San Francisco Giants Begin Brutal Stretch to Finish April

The San Francisco Giants have a brutal schedule to finish the month of April, which begins Tuesday night at Arizona where they’ll face the division leading Diamondbacks.

If you haven’t been happy with the Giants performance to start the season, don’t expect it to get much better the rest of the month.

Starting Tuesday night they play three games in Arizona, who is one of the hottest teams in baseball. And then they travel to Anaheim to face an Angels team that is off to a historic start to the season.

The Giants finish the month at home with series against the preseason favorites to win the National League in both the Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Dodgers. That Dodgers series now includes a double-header because of the rainout on April 6.

All-in-all, the Giants will wind up playing the Dodgers 10 times in the first month of the season. That actually might not be a bad thing considering the Dodgers are playing terrible right now without Justin Turner.

The San Francisco Giants are 3-3 against their rival so far, and I’ll be more than pleased if they split the four-game set at the end of the month.

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As it stands, the Giants are 6-9 through their first 15 games, which is certainly not where they want to be.

The San Diego Padres are the only team that they’ve played so far that probably won’t finish close to .500, and the Giants lost a four-game series to them.

In all honesty, if the Giants can finish this month with 12 wins, that would be a decent start to the season. They just can’t get swept in any of these series.

We already know the Giants are trying to tread water until the starting rotation gets healthy and the lineup comes together. They can’t afford to fall too far behind this early playing their toughest competition.

The good news is, if they can survive this month going 12-17, things get much easier in May. Their first 15 games in May come against teams that aren’t expected to compete in 2018.

They can use those games to try and get back to .500, and hopefully Madison Bumgarner will be inching closer to his return by then.

Next: Posey, Panik Off to Great Starts for San Francisco Giants

The bottom line for Giants is, you’re going to have be continue and be patient. Things are probably going to get worse before they get better.