San Francisco Giants Drop Series vs. Diamondbacks: 5 Takeaways

The San Francisco Giants dropped the final game of their season opening series by the score of 9-3.

The first few games of the season haven’t gone according to plan for the San Francisco Giants. The bullpen blew a lead, they won, then they blew a good lead again and compounded their issues with bad defense. Tonight was more of the same.

Thanks to an Aaron Hill home-run, the Giants moved out to a two nothing lead in the fourth inning. Then that disappeared on two Jeff Samardzija cutters that missed their spots. Welcome to Arizona in April. Make a mistake up? Say goodbye and expect the scoreboard to change.

The Giants then got BACK out to a 3-2 lead in the sixth with a Buster Posey RBI double. Again, the Giants failed to get a shutdown inning, and gave up four runs, making the score 6-3. The Diamond backs never looked back.

Five Takeaways from the First Series

It feels like it’s way too early to take much away from this series, but here is something to look at:

The Giants are way better than what you saw. Buster Posey is a better hitter, the Bullpen is better than the opening day, the defense is better than last night. The Giants as a whole are better than this. Arizona is a crappy place to play because the ball flies and moves there like no other place. It’s Coors Field south. So it’s just too hard to say that the Giants are as good as what we saw opening day.

There is likely a big left field issue.

Chris Marrero

and

Jarrett Parker

are 0-17 with 10k’s in four games. Their defense isn’t terrible, but their bats have been so bad that Aaron Hill is playing in left field. He didn’t look there tonight, making bad reads on balls as you would expect for someone making his second appearance ever in the outfield after 10 career seasons in Major League Baseball. How are they going to fix it? Who knows. Hopefully for them, one of the two starts playing better before they have to pull the trigger (on a trade, sickos).

More from Around the Foghorn

Arizona is a terrible place to play. I know I included that in the first point, but my word folks. It has come to the point of being Coors Field-Esque. Also, the Diamondbacks are a good hitting team, and a decent enough pitching team. Take into the account they’re used to playing in Arizona on a regular basis, they are going to be a tough win on the road.

Giants twitter has some serious counseling to go through. The reactions, hot-takes, overreactions, and ridiculous statements have been painful to scroll through as we attempt to contribute to the conversation. However, the tone has been negative from the moment Derek Law stepped on the mound on Sunday. IT. HAS. BEEN. FOUR. GAMES. chill.

The Giants didn’t get enough shut down innings. The Giants were only outscored by five in the opening series, lost three games. They put up runs in 15 of their total 36 innings played. They only got seven shut down innings in the entire series. For those who don’t know, a shutdown inning is when they keep the other team from scoring in the half inning following the Giants scoring a run. If the Giants want to keep building leads, keep teams at bay, they have to focus on that next half inning. By not allowing the other team to get back into the game, or think they have a foothold still, they shut down the game and roll on out with the victory.

Next: Takeaways from Minor League Exhibition

The San Francisco Giants take on the San Diego Padres next, at 1:15pt tomorrow. Catch the game on NBC Sports Bay Area

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