As I watched the curtain fall in today's series finale between the San Francisco Giants and the San Diego Padres, I tried to find a silver lining to the Giants horrible performance.  Sure, they were swept in convincing fashion by the team many picked to bring up the rear in the National League West.  True, they were outscored by the Padres 19 to 7 for the series.  And yes, the Giants did yield 14 walks compared to just 3 for San Diego.  But amid the gloom cast upon the team by such a poor showing, surely there must be some positive lesson to be learned...  right?

Yes, there is.  And the lesson here is very simple.  The Giants were swept because they failed to do two very basic things.  They failed to throw first pitch strikes, and they failed to swing at good pitches.  Throughout the series, each of San Francisco's starters got into trouble by routinely starting each count 1-0 and even 2-0.  In contrast, all three San Diego starters pitched the Giants into 0-1 and 0-2 counts.  Of course, the Giants line-up was happy to assist in this, routinely swinging at balls out of the strike zone.  In fact, the only two Giants who did a decent job of showing any plate discipline were Randy Winn and Fred Lewis.  Even our most experienced hitters (Molina, Rowand and Renteria) were regularly swinging at bad pitches.  This resulted in several wasted scoring opportunities as Giant hitters poped out, grounded out and struck out on balls way outside the hitting zone.  I won't even mention how ridiculous Pablo Sandoval's lack of plate discipline was this weekend.  Having a reputation for swinging at every pitch is NOT a good thing.  Even bad-ball hitters have trouble hitting balls in the dirt or over their heads.  Sandoval looked like he was swinging at a pinata at times during this series, blindfold and all.

The Giants are a young team, and of course, this is just one series.  However, until the team finds a way to swing at strikes, and throw strikes to start the count, they can expect to lose many, many more games.  Not sure if this is quite the "silver lining" I was looking for, but at least there's a way out of the gloom.

ECJ