The Road Trip From Hell

The San Francisco Giants started an 8 road trip after the all star brea. It looked as if it would be a nice trip to start the second half of the season. And had there pitching rotation in order and bullpen rested, ready to make the second half push toward the playoffs.  They had the best record in the first half, were opening up against the last place Padres for 3, the Red Sox for 2 who are a good team but it's only 2 game and it's at Fenway enough said, then they had the Yankees for the final 3 games who are not a very good team either but it is the Yankees enough said. So you have 2 teams struggling and 1 competing, 3 beautiful ball parks in beautiful cities. 

  Let's start in  San Diego where they were swept by a team that they were 9-0 against this season coming into the 3 game series. Lose the first game 4-1, with your ace Madison Bumgarner on the mound. Lose the second game 7-6in heartbreaking fashion with a blown save by Santiago Casilla in the 10th inning, after the Giants had fought back to tie the score and force extra innings. Where Buster Posey hit a home run to give the Giants their first lead of the game. Lose the third game 5-3, with your other ace on the Johnny Cueto on the mound. 

         Overall the Giants scored 10 total runs in this series which should be enough with their pitching staff. But the starte gave up 6 home runs alone. That's way to many home runs for 3 games. 

  Now Boston where they were swept by the Red Sox in a 2 game series. Losing the first game 4-0. Jake Peavy pitched well but he gave up 2 home runs as well. Lose the second game 11-7 Where there was more of the same Matt Cain was only able to go 2.1 innings and gave up 3 home runs. That puts the total of home runs to 15  given up by the starting staff and the Giants only scoring a total of 17 runs on the road trip  thus far. 

  Now to New York to face the Yankees for a 3 game series. Losing game one 3-2,another loss with your ace on the mound. Before the second game they switched things up flip flopping Cueto and Samardzija Giants won 2-1, their only win of the road trip. Cueto pitched 6 solid innings and Mac Williamson provided all of the offense. Lost the final game of the series 5-2. Samardzija gave up 2 more home runs.  Putting the home run total given up by the starters to 17 and the run total for the Giants to 23, that's only 6 more total home runs than their competutors on the road trip. And not all those home runs were solo shots. 

Her are some more troubling stats from the road trip. 

• Giants hitters went 9-72 with runners in scoring position on the road trip
• Buster Posey went 7-30 with only 4 RBI on the trip
• Brandon Crawford did not have a single RBI and only going 6-33  (he is the team leader in RBI )
• Brandon Belt went 2-33 with 17 strikeouts 

So they go 1-7 starting pitching gives up a ton of home runs and the offense struggles. What should be more alarming the pitching or the bats? The trade deadline is 1 week from Monday. Do the Giants need to make any other trades than just bullpen help which we all know they need? Do they need to address the lineup in the trade deadline? Or are they confident that Pence Duffy and Panik will be back soon enough.  

Lets hope this home stand is a little more favorable for the Giants. They still lead the division by 3.5 games over the Dodgers at the time of writing this. With a rec of 58-40 whi is tied for the second most win in baseball and only one win back of the most wins. So things are still okay, but they need to have a good home stand to right the ship. We will see what happens. 

   Thanks for reading I will do another little review after the home stand and we will have some more answers to what direction the Giants are heading. 

Go Giants !!!!!!!!

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