Chris Haft
MLB.com
The Giants' trip to San Diego and Los Angeles wasn't a disaster.
But there's no way to sugar coat the six consecutive defeats the Giants absorbed, including Thursday night's 7-2 drubbing administered by the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Giants manager Bruce Bochy didn't try to minimize the Giants' plight. He addressed it with plain, harsh language.
"All facets of the game are going bad for us right now. We know it," Bochy said. "There's no question. We're bad right now. Are we bad? No. Right now we are."
Bochy urged the Giants (2-7) to bring some attitude along with their bats and gloves. Asked where a solution to the Giants' woes might lie, he said, "As much as anything, we start with how we take that field. We have to get [ticked]. We're better than this. Some guys, they're struggling, and that's going to happen. But for it to happen in all facets of the game, that's when you get these types of streaks."
Over the half-dozen games, the Giants were truly competitive only in Wednesday's 5-4 loss. Overall, they were outscored 42-14. They hit .208, despite Bochy's attempts to generate offense by shuffling the lineup and batting order. Their vaunted starting rotation went 0-5 with a 8.79 ERA.
Against the Dodgers, San Francisco limited Manny Ramirez to two hits in 10 at-bats with zero RBI in the series and it still couldn't win.
Before departing on this trip, the Giants looked promising as they took two of three games from Milwaukee in the season-opening series. Currently, they look like what the standings say they are: A last-place team. Maybe it's encouraging that players are uncomfortable with the club's status.
Catcher Bengie Molina seconded Bochy's remarks. "I believe in what he said," Molina said. "I don't know what it was on this trip, but we need to bring more intensity to the field, more hunger."
"It's something where we have the skills and tools and players and it's just a stretch where we haven't put it together on the field," said left-hander Barry Zito (0-2), who pitched well in spots but still allowed six runs in five-plus innings. "It's really frustrating. You could say that it's early in the year and blah blah blah, but we have to fight hard right now. We can't wait for things to happen, myself included."
The Giants won't escape the cellar until they cease playing as they did in this series finale, which featured the varied lapses Bochy cited. Pick a category, any category, including:
• Baserunning: Emmanuel Burriss doubled and stole third base with one out in the first inning but broke slowly for home plate on Pablo Sandoval's grounder to shortstop with the infield playing back and was tagged out in a rundown.
• Offensive execution: The Giants could not score Fred Lewis from third base with one out in the fourth inning and did not advance Sandoval after he lined a one-out RBI double in the fifth.
• Defense: With the score tied at 1, Los Angeles scored twice in the second inning as Lewis hesitantly approached Matt Kemp's line drive to left field and played it into an RBI triple. "We need to make plays. That's how you stop rallies," Bochy said.
• Pitching: Zito recovered to no-hit the Dodgers from the third through fifth innings. But with the Giants trailing only 3-2, he loaded the bases with nobody out in the sixth by hitting Russell Martin and walking Andre Ethier and Kemp. Brandon Medders relieved Zito and yielded Casey Blake's sacrifice fly and pinch-hitter Doug Mientkiewicz's two-run double.
The Giants were swept in a three-game series at Dodger Stadium for the first time since Aug. 11-13, 2006.
From MLB.com
 San Francisco (2-7) Lost 6 | LA Dodgers 7, San Francisco 2 |  LA Dodgers (7-3) Won 5 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Standings thru 4/16/09 | Recap: SF | LAD | Wrap | Gameday |
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