SAN FRANCISCO — It is too little, too late? Or just enough, at just the right time?
These are the questions that Farhan Zaidi and the Giants’ front office will contemplate over the ensuing 48 hours, give or take, leading up to Tuesday’s 3 p.m. trade deadline after San Francisco completed a four-game sweep of the Colorado Rockies, 5-4, Sunday afternoon at Oracle Park.
On the one hand, the past four games pulled them back within 3½ games of the final National League wild card and two games of .500. The bullpen game they deployed in the series finale could be the last of the season as their starting rotation nears full-strength and looks fearsome. Tyler Fitzgerald has given them superstar-level production at shortstop, and they have the makings of a homegrown core up the middle with Heliot Ramos roaming center and Patrick Bailey behind the plate.
On the other, Zaidi had 100 games before this week to evaluate his team, and they spent exactly four days of that span as a winning ball club. Just last week they dropped two of three to the same opponent they just swept while starting 2-5 after the All-Star break. Even after sweeping both halves of Saturday’s double-header, FanGraphs pegged their chances of reaching the postseason — let alone making a deep run — at 16.9%, the equivalent of rolling a six-sided die.
Figuring into the calculation is the Giants’ schedule the rest of the way, the seventh-easiest remaining slate, but what it can’t account for are the feelings within the clubhouse walls. Sean Hjelle said on NBC Sports Bay Area that, “I think people are going to regret counting out the Giants,” and two of the team’s most likely trade chips, veteran outfielder Michael Conforto and injured starting pitcher Alex Cobb, have both professed their desire in recent days to remain in San Francisco.
“I know it’s easy from the outside world to write us off. I just don’t think that anybody in this clubhouse feels that,” Cobb said before the game while discussing his latest setback. “I don’t want to disparage other teams, but even the really bad teams hit a stride and just rattle off wins and we haven’t had that yet. When we do, I see us being right in the mix of it at the end of the year. I think everybody does.”
Were the past four games the Giants finally hitting their stride?
Or were they four games against the National League’s second-worst team, with two more on tap against the AL’s second-worst squad?
Either way, it amounted to some of the Giants’ most inspired baseball of the season, outscoring their opponents 25-9 over the course of the four-game series. Opening leads within the first two innings of each game, the Giants never trailed and held an advantage at the end of all but one of the series’ 36 innings.
On the pitching mound, the Giants followed up the 30 strikeouts they recorded over both games of Saturday’s double-header with 11 more between Erik Miller, Randy Rodríguez, Taylor Rogers, Jordan Hicks, Spencer Bivens and Camilo Doval, setting a franchise record for punchouts in four-game series with 53.
After averaging a paltry 3.6 runs over their seven-game road trip out of the All-Star break, the Giants scored an average of 6.25 over the four-game sweep while pounding out double-digit hits in three of the four contests, including 13 on Sunday — three apiece from Jorge Soler and Matt Chapman.
Spelling injured second baseman Thairo Estrada, Casey Schmitt gave the amalgam of bullpen arms an early lead to protect with a 422-foot solo shot to left field in the first inning, and the Giants had built a 3-0 advantage by the end of the second after Conforto and Derek Hill traded extra-base hits out of the bottom two spots in the lineup.
Hicks was originally scheduled to make his final start before transitioning to the bullpen but ended up entering in relief to begin the sixth inning, allowing two runs on three hits — including a solo home run from Michael Toglia in the seventh — over two innings.
Instead of Hicks, the Giants used Miller as an opener for the 13th time this season; manager Bob Melvin explained before the game, “it wasn’t going to be a deep outing (from Hicks) anyway.”
OF Heliot Ramos was held out of the starting lineup for only the second time since he was called up May 8 while dealing with a jammed right thumb, Melvin said. Ramos had started the past 68 games, including both halves of Saturday’s scheduled doubleheader.
RHP Sean Hjelle was placed on the bereavement list before first pitch, but all Melvin could share was that he was attending to a “family thing.”
With Tuesday’s 3 p.m. trade deadline looming in the background, the Giants will enjoy a day off Monday before regrouping for a two-game series against the A’s. While RHP Alex Cobb was originally set to make his season debut during the series, his start was pushed back and the Giants have not named their starting pitchers.
