After suffering their first four-game series sweep to the rival Los Angeles Dodgers since June of 1995, the San Francisco Giants will head to Phoenix, where they will open a three-game series with the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday night.
San Francisco, which set a franchise record with 107 victories while winning the National League West last season, is just a game over .500 and is 11-20 since June 17.
The Giants, who were outscored 25-13 in the four losses at Dodger Stadium, trail first-place Los Angeles by 16 1/2 games.
San Francisco manager Gabe Kapler didn’t mince words following his team’s 7-4 loss in Sunday’s finale.
“Not good enough,” he said. “Really frustrating level of play that’s just not going to be acceptable for us. There’s no other way to classify it. It’s just not good enough.”
“Probably as frustrating as it gets,” added Alex Cobb, who gave up four runs over 5 2/3 innings. “We were competitive for all the games; we just didn’t get it done.”
Still, the Giants head into Monday night’s contest just two games behind St. Louis for the final wild-card spot in the National League.
“You know that if you’re sitting in striking distance of that wild card, all it takes is one good stretch of quality play and you might be up three or four games,” Kapler said.
“It’s not where we want to be after that four-game series,” Cobb said. “But go in and take care of business in Arizona, and you can come off the road trip possibly with some new momentum.”
Right-hander Jakob Junis (4-1, 3.06 ERA) will start Monday for the Giants, his first since a 7-2 win over the Dodgers on June 10, when he fell to the ground with a left-hamstring injury after throwing a pitch to Max Muncy in the sixth inning.
He returned on July 17 to throw two innings of relief in a 9-5 victory over Milwaukee and allowed three runs on five hits while striking out two.
Junis is 1-0 with a 3.00 ERA against Arizona, picking up the win in his lone start against the Diamondbacks as a rookie with Kansas City in 2017.
Arizona will start left-hander Tyler Gilbert (0-3, 5.34), who is 0-1 with a 1.69 ERA in three career appearances and one start against the Giants.
Gilbert is 0-0 in three starts in July but has allowed just four earned runs and 12 hits over 14 1/3 innings during that span. He tossed 5 2/3 scoreless innings while allowing three hits in a July 10 start against Colorado.
The Diamondbacks had a three-game winning streak snapped with a 4-3 loss to Washington on Sunday, blowing a 3-1 lead.
Arizona had its chances, leaving 13 men on base while going 3-for-13 with runners in scoring position and failed to score despite loading the bases with no outs in the bottom of the eighth.
“I felt like we did a lot of right in this game today with the exception of scoring runs,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said. “We had opportunities to score and blow this game open, but it just didn’t happen.”
–Field Level Media