The worst version of the San Francisco Giants showed up to play against the Texas Rangers on Wednesday.
The San Francisco Giants had their three-game series against the Texas Rangers end in ugly fashion with a 6-0 loss on Wednesday at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.
Wednesday’s loss marks the Giants' fifth in the last six games. Let’s discuss what went wrong and what it shows:
Third inning meltdown
After neither team could score in the opening innings, the Rangers took the third for themselves.
Texas jumped on Giants starter Carson Whisenhunt almost immediately. After Whisenhunt was able to strike out leadoff batter Evan Carter in the bottom frame, he gave up a double to Wyatt Langford.
Whisenhunt was able to get a second out when he forced Ezequiel Duran to pop out. Still, it did not matter as Brandon Nimmo singled to get one run on the board for the Rangers before Whisenhunt gave up a single to Jake Burger and a triple to Justin Foscue that added two more runs.
Whisenhunt gave up an RBI double to Elias Diaz that capped off a four-run frame for Texas before he finally got out of the inning. By the end of his outing, he had allowed five hits, four earned runs and three walks over 3.1 innings of work.
Pitching, especially among the starting rotation, has not been a strong suit for the Giants this season. Of Major League Baseball’s 30 teams, their starters rank 23rd in ERA (4.47).
Additionally, they rank fourth in earned runs (307) and seventh in hits allowed (583). Whisenhunt's poor outing is indicative of a larger issue within the organization this season, and it has hurt the team once again.
Unable to score
Neither team lit up the stat sheet when it came to hitting the ball. Sure, the Rangers had better efficiency (9-for-31) than the Giants (8-for-35), but the biggest difference is that they capitalized on opportunities when San Francisco did not.
The Rangers were 4-for-12 with runners in scoring position on Wednesday, while the Giants went 0-for-8. Nimmo and Foscue were the biggest contributors for Texas with two RBIs each, and San Francisco did not have a hitter it could count on to capitalize on opportunities.
The Giants are sixth in batting average (.252), fourth in hits (987) and tied for fourth with the Washington Nationals in doubles (200), but batting in runs is where they fall off a cliff.
In RBIs, San Francisco ranks 23rd with 460. The problem for the Giants is not getting runners on, but finding a way to score, and it has arguably been equally brutal to their pitching woes during an ugly season in which they are now 48-67.
