Thursday BP: Giants schedule down the stretch not going to be easy

Good morning, baseball fans.

It’s hard to think of a more frustrating season of San Francisco Giants baseball in recent history. The bad years, you knew they were going to be about as bad as they were. They were pretty consistently bad throughout the season. The mediocre years, you knew they were going to be pretty mediocre, and they were pretty consistently mediocre throughout the season.

The collapse in the second half of 2016 comes to mind, with all of its new, creative, and painful ways of losing baseball games. But even they managed to make the playoffs in the end. (Let’s not think too far past that point.)

In all likelihood, this year’s team will likely finish just about as mediocre, overall, as last year’s exactly .500 team. But there were parts of this season where it felt like “man, this could be a really good team if they can keep this going”. Like when they were 18-8 in June, even sweeping the Los Angeles Dodgers. We know it wasn’t all in our heads.

It’s the same frustration you feel when you watch Alex Cobb nearly throw a no-hitter and lose it in after 26 outs. It’s the frustration of watching great performances from Cobb and Kyle Harrison last week and seeing a few decisive wins, and actually winning a series for the first time since the beginning of August. And then they lost six games in a row.

It’s frustrating. Because it’s like, we know this team is capable of performing well. They’re capable of hitting well. Like, it’s there. We’ve seen it! But it feels like they constantly follow that up by attempting to gaslight everyone by going 2-for-35 with RISP in a series. Or scoring eight runs only to give up 11. It really makes you start to question your sanity.

I always say, stranger things have happened and there is still a decent amount of baseball left to play. But aside from the two upcoming series against the Rockies, it’s not exactly a breeze of a schedule if they want to make up ground in the wild card race. And even the Rockies are never a given, especially when Coors Field is in the mix or the Giants forget how to baseball.

Down the stretch, the Giants will also face the Cleveland Guardians, the San Diego Padres (who they just lost three in a row to), and both teams ahead of them in their division, the Arizona Diamondbacks, and the Dodgers twice. That’s not an easy road even for a consistent team.

If anyone wants to get in their extremely bold predictions about a miraculous comeback in the Giants’ future over the next month, feel free to do so now. Because that’s about what it’s going to take for them to make the playoffs at this point.

What time do the Giants play today?

They do not. Instead, they head home to welcome the Colorado Rockies to Oracle Park starting tomorrow night.