What Can You Say?

Henry Schulman - San Francisco Chronicle

As manager Bruce Bochy was introduced on a satellite-radio talk show last week, the hosts raved about how well the Giants were doing. Their record was 16-23 at the time, raising the question, were the expectations really that low?

Yes they were, and with a 3-7 homestand that ended dreadfully Sunday, the Giants finally played down to those expectations.

After Matt Cain coughed up four home runs for the second time in his career, including three in the span of seven batters, the Giants rallied with three runs in the seventh inning to tie the game 6-6, only to get crushed by the White Sox 13-8 on seven runs in the eighth and ninth against Tyler Walker and Brian Wilson.

The eight Giants runs would have been enough to win any of the previous 13 games they had lost. But when a team is flailing as badly as the Giants are - with five straight losses and 12 in their last 15 games - the ledger of runs scored and runs allowed rarely match properly.

The Giants have scored six runs eight times this season and lost five of those games.

"It's extremely frustrating," Walker said. "The pitchers aren't picking up the hitters and the hitters aren't picking up the pitchers. This is a team game. Everything has to click on all cylinders to win ballgames. Today, our offense stepped up huge and our pitchers didn't shut down their hitters. It was a tough day."

It has been a tough couple of weeks. The sheen of the first 31 games, when the Giants were 14-17, has all but disappeared now that they are 17-28.

"We think we're better than what our record shows," said Bochy, who planned to talk to the team on the plane ride to Denver. "We've lost some tough ones. The buck stops here. It stops with the players and the staff. We're the ones who can change that and turn this around. All we can do now is keep pushing forward and keep our heads up."

What a strange end to the homestand. For four innings, Cain's start had no-hitter written all over it. By the end of his seven innings, Cain and the Giants trailed 6-3 because Cain could not keep the ball in the yard. After allowing six homers all season, he served up four in three innings.

Joe Crede's one-out homer in the fifth was Chicago's first hit and tied the game 1-1. Orlando Cabrera's leadoff homer in the sixth retied it 2-2. After A.J. Pierzynski hit an opposite-field single on a 3-2 pitch, Carlos Quentin socked his American League-leading 11th home run over the fence in left-center.

Cabrera, who had one homer coming in, hit his second of the game in the seventh to give Chicago a 6-3 lead. When Cain was done, he sat in the dugout shaking his head.

"That's why this game is so humbling," Cain said. "You can go out there and pitch a great couple of innings. All of a sudden it can blow up in one inning."

Lots of innings blew up for all sorts of pitchers. The Giants tied the game with a three-run rally against two Chicago relievers in the seventh. Randy Winn tripled, Jose Castillo singled home a run and Bengie Molina tied it with a two-run double - his only two RBIs on the homestand.

But the White Sox took a 9-6 lead on a three-run double against Walker by pinch-hitter Nick Swisher, a blooper to the left-field line that was hit as softly as the three singles that preceded it. Walker gave up 10 runs over three innings on the homestand. On Thursday, he allowed four runs on two homers to blow a 7-3 lead.
That game, he said, "was almost easier to swallow than getting chinked to death" by Chicago.

The Giants scored twice in the eighth after Octavio Dotel walked the bases loaded, but Chicago salted it away with four ninth-inning runs against Wilson.

The skies look even more foreboding for the Giants as they embark on their second-longest trip of the year. After three games at Colorado, which passed San Francisco for third place in the National League West, they visit division leaders Florida and Arizona.

The challenge seems more daunting in light of the Giants' 6-13 road record.

"Regardless of the team, you've still got to execute the game of baseball," reliever Vinnie Chulk said. "It doesn't really matter who you're playing. If you execute late in the game and do the little things during the game, we'll get some wins on the road trip and hopefully come back with a winning record for the trip.

"We've just got to get back to that killer instinct when it gets close. In the late innings, we've just got to put it away when we've got it, and if we don't have it, just try to scrap for a run or two and try to pick up a win that way."

On Sunday, the Giants scrapped for eight yet fell far short of a much-needed win.