Padres 5, Giants 4: Swept in San Diego, Four Walks in the Second, and a Deadline That Cannot Come Fast Enough

I watched all three of these. All three. I do not know why I do this to myself in August of a lost season, but I did, and I sat there Sunday afternoon and watched us get swept out of San Diego by a team that did not have to try very hard, and I am done being polite about it.

I knew in the second inning. You knew in the second inning.

Do not tell me you did not know. Merrill hits one out to center, it is 2-0, fine, whatever, it is a homer, they happen. Then Landen Roupp walks a guy. Then he walks another guy. And I am sitting on my couch saying it out loud to nobody — throw a strike, please, just throw one strike — and instead Cronenworth grounds a two-run single through the left side and it is 4-0 in the second inning of a game we had to have.

Four-nothing in the second. Against this offense. That is not a deficit, that is a verdict. I got up, I did something else for twenty minutes, and I came back because I am an idiot who loves this team.

Four walks. FOUR. In four and two-thirds.

Roupp struck out six. Six! The stuff was there. The arm was there. And he walked four guys and gave up five runs and was gone before he finished the fifth, and I want to grab this entire pitching staff by the collar and ask them one question: why is it so hard to throw the ball over the plate? That is it. That is the whole job. Everybody in that clubhouse throws harder than anyone who ever pitched for us in 2010 and not one of them can find the strike zone with a map.

I am tired of watching innings get handed away. Not lost. Handed away. Free bases, and then somebody gets a bloop, and then it is 4-0 and I am mad at a television.

We cut it to one three separate times and I still believed. Every time.

And here is the sick part, the part that keeps me coming back. Eldridge scores in the fourth on an Adames knock. Devers scores on a Cavanaugh groundout. Now it is 4-2 and I am leaning forward. Basabe — Osleivis Basabe, a guy who barely got to play this year and has been the best hitter on this roster for three days — hits one out in the fifth. 4-3. I am standing up. I am fully in.

They score one right back in the fifth on a Campusano single that gets through because it clanks off Adames' glove, because of course it does. Then Devers hits number 23 in the eighth and it is 5-4 and I am standing up AGAIN, in my living room, in August, for a team that is eighteen games under .500, and then Morejon comes in and strikes out three of the last four and it is over and I feel stupid. Every single night. I feel stupid every single night.

Arraez went 0-for-5 and I have questions

Zero for five at the top of the order. Jung Hoo Lee goes 2-for-3 hitting behind him and can barely get a chance to score because the guy in front of him keeps making outs. Seven hits as a team. Six men left on. Two errors in the field in a one-run game, which is a thing bad teams do and we are a bad team now, so, congratulations to us.

And Vitello sits there. He always sits there. Sixty lineups in seventy-seven games and the one thing that never changes is the guy who is not hitting staying at the top of it.

The bullpen was perfect and nobody noticed

Hentges, Smith, Brubaker and Miller: three and a third innings, zero runs. Nothing. Not a single run allowed in the entire back half of the game. The one part of this team that has burned us all year long finally holds serve, keeps us within one for four straight innings, and the offense gives them nothing to work with. That is the 2026 Giants in one sentence. Whichever part of the team shows up, the other two do not.

Twenty-one and thirty-seven. Say it out loud.

Twenty-one wins. Thirty-seven losses. On the road. That is not a slump, that is who we are away from Oracle. Seven-nothing, six-five, five-four — a shutout, a giveaway, and a game we were never quite in. Three different ways to lose in one weekend. That takes real commitment.

Forty-seven and sixty-five. Twenty-two back. Texas is next and I already know how that goes.

Buster. Monday. I am begging.

The deadline is tomorrow and it is the only thing left this season that can actually make me feel something other than annoyed. Sell it. All of it. The expiring guys, the veterans, the whole thing. Give the at-bats to Eldridge and Basabe and whoever else is going to still be here when this is worth watching again, and stop telling us this group is one move away, because it got swept by a wild-card team and scored four runs in the only game it really tried in.

I will be watching tomorrow. Not because I trust him to do it. Because I have to know. Go Giants, and I say that with my jaw clenched.

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