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With 146 games still left to play, it would be absurd for Giants fans to start panicking about their team's slow start. But any concern that does exist may be magnified by what looms for the Giants this weekend.
The Giants lost their seventh game in their past eight tries with a 9-4 stinker
against the San Diego Padres on Thursday in front of 36,283 at SBC Park. After
winning the first game of this four-game series, the Giants dropped the final
three by a combined score of 29-9.
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The Giants already are 41/2 games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West, and they open a three-game series in Los Angeles tonight. The Giants limped onto their charter Thursday night facing about as big a series as there can be this time of year.
"I'm concerned about the Giants," manager Felipe Alou said. "It's
going to take awhile for me to be concerned about anybody else. Not only me,
but every guy in that room (the clubhouse). A funk is a funk, and we need to
fight our way out of it."
Last season, the Giants beat the Dodgers five out of six times in April to put
Los Angeles in a hole early. The Dodgers could send the Giants reeling by winning
the battle this weekend. A second three-game sweep in two weeks would drop the
Giants 71/2 games back.
"We need to worry about ourselves and play good baseball," said center
fielder Marquis Grissom, who struck out as a pinch hitter in the sixth inning.
"It's a long season. Right now, we're struggling. So what? We'll get it
together sooner or later."
For the third straight game, the Giants found themselves down early. But the
proceedings actually got off to a promising start. Second baseman Ray Durham
led off the bottom of the first with his first home run of the season. J.T.
Snow followed with a double and Jeffrey Hammonds singled him to third.
But Barry Bonds wasn't sitting in the middle of the order because he had the
day off, and the Giants could push only one more run across, on a fielder's
choice by Michael Tucker.
Kirk Rueter and the Giants then suffered through a nightmarish second inning,
one that could have been substantially different had they not blown a double-play
grounder. Phil Nevin led off with a single and moved to second on a walk to
Ryan Klesko. Jay Payton followed with a sharp grounder up the middle that shortstop
Neifi Perez gloved, briefly mishandled, then flipped to Durham backhanded. It
appeared Durham still had time to turn the double play, but in a rush to make
the pivot, he never cleanly caught Perez's flip.
Instead of having two outs and a runner on third, the Padres had the bases loaded
with nobody out. They went on to score six runs in the inning.
"If we make that play, it would have been a heck of a double play,"
Alou said. "But if we turned that double play, it could have been the turning
point. But we don't know."
The Padres extended their lead to 9-2 with three unearned runs off reliever
Wayne Franklin in the sixth, and the Giants found themselves facing a sizable
deficit for the third straight game. They trailed 6-0 in the fourth inning of
Tuesday's game (a 9-5 loss) and 7-0 in the fourth Wednesday (11-0 loss).
For the Giants offense, which entered Thursday tied for 13th in the National
League in runs scored, those margins are just too steep to erase right now.
"We can't make excuses," said Perez, who had a two-run triple in the
sixth. "Last year we fell behind and came back. It is tough to (play from
behind) like that, but there are still no excuses. We should win the game."
Alou added: "I've come close to forgetting our signs. When you fall behind
early like that, unfortunately you have to just sit and wait for something to
happen."