Examining Giants’ early-season struggles against NL’s best originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea
SAN FRANCISCO — If the regular season ended today, the Giants would be the third Wild Card team in the National League, a position that wouldn’t have been too difficult to predict two months ago. They’re on pace for 89 wins, which certainly would be a letdown after 107, but still would be their second-most since 2012.
It has been a solid first quarter of the season, but it’s certainly hard to feel good about the way they’ve played in recent weeks, particularly when you think about what that Wild Card spot would mean. Teams are separating from the pack in the NL, and the Giants aren’t faring well against them.
Over the weekend, the San Diego Padres handed them their first three-game sweep of the season, which, combined with a two-game sweep at Dodger Stadium and an early-April series at Oracle Park, means the Giants are 2-6 against the Padres and Dodgers, the two teams they’re fighting with in the race to win the NL West.
That’s been a trend for two months. They’re 15-5 against teams with losing records but just 7-13 against teams above .500. But it’s too soon to worry, left-hander Alex Wood said on Sunday.
“We were missing a lot of guys for the Dodgers series, but you catch different teams at different times of the year and we caught the Padres when they’re hot right now,” Wood said. “I thought we played okay throughout the weekend but I don’t think we played our best baseball all-around. Usually, you look for two of the three — pitching, defense or hitting — and I think this weekend we didn’t hit on two of three at least. We’ll get on runs where we do all three really well or two of the three consistently and I think we do a good job of that. We’re a pretty consistent club for the most part.
“They just came in and kicked our ass this weekend. We’ll come back ready to play a tough opponent in the Mets the next three days and try to right the ship and get back…