Giants offense sputters again in 3-1 loss to Blue Jays

In a Jake Peavy start, the Giants allowed just three runs. It doesn't matter how. It doesn't matter what it looked like. When life gives you lemonade, don't start asking how many grubby, unwashed fingers were involved in making it. Just take the lemonade.

More than that, it was a Jake Peavy start against the Blue Jays, a team designed in a lab to break pitchers like him in half and feast on the marrow. The Blue Jays loaded the bases within five seconds of the game starting, Edwin Encarnacion hit a moonshot into the bleachers, and the Giants still allowed just three runs. It was a gift from the god of lowered expectations, and they had a reasonable chance to win.

Can you imagine? A reasonable chance to win! In a Peavy start against the Blue Jays!

Which means that it's time to stare at the lineup until they get uncomfortable and leave the room. Whereas it's been fashionable for most of the season to wave off the feckless games as flukes, and rightfully so, we've discovered the tipping point: three feckless games in a row. After three miserable games from the lineup, we all get to grumble and panic, as if the Giants haven't been one of the better offensive teams in baseball. Not with this recently available evidence of three obnoxious games.

That's nine hours of baseball in the last three days. And people wonder why baseball fans like to overreact. Nine hours is a long, long time. I don't think I've had nine combined hours to myself since New Year's, and yet for the last three days, the Giants have spent nine hours making me wish there were better magazines in the waiting room of life.

Here we go again, though, blaming everything on whatever the Giants did wrong. Take a few moments to appreciate that Aaron Sanchez was throwing nothing but hard stuff, for the most part, against a team that usually does exceptionally well against hard stuff. His sinker was brutish and unfair, and the Giants could only walk in their best plate appearances. They're averaging four walks a game, which is a full walk over their per-game total from last year, but that doesn't matter when there aren't hits mixed in.

Tip your cap to Sanchez, ignore exactly how the Giants allowed just three runs, and don't think about the last two games as part of a trend. Hope they're just isolated hiccups stacked together to give us the illusion of a trend.

Man, baseball seasons are long.

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Okay, maybe it's time to think about Peavy for a little bit. If you want to make a sour face, consider that Monday night's outing was, quite possibly, as good as Peavy can be reasonably expected to pitch.

That isn't to say he'll never have better results -- every pitcher is good for one of those 7-inning, 1-run starts occasionally -- but he probably won't pitch better. He'll live on the corners and hope the other guy gets himself out. He'll leave pitches over the plate, but hopefully not too many. Sometimes it'll lead to quality starts, and other times it'll lead to five runs before the start of the third inning.

Peavy's nibbling isn't too effective against a team like the Blue Jays, who will take and take and fight and fight and take, coaxing 25 pitches out of him every inning. It's not entertaining, but it's how Peavy has to attack batters now. We watched it for years with Ryan Vogelsong, and the shelves has been restocked. The only problem is that we aren't getting the 2011 Vogelsong, just like we're not getting the 2014 or 2015 Peavy. We're getting a grainy facsimile of the pitchers that used to succeed.

Long story short: Tim Lincecum's agent didn't have an emergency brainstorming session with his staff after Peavy's outing. There were no surprises on Monday night.

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Albert Suarez looked like a decent enough long-relief type! His numbers in the minors suggest even that role would be a stretch, but I assume that Dave Righetti awards each pitcher one new pitch when they reach the majors, as if they've leveled up in a video game.

He was starting in the minors, you know. Doing pretty, pretty well. Not saying. Just saying.

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This is late because I just finished watching the Warriors game. You would think that game would have lifted my spirits and powered me through the recap. That's what I was hoping for, to be honest. Instead, even with the endorphins and Curry-dust highs, the second I think about a 3-1 loss in a weekday interleague night game, I instinctively get up to make another pot of coffee.

I made a huge mistake. I don't know if you've ever flipped back and forth between a Peavy start and a playoff game in another sport, but you can get some serious motion sickness. Next time, the DVR will be allowed to do its job.

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Lemonade is kind of gross, you know. Why don't you just carry a pouch of sugar cubes and munch on them throughout the day while you chew on a lemon rind? Seems more efficient.

But it's better than Mountain Dew, so just be grateful for the lemonade and hope someone brings you some iced tea to help dilute the grossness of what life just gave you.

That's a Jake Peavy start, alright. It least it isn't Mountain Dew all of the time.