The Giants are in a total, troublesome free fall
Tuesday night’s game was a bad one for the San Francisco Giants. They went into the ninth inning with a 4-1 lead against the San Diego Padres, just three outs from sewing it up, when a combination of Hunter Strickland and Steven Okert coughed up five runs and the win.
Back on June 26, the Giants were in first place in the NL West, leading the Los Angeles Dodgers by eight games. Since the All-Star Break ended on July 15, the Giants have played 54 games. They’ve won 20 and lost 34. That includes a six-game losing streak, a five-game losing streak, and a four-game losing streak. They’ve won two games in a row just four times, and three games in a row just once.
You can watch the Giants try to avoid getting swept by the Padres in Yahoo Sports’ MLB Free Game of the Day. And we provide many ways for you to catch it: on the Yahoo Sports app, Yahoo’s Sports Home, MLB index, video home and this very post. Local blackouts apply, per MLB rules. First pitch is at 3:45 p.m. ET.
The Giants’ bullpen hasn’t been helping them out lately. And when a bullpen doesn’t help, it’s almost always doing the opposite. In their last 10 save chances, they’ve blown six of them. That’s six more games in the loss column that could have been in the win column, and converting even half of those blown saves could have turned around their free fall. In fact, the Giants’ bullpen has blown 27 saves in 2016, which is not a small amount. Santiago Casilla himself has blown eight of them, which leads the majors.
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When you look around at the Giants offense, one thing does stick out: Buster Posey doesn’t seem quite like himself. He’s definitely not the main source of their problems, but he’s having a down year. He’s hitting .288/.363/.438, which is a line a lot of major leaguers would be more than happy with. But it’s not the Buster Posey that we’ve come to expect. It’s his worst year since his injury-shortened 2011, and not that close to 2015 when he batted .318/.379/.470. He’s definitely still Buster Posey, but the 2016 version is almost like Buster Posey Lite. (Now with 30% less fat!) And it’s hard not to notice this: Buster Posey hasn’t hit a home run in 47 straight games. His last homer was on July 16, and he hasn’t gone yard since. That’s quite the power outage.
Things were looking up over the weekend when the Giants swept the Diamondbacks, but they came back and lost two straight to the highly inferior Padres on Monday and Tuesday. The Giants are just a half game ahead in the Wild Card, and could actually drop out soon if they don’t start actually winning more games.
But maybe it’s not about the bullpen or the offense or Buster Posey after all. Maybe it really is about curse of Taylor Swift.
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Liz Roscher is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at lizroscher@yahoo.com or follow her on twitter! Follow @lizroscher
