The Giants Baseball Blog

This series the Giants just finished up with the Pirates was one of the toughest I've seen all year. In all three games, the Giants coughed up comfortable leads and have now fallen 1.5 games back of LA in the West for the first time since early May. Whats been especially rough is the way they're losing these games though. It seems like each day it's a particular area of the team that isn't pulling their weight. For example, Matt Moore, a guy the Giants paid heavily to get, wasn't able to give them a quality start on Monday and that, coupled with some bullpen deficiencies caused the Giants to lose a game they should have won. Then on Wednesday, Jeff Samardizja was solid, allowing 3 runs over 6 innings, but the Giants offense just couldn't quite figure out rookie Jameson Taillon and lost the game 4-3. Then, perhaps the toughest of all three losses came Wednesday, when the Giants staked Matt Cain a 4-run lead early and Matty looked like he was on his game thro...

Much of the Giants struggles in the second half have been because of a major offensive drought the team has been going through the last month. Before the break, the Giants were figuring out ways to scrap together runs despite missing a couple of key contributors like Pence and Pagan. Now fast-forward to mid-August, entering the stretch drive and the final 6+ weeks of the season, and the Giants lack of offense has become a trend that's lasted much longer than any of us were anticipating/hoping. Over the last 10 games the Giants have scored four-plus runs just four times, have been shut out twice and put up just a run in two of those contests. There pitching is good enough to where they're going to win most games in which they score more than 4 runs but that just hasn't been happening with any consistency. One of the reasons has been Hunter Pence. Hunter is a guy they were expecting a ton of run production from this year, yet he was knocked out for a couple months and has r...

The Giants parted with a lot of well known names in the organization over the last week, culminating with two big deals before Monday's 1 PM trade deadline. While I don't think they got away with any steals this summer, I'm leaning toward liking two of the three deals, but only time will tell how they really play out. First the one I thought was a little too much for a little, well, too little. The Giants gave up Andrew Susac, an aging, albeit still valuable catching prospect, but also their top pick from 2015 and a guy who's looked it in his brief stint in pro ball in Phil Bickford for a middle reliever. Now, granted, that middle reliever has been one of the best in the game the last few seasons and should give the Giants exactly what they needed most in that bullpen, the price was a little too steep for my liking. I would have preferred more of a 2nd rate pitching prospect with Susac, someone along the lines of a Chris Stratton or Kyle Crick (who still has upside bu...