San Francisco Giants: How do they keep failing to score?

I don’t know how they did it, but the San Francisco Giants will seemingly escape Los Angeles with a series split, despite being outscored 14-2 by the Dodgers.

This is especially weird because the San Francisco Giants had so many chances to score (except for maybe the second game), so let’s go ahead and examine the futility the bats had with runners in scoring position.

For reference, the Giants left 30 runners on the base paths while only scoring two runs in this series with the Dodgers. Meanwhile, the Dodgers have left 15 runners on base while scoring significantly more runs than the Giants. Thats not a winning formula.

The Giants are clearly succeeding at getting on base, but seem to be struggling to put up crooked numbers on the scoreboard, two hits. So why are they struggling to drive in runs?

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The key Giants players who are batting in the middle of the order are simply not producing. The 3-4-5 of Andrew Mccutchen (one hit), Buster Posey (four hits), and Evan Longoria (no hits) have been underwhelming to say the least.

Add in Austin Jackson‘s one hit and the new Giants have underwhelmed to say the least, to the tune of a brutal 2/43 start.

They also haven’t had many productive outs, often neglecting to move runners over with a conducive fly ball or ground out to the right side. What isn’t helping is a strikeout rate of over one per inning, which is a fine sacrifice to make if the team trying to hit for more power.

However, you then get to the simple lack of extra base hits. When you remove Panik’s pair of bombs from the total, the team has hit a measly three doubles.

Singles are great and all, but hitting three singles to score one run is just not efficient and often unlikely. Part of that is luck and will come with time, as some of the hard line drives the team has hit have gone straight to a defender, but singles are still not the best way to score.

Next: Strickland for closer?

That said, the team is 2-2 and there are 158 more games to be played. The offense is made up of veterans who should hopefully be able to right the ship and score more runs to keep the team afloat until the pitching reinforcements (Madison Bumgarner and Jeff Samardzija) return from injury.

Just thinking about all of the ways Giants hitters struggled though, it really is a good thing Joe Panik decided to hit those clutch home runs in the first two games.