Shaky road trip finally in rear view

We're not saying that was a crap road trip, but the Donner Party enjoyed traveling more than the Giants did this past week.

Leaving AT&T Park with a 6-2 mark and having just completed a series win over their chief rival, the Giants looked pretty good. Six games later they stumble home off a 2-4 road trip like someone who had one too many after having one too many.

San Francisco had no answer for this guy, or a funky strike zone. (AP)

The latest indignity was Sunday's 3-1 loss at Los Angeles; a game in which the Giants too often looked like disinterested observers.

There were some flashes, primarily defensive ones from gold glove shortstop  Brandon Crawford, but there were too key hits and too many pitches missed for the Giants to survive.

It was a battle of new faces; the first time LA had seen Jeff Samardzija in a Giants uniform and the first time the Giants had seen Kenta Maeda period. Advantage to the import.

Maeda's went seven, allowing just a run on four hits -- a third-inning solo homer by Joe Panik on a cutter that didn't. Other than that, the Giants didn't do much.

Early it seemed there would be a different story to write. Maeda had walked just one hitter in two previous starts, but the Giants got two freebies in the first before Maeda wriggled off the hook. He was similarly shaky to start the second but the control issues soon evaporated, and not just because the newbie found a groove. 

If ESPN's visible strike zone can be trusted, he didn't suddenly find the zone. It found him. Plate umpire Alfonzo Marquez got generous on the edges and the Giants obliged by chasing. Samardzija got no such assistance, and it eventually cost him.

Panik's long ball was the lone offensive highlight. (Getty Images)

It's trite to blame an umpire. Samardzija missed his spot too often to make Marquez the only focus, but there was a point in the game where the contrast helped to shift the scales.

Panik's third-inning bomb had given SanFrancisco  a 1-0 edge. The Dodgers answered that run in the fifth, and they had just a smidge of help.

A one-out walk to Yasmani Grandal left Samardzija staring home when pitches ruled balls were (according to technology) closer to the zone than those with which Maeda found favor. The walk was magnified one out later when a Samardzija cutter found too much of the dish and Joc Pederson launched it 402 feet into the right field pavilion.

It was something Samardzija had, to that point, gotten away with. On multiple occsasions lefties found pitches intended for locales inside leaking out over the plate, and Pederson finally burned him.

Overall it wasn't a bad outing, even with the sixth-inning tally Samardzija gave up as window dressing. He went six innings, giving up three runs on six hits. But the mistakes  were magnified by the offense's inability to get anything going. The Giants had just five hits, with Crawford, Buster Posey, Brandon Belt and Hunter Pence adding singles to Panik's homer.

Lest we forget, The Shark added to his own misfortune by killing a potential rally when he  bunted, BUNTED into a double play. He didn't exactly help himself when given the chance. 

Fundamentals, Dude. Fundamentals.

At 7-6, the Giants return home having slipped from first place to third in the NL West;  no big deal considering that one game separates the top three.What may be of greater concern to Giants fans is the way in which it happened. Through eight games, the offense generated 43 runs and scored a dozen twice, Since, the six-game total is just 27, and 19 of those came courtesy the Coors Field slot machine. 

In the search for good news, the Giants have a winning mark despite playing nine of their first 13 games on the road and have done so with just one off day. While rest will have to wait for another week and a half, the next nine contests are at friendly AT&T as Arizona, Miami and San Diego come calling. The trio is a combined 12-26.

Losers of four game in their last five, the Giants will try to turn things around tomorrow against Arizona (5-8). Jake Peavy (Oh, God) takes the ball against Hector Santiago.

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