Derek Law goes to DL with forearm strain

So, here's the bad news:

Derek Law going on DL with right elbow strain. Obviously bad news for #sfgiants.

— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) August 28, 2016

You're probably not wondering if there's any good news from all this.

Derek Law placed on the DL with right elbow strain. Jarrett Parker recalled from 3A. #SFGiants

— SFGiants (@SFGiants) August 28, 2016

You're probably still not wondering if there's any good news from all this.

Law had Tommy John surgery in 2014 and has had the more typical slow route back to professional baseball. A forearm strain doesn't portend to great things, and the Giants have already had experience with relievers twice experiencing TJ surgery, so there's every reason to jump to some unhealthy conclusions. Plus, the Giants bullpen has been a Cormac McCarthyesque wasteland at times, with the only punctuation being late leads and blown saves.

It has been exactly one month since Doug's last bullpen trust power ranking. Derek Law was #1. And now he's gone.

But the good news is, the only silver lining here, is that it points to what the Giants need to do over the final 5 weeks of the season. And no, I'm not saying give up in order to stop embarrassing themselves (though that could be on the table), I'm saying the silver lining in all this is that it might very well put the offense on red alert. The ONLY way the Giants are going to stay in the playoff picture is by scoring more runs. They've got to hit.

So, even though Derek Law, an exciting and powerful reliever that the Giants won't be able to duplicate anytime soon, is gone and possibly gone forever, if not the rest of the season, the Giants aren't out of it. Madison Bumgarner is still on the team, Johnny Cueto, too. Jeff Samardzija is pitching better, and Matt Moore 1-hit the Dodgers just a few days ago. The common thread through all those pitchers and their starts is not that they have been good, it's that the Giants have been really bad at scoring runs for them.

Jarret Parker's return should help. He was surprisingly solid and put together many nice plate appearances before his demotion. If Mac Williamson can heal soon, his return in September should serve as another boost. Hunter Pence isn't going to contribute any meaningful power the rest of the way, and probably not Buster Posey, either. Brandon Belt might slump through September, too, or else turn it on when it's already too late. That leaves everybody else. We know Denard Span won't OPS .750 ever again, and Eduardo Nunez is largely still struggling. Joe Panik's bat appears to be on the comeback trail. Will Panik, Crawford, Nunez, Parker, and Gorkys Hernandez be enough?

Hit more, Giants. You're not going to get better pitching, especially now that your best reliever has just left the building.