The last two weeks have been rough. The G-Men are 4 games under .500 for the season and struggling to get back to having a legitimate shot at the third wild card (if the other teams in the hunt collapse). They are something like 7 games back of the last wild card spot and got swept by the bottom feeding Tigers and then by the Twins. It does not look good. Crawford is out of sorts and is having the worst season of his career, the pitchers are giving up big hits in the worst situations, the relievers look lost, and the defense is tentative (and often sloppy from trying too hard). Other than that, its happy town at Oracle Park.

The G-Men just finished the two game interleague series against the A’s by taking both games, proving to the faithful that the G-Men are not the worst team in baseball and are able to play a solid nine innings of relatively error free ball behind a good defense (including the Brandon’s, who are both back) and a lot of home runs. The boys now head down to San Diego for a 3-game series against the Padres starting on Monday.

Thursday night in LA the Giants opened the second half of the season with a 9-6 loss to the Dodgers in one of the most entertaining games of the year. The G-Men went down 5-0 after the stack of LA superstars put on a hitting show against Rodan. But then the tide turned, behind a grand slam by Ruf and a short lived 6 to 5 lead in the 7th, the LA team surged back with a grand slam of their own to take the game 9-6. I don’t care how much a fan hates or loves LA or SF but that was great baseball. Friday night (as this is written) is Logan Webb against Ty Anderson.

The Giants reached the official halfway point of the 2022 season on Thursday, recording two hits in a 2-1 walk-off loss to the Padres on Thursday night at Petco Park. It was not pretty and wasted a fine pitching performance from Logan Webb. This weekend was the Padres for divisional games and, behind Carlos Rodan (complete game with 12K’s) and Alex Wood, the G-Men looked like a different team and split the series. Scoring 12 runs in a 12-0 blowout on Sunday did a lot for hitting confidence.

This blog post is coming to you from Kansas, where the Czar is celebrating the world of Liquor with the nation’s liquor regulators – and, yes, they consume the product. For that reason, the blog is short but there may be an update as the week goes forward and the Giants continue to battle for position in the three-team race that is the National League West. Right now, the G-Men are in 3rd place close behind the LA team and the Padres, both of whom are playing great baseball. However, the fact that the LA team got swept by the Giants over the three-game series last week may be a harbinger of things to come.