SAN FRANCISCO — The Giants fell behind early in Saturday’s 5-4 loss to the Marlins, but even though Jeff Samardzija settled in to only allow two runs across over his final six innings, his teammates came out sluggish and gave him just a single run of support in the first five frames.
San Francisco’s offense has been subpar all season, but its early offense has been even worse. Too many times, Bruce Bochy has seen his lineup turn itself over once or twice through without putting runs on the board. The Giants rank among the bottom three teams in the league in runs scored in the first, third, fourth and fifth innings. In fact, they are one of just two teams who have scored more runs in the ninth inning than they have in the first this year.
Saturday night was no different, as it took until the sixth to get things rolling. The Giants allowed Marlins starter Chris O’Grady, who was making his MLB debut, to sail smoothly through five innings while allowing just one run. And although a pair of doubles helped the Giants score two in the sixth and knock O’Grady out of the game, it was too little, too late.
“Early, we just didn’t do much offensively, we weren’t hitting many balls hard,” Bochy said. “To me, that was the frustrating part of the game, we couldn’t do much against their starter, he stayed off the barrel of the bat and we couldn’t just score off them until late there.”
The Giants fill the top of their lineup with good, veteran hitters, so it’s a bit of a mystery as to why they aren’t able to get things going quicker. Denard Span and Joe Panik sat atop Saturday’s lineup, and both carry a batting average around .280. All-Star Buster Posey held down the cleanup spot and the team’s leading home run hitter, Brandon Belt, is almost always somewhere in the top five. But time after time, the Giants go quietly through the order to begin the game and find themselves trailing. Count Bochy as one who is perplexed by the trend.
“There’s no magic wand for this except maybe you know to just focus a little bit better here early in the ballgame,” Bochy said. “And these are things that have been talked about, you know. And I’ll give their guy credit, you know he had a nice little cutter, changeup, used both sides of the plate with it, then he would elevate his fastball. He threw an assortment of pitches, we hadn’t seen him, but I think it’s just too many times we’ve been in a situation where we haven’t scored early.”