By Morris Phillips

SAN FRANCISCO–If the Giants were to find a way not to win a third, consecutive series, this wasn’t the way.

More of the same. When the Giants’ offense fails to get the key hit, and knock in some runs, they often lose. Wednesday afternoon’s loss to the Tigers, 3-2, was just another example in a less than lengthy stretch of games.

“I think it’s as simple as getting one more big at-bat,” manager Gabe Kapler said. “We’ve talked about that for a while now.”

The Giants rallied in the third–leading 1-0, then loading the bases with one out–but came up empty. In the seventh–now trailing 3-1–the Giants had the same, advantageous setup, but scored just once, on Mike Yastrzemski’s fielder’s choice ground ball. A run in each inning, and the hosts are likely winners, and building on a 41-33 record. Instead, they’re stuck in a 3-6 stretch against beatable opponents.

The Giants finished 2 of 9 with runners in scoring position, intriguing, in that the two successes were from guys that could pick it up and change things. Evan Longoria homered in the first inning, and his infield single loaded the bases in the third. Lamonte Wade Jr. returned to action–after missing 61 of the first 73 games–and singled in the seventh. Wade was put in a tough spot, hitting against a tough lefty Gregory Soto in the ninth, when the Giants normally would have pinch-hit, but at that point in the game on Wednesday, Kapler had expended all his hitting options.

Alex Wood–who started, and gave up the decisive two-run homer to Detroit’s Eric Haase in the sixth–best expressed the agony of his own shortcomings and the teams saying “these are the days that are just extremely frustrating. I felt really good. I thought it was the best my slider’s been in a long time, if not (this entire season). So to have that (home run) happen at the end really sucked, to be honest. Just really frustrating.”

“It starts with our staff. Webby and ‘Los have put up their lines. The rest of us have to step our s— up,” Wood said, applauding his staff mates Logan Webb and Carlos Rodón. “Start having the lines match up with how we’re feeling and putting up some zeroes and finishing some starts with zero or one run on the board. A lot of those one-run games are on us.”

There’s some truth to Wood saying this is not all on the offense. And, once again, this is a team with a winning record and a clear-path to the newly, expanded playoffs. But off a 107-win campaign, something missing or somethings are missing. To Wood’s point, the Giants ERA of 3.99 puts them just above the league average. Last season, their staff had a National League top-three ERA virtually the entire season. Defensively, the Giants have committed 41 errors, also a league average number, but reflective of how poor the defense has been, the Giants defensive efficiency, as defined by baseball-reference.com is in the bottom four in all of baseball. What’s that last bit really mean? The Giants could suffer even worse defensively going forward, so far, they’ve made defensive mistakes, but in a lot of cases, not suffered run scored against them.

The Giants open a three-game set with the White Sox on Friday at Oracle Park. Lance Lynn of Chicago and Alex Cobb will get the starting assignments.