Giants a 6-2 loss that sent them back to just one game above .500 as they hit the road for the start of a tough finishing stretch.
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"This was an opportunity to get three above [.500], and it's a big swing from potentially three to back to one [above] again, and now we're going on the road," Melvin said after the loss. "We really thought we'd end this homestand more than one game above .500."
The schedule is not usually easily divided given the nature of a 162-game season, but the second half did kind of have two rough outlines of different stretches.
Starting with a series at Coors Field right after the MLB All-Star break, the Giants had about a month where the schedule was as easy as they could hope for. They have faced the Los Angeles Dodgers and Braves, but also the Colorado Rockies (twice), Oakland Athletics (twice), Cincinnati Reds, Washington Nationals, Detroit Tigers and White Sox. The Dodgers are the only ones from that group locked into the playoffs, and the Giants have taken advantage, but not the way they should have.
They are 18-14 in the second half, but it should have been better given the quality of their opponents. It needed to be better during this stretch given the hole they dug before the All-Star break. They have gained a bit of ground on the Braves, but have fully lost touch with the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks, both of whom were just two games ahead of the Giants at the end of the first half.
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"We're at the point of the season where we can't let games slip away," right-hander Logan Webb said. "It was a much-needed win today to get the sweep and we came out flat, plain and simple."
Webb did his part, allowing two runs over eight innings, but he was pulled after just 93 pitches. The right-hander was sick last week and had some other physical limitations on Wednesday, putting him on a pitch count.
The Giants would need their bullpen one way or another, which meant that Tuesday's game might have ended up costing them on Wednesday. They should have blown that one apart, but they wasted opportunity after opportunity and ended up using Tyler Rogers and Ryan Walker to close out a 4-1 game.
Rogers was unavailable Wednesday after pitching three straight. Walker was down after a two-inning outing on Sunday and a save on Tuesday. Melvin turned to Erik Miller, who loaded the bases, and then Spencer Bivens, who gave up four runs on a pair of two-out singles in the top of the ninth.
It was easy to point to bullpen management at the end of the series, but the Giants should have done a lot more offensively against a team that has allowed 5.7 runs per game in the second half. They scored 11 total runs in the series and managed just two hits in five innings Wednesday against a bullpen that ranks 28th in the big leagues in ERA.
All season long, the lineup has put too much pressure on a pitching staff that has the MLB innings leader and two right-handers who are tied for the lead in relief appearances. Since deciding not to sell at the trade deadline, the Giants rank 29th in the league in OPS with runners in scoring position, and their .183 average in those situations is 28th.
The sledding is about to get a lot more difficult, too. Over their final 33 games, the Giants will face an opponent with a winning record 27 times. They have the toughest remaining schedule in the National League, a frightening thought for a group that's 27-38 against teams with a winning record.
The Giants are still one of those, as taking two of three was enough to get them to 65-64. But they needed a sweep against the White Sox, and they knew it.
"I think the effort that we had today was not great, and that's me, too. I gave up a leadoff triple," Webb said. "So, we all just have to put our heads down. We have to win every game. I know that's kind of hard to say, you can't win 30-something straight -- no team has done that -- but we've got to think that way. There's games you should win, and today was one of them.
"The other teams are winning, not losing. We've got to keep winning to stay in it."
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