The Giants have lost a season-high seven straight games, all on the road and all after the All-Star break.
A fielding breakdown in the seventh inning let Arizona turn a tie game into a two-run lead. A solo shot off Sam Long added to Arizona’s lead, which held despite San Francisco bringing the go-ahead run to the plate in the ninth.
Wednesday’s 5-3 loss caps the Giants’ road trip with a sweep to Arizona and the first four-game sweep to the Dodgers since 1995. The Giants (48-50) head home with their first seven-game winless trip since 1985 — the year San Francisco lost 100 games.
The Giants have ranked last in Fangraphs’ catch-all defensive metric for most of 2022. In a pre-trade deadline stretch in which the Giants have had the opportunity to prove that they’re worthy of roster additions, the defense hasn’t cleaned up.
Gabe Kapler has said the trade deadline doesn’t add artificial pressure to perform. Starter Alex Cobb said it can be a motivating factor. Regardless, questions about whether the team should try to improve the team to make a wild card push or cash in assets for the future will only grow with more losses.
In the series finale against Arizona, the Giants started slow — something of a recent trend. Switch-hitting star Ketel Marte tagged Webb for a solo shot in the first inning that left his bat at 106.2 mph. Marte tagged a sinker over the plate and knew he did damage right away.
The homer was the ninth Webb has surrendered this season, matching his total from 2021.
But it was also the only hit Webb gave up through the first three innings. He retired nine Diamondbacks with six ground balls and three strikeouts, dominating the bottom of the strike zone.
The Giants took a lead with a pair of runs in the fourth. Wilmer Flores socked an opposite-field double and advanced to third with heads-up baserunning. He scored on a Thairo Estrada single. Estrada then stole second in a first-and-third situation, allowing Luis González to slide hands-first into home.
The sequence of aggressive baserunning was an anomaly for the generally plodding Giants. With the oldest group of position players in baseball — which has happened to be consistently banged up — the club has mostly gone station-to-station. But Estrada and González, SF’s two leaders in stolen bases, supply athleticism.
But a pair of doubles from Marte and David Peralta erased San Francisco’s short-lived lead. On the road trip, the Giants never claimed a lead for longer than half an inning.
Estrada made a diving catch up the middle in the sixth and led off the seventh with a double into left — his second of three hits in the game.
Just one night prior, he was the victim of dugout collateral damage when Carlos Rodón kicked a bat in frustration. Rodón apologized to Estrada, though Estrada declined to comment further on the situation with reporters traveling with the team.
The Giants couldn’t cash in on Estrada’s leadoff double, though, despite deploying two pinch hitters. So Webb returned for the seventh inning at 88 pitches in a 2-2 game.
In his first post-break start, in Dodger Stadium, Webb issued a season-high four walks. He said he could have possibly benefitted from an extra day of rest between outings.
Webb’s command issues didn’t linger into Arizona, but the Diamondbacks knocked him out with a bunt and two ground balls in the seventh.
Austin Slater disregarded a cutoff man, which gave Sergio Alcantara second on a single. With two runners in scoring position, Arizona laid down a safety squeeze. A charging Brandon Belt overthrew Austin Wynns at home, allowing the Diamondbacks to take a 4-2 lead.
Josh Rojas’ solo homer off Long made it 5-2, and although the Giants plated one in the eighth, Arizona’s lead held. The defensive collapse was too much to overcome.
On Tuesday, the Giants dipped below .500 for the first time since the first week of 2021. It had been the longest streak of winning baseball in MLB. Now with a seventh straight defeat, SF has sunk further from playoff contention.
San Francisco’s last seven-game losing streak came in 2019, Bruce Bochy’s last season as manager. Since June 19, SF is 11-23 — the worst winning percentage in MLB in that span.
It happened because the defensive issues that have plagued the Giants all year reared yet again. And they pushed the club to a new low in the Gabe Kapler era.