Giants’ Offense Already Hitting Historic Lows

LOS ANGELES—It’s four games into the year. No one makes or breaks their season by April 1.

Still, given their history, the Giants’ offensive performance to start the season is worrisome.

The Giants scored two runs in their first four games. Both were solo home runs by Joe Panik.

Evan Longoria is 0-for-15 with five strikeouts. Andrew McCutchen is 1-for-16. Austin Jackson is 1-for-12.

They were all brought in to help an offense that finished 29th in runs, 29th in on-base percentage and last in slugging percentage last year.

So far, no dice.

“It hasn’t been easy sledding,” Longoria said. “Obviously there’s a long way to go and we’ve got a lot of games left.”

The Giants managed to split their season-opening series with the Dodgers. They won 1-0 on consecutive nights, then lost 5-0 and 9-0.

Two runs in 36 innings, for a team that spent the entire offseason focused on plugging its offensive holes.

It will all be forgotten in a month if the Giants are hitting. That’s certainly not an impossible outcome.

That’s what they’re banking on. That’s all they really can bank on at this point.

“It’s going to be a good offense, I know it is,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. “It was a rough series for the boys….They’ll get clicking. It’s a matter of time. They’re too good, and we know that.”

In their latest loss on Sunday the Giants stranded eight runners. They left the bases loaded in the third and fourth innings. In the sixth, Buster Posey led off with a double and was left there.

They are 1-for-28 with runners in scoring position as a team. They are striking out just under nine times per game. On the whole they are batting .192.

Even by the standard of “just” four games, it’s been bad.

This is the first time in the Giants’ 136-year history they failed to score more than one run in each of their first four games of a season. By virtue of the Giants’ offense, the Dodgers became the first team since 1915 to hold an opponent to two runs through the first four games of a season.?

“Give good pitching credit too,” Bochy said. “You always have to do that. But these guys are good hitters. They can hit good pitching.

“I don’t care who you are, it’s always good to get off to a good start or you do press a little bit. We don’t need to do that. We have too much length to this lineup.”

The numbers will get better. No one reasonably expects the Giants to hit .192 as team the entire season, or Longoria to go hitless or McCutchen to bat .063. It’s been four out of 162 games, the epitome of a small sample size.

But it has to get better soon. More series like this, more failures to get runners in from scoring position, and the Giants will find themselves once again closer to the No. 1 overall draft pick than the playoffs.

“It is what it is,” Longoria said. “Now it’s let’s go back home and start over.”