Giants can’t contain the Marlins’ potent offense

Any team that goes up against the Marlins should feel like they need to win those games. Even the Giants, the second-worst team in the National League, should feel like they have to beat this team. Their entire offense is well below replacement. Their best hitter is Neil Walker. Those wins should be free real estate.

The game began as it should. Joe Panik hit the first pitch of the night over the fence to give the Giants a one-run lead which wasn’t coughed up in the bottom half of the inning. This was just the fourth time in 53 games that the Giants have entered the second inning with a lead. They’ve trailed at the end of the first inning 20 times before tonight, so they’ve five times as likely to be losing after the first frame.

The early lead didn’t help the Giants, though. The Giants pitching couldn’t contain the very worst offense in the majors. The Marlins scored 11 runs tonight. That’s the first time all year Miami has scored more than 10 runs, and the Giants pitching staff made it possible. Incredible.

Jeff Samardzija gave up a ton of hard contact in the third inning, and really, he was fortunate to escape with only two runs allowed in the inning. Samardzija couldn’t make it through the fifth, and Nick Vincent couldn’t bail him out.

Nick Vincent and Derek Holland each gave up three-run homers, and we couldn’t even watch the home run sculpture go off. Not even Sam Coonrod and his nasty slurve could keep the ball in the park against a team that’s dead last in the majors in homers.

The homer off of Coonrod went to the upper deck in right field, a place of the park where no one has sat for years. When the ball landed, a cloud of dust poofed into the air, and a skeleton wearing a Dee Gordon jersey fell over.

At the risk of making a hackneyed comparison, I don’t think I’ve ever watched a major league baseball game that felt more like watching Indy ball. I’m sure I’ve been to Chico Heat games that had more people in the crowd than were at Marlins Park tonight.

Maybe I recognized all the names of the guys on my team, but I’ve never heard of most of the guys on the other side before, and I’ll probably never hear of them again. When Evan Longoria flew out to right in the second, someone name Cooper caught it, and I couldn’t even guess what his first name is. (It’s Garrett apparently.) Trevor Richards, who started for the Marlins, actually went undrafted and was plucked out of an independent league.

Technical difficulties knocked out the camera feed for all but two cameras in the bottom of the fourth inning which gave it the feel of watching a Facebook Live stream.

The other team did have that one guy that used to play in the major leagues, Curtis Granderson, and if I were there, it probably would have been easy to go get his autograph, but like, I wouldn’t want to bother him as he’s carrying his equipment out to his Subaru.

I also never got the sense that any of these players were any good. Sure, they’re better than any scrub off the street, but these aren’t elite players. Jeff Samardzija certainly threw the ball accurately, but did he throw it like one of the best players in the world? I find that hard to believe since the anonymous Marlins were smoking the ball against him.

By comparison, Richards looked a lot sharper, but aside from Joe Panik’s home run, the Giants didn’t convince me that they could hit at all. I mean, Richards threw a pitch so wild it went completely out of frame. He couldn’t have been that good.

The Giants managed to put something together against Elieser Hernandez in the ninth inning, but he’s the guy the Marlins were using for mop-up. That rally began when Stephen Vogt beat out an infield single, and ordinarily, I’d applaud a crusty vet hustling out a hit even when the team is down by 10, but this just made the game take that much longer.

On this six-game losing streak, the Giants have been outscored 59 to 17. They haven’t scored more than four runs in any of these games, and they haven’t prevented the other team from scoring fewer than five. FanGraphs projects the Giants to go 50-60 the rest of the way, but there’s no way they’re even that good.

When the season began, we had no delusions of this being a winning team, but there was an opportunity to get Bruce Bochy to 2,000 wins. All they needed was 74 wins, but now they would need to go 53-56 through the end of the season. That’s a lofty goal for the current roster configuration, but what talent remains on the roster will be traded away. They’re only going to get worse from here.