Did the Giants get out of their funk in Arizona?

The Giants have had a miserable second half, with 14 wins and 788 losses going into tonight’s contest with San Diego. But at the end of their last road trip, they won three in a row in Arizona. Now, no one is pretending that the Diamondbacks are good – I am actually overlooking federal regulations by not referring to them as "the hopeless Diamondbacks" – but they are a team in Major League Baseball with many players who would be able to hold roster spots on other teams in Major League Baseball.

On the other hand, do you know who else is a very bad team? The Padres are a very bad team, and last night the Padres came to AT&T and the Giants played like they had for the last two months. The pitching was mostly fine until a hilarious home run and the offense, facing a bad pitcher who they hadn’t seen before, didn’t bother. Classic Second Half Giants! Always keeping us ... not guessing, really. Annoyed? Annoyed. Always keeping us annoyed.

Anyway, are the Giants out of their funk or are they so deeply enfunked that even winning 3 straight games doesn’t make a difference? Take it debate team!

Out of their funk

Good teams are allowed to have bad games, you know. Even when the Giants were going well, they were still occasionally shut down by a Jeff Locke or Eddie Butler, so to expect that to never happen again is probably not a hope rooted in reality. Sometimes the Padres get to win games. It’s not their role and they should know that, but it does happen.

And did you see that series in Arizona? The Giants started it by winning a game they’ve lost at least 12 times since the All-Star Break, then came out the next day and dominated the Diamondbacks, and on Sunday, completed the sweep by playing a nice, normal game where everyone was solid and no one was terrible. That’s what a good team looks like. They score runs, get a good performance out of their starting pitcher, score a couple more runs to add on in the late innings, and then the bullpen seals the win. That’s a good team. That’s a major league team. That’s a team you can believe in.

The funk has consumed them, and they are nothing but funk, and shall be until the Earth is mercifully swallowed by the Sun

They looked really shitty last night.

That’s it. That’s the argument. They’ve spent two months looking shitty, and last night they looked shitty in the same way, and they’re still that same team. The hitters hit a few balls hard in the early innings that just happened to find gloves, and then it looked like they gave up. Jeff Samardzija kept the game close until Hector Sanchez - Hector Sanchez - hit a 2-run homer off him that was just barely fair and just barely over the fence. The opposing pitcher was, well ...

This is a deeply enfunked team that just happened to play against the super garbage-ass Diamondbacks for three games. They were able to beat the Diamondbacks because the Diamondbacks have been living in the garbage for so long that their only recourse was to become it. The Giants just have some funky garbage stank on them. It’s not enough to infect their character and being, but gosh, they sure can’t be a good baseball team right now.

9/13 POSTGAME UPDATE: Holy shit, no. They didn't. They really didn't.