San Francisco Giants Manager Gets Honest About Underwhelming Start

A month into the season, the San Francisco Giants are not where they hoped to be. Heading into Monday's off day, they're only 14-15 with a minus-17 run differential, putting them on track to finish the season with a similar record to last year (79-83, minus-45 run differential).

It hasn't been all bad, though. The Giants have won seven of their last 11 games, winning three of their last four series. And despite their losing record, they're still in second place in the NL West behind only the Los Angeles Dodgers.

After Sunday's 3-2 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates, manager Bob Melvin reflected on the state of his team at this point in the season.

When asked to give San Francisco a letter grade one month into the season, Melvin initially deflected, saying "I'm not gonna do that." He followed that up by saying, "We've been spotty. I mean, you look at the stats across the board, whether it's pitching numbers, whether it's the offensive numbers, it hasn't been great."

Having said that, Melvin acknowledged that it's still early in the season and there's a lot of time left to figure things out. The Giants still have 133 games left, after all, and have only completed 17.9% of their schedule.

"It's not a horrible place to be," Melvin said. "No one's really running in our division too much...At some point in time we'll hit our stride."

On the plus side, it's encouraging that Melvin isn't panicking yet. Baseball is a long season, and Melvin knows not to overreact to the ebbs and flows. The 62-year-old skipper is in his 21st season managing and has managed nearly 3,000 games, so he's not going to lose much sleep over a .500-ish start.

That said, perhaps a greater sense of urgency is warranted. San Francisco has failed to capitalize on the slow starts of its division rivals and is merely treading water. Furthermore, Melvin's San Diego Padres had a sluggish start last year as well and never fully recovered, ending up at 82-80 and missing the playoffs despite being loaded with talent.

The Giants really need to start hitting, as they're averaging just 3.65 runs per game over their last 26 contests. They also need much better work from their bullpen, which has been horrendous with a 5.60 ERA and 1,40 WHIP thus far.

Without improvements in those areas, San Francisco's performance is unlikely to get better.