SAN FRANCISCO -- The focus for the past week has been on the newcomers, and Kevin Pillar certainly has done all one can do to take some pressure off his new teammates.
But the Giants were not built to rely on a Pillar or Tyler Austin, or Connor Joe and Michael Reed before them. The core was kept intact throughout the offseason -- not totally by choice -- and for two weeks of bad baseball, that's the group that's letting Bruce Bochy down.
The Giants lost 3-1 on Wednesday, the lone run coming on Pillar's solo shot off Padres lefty Nick Margevicius. As there usually is, there was a whiff of a rally in the late innings. As they have done so often, the Giants came up one big hit short.
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Farhan Zaidi has tinkered with the edges of the roster relentlessly, but the Giants won't go anywhere in his first year if production doesn't come from the core.
Pillar drove in nine runs in this series and hit two homers. The six position players who were in the Opening Day lineup and remain on the roster have combined for 18 RBI and five homers all season, and that's mostly because of Brandon Belt.
"I know it's magnified early when guys aren't quite swinging the bat like they normally do," Bochy said. "I think you can look across baseball and you see quite a few guys who aren't hitting what they normally would be hitting. So you try to stay encouraged that those are going to get better, those numbers."
So far, they tell an ugly story.
San Francisco Giants
The average OPS in the National League was .761 entering the day. The Giants were a distant last at .582, and they don't have any holdovers even hitting at an average rate thus far.
Buster Posey has a .189 batting average, .520 OPS and zero RBI. Evan Longoria's average is at .188 and his OPS is .496 after an encouraging spring. Brandon Crawford has an 11-game hitting streak but a .666 OPS. Joe Panik is at .575 and now in a platoon. Steven Duggar is at .578 and has struck out in more than a third of his at-bats. Belt is the one guy who has gotten off to a decent start from a power perspective, but even his .734 OPS is well below his career average.
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"It's going to have to happen pretty soon for us," Bochy said. "As I've said, our core guys are the guys that we'll lean on, but really I think with our new guys here, I think our lineup has more depth. We've been swinging the bats better. We just had an off day with some big hits or even some productive outs."
They've had a lot of them so far, leading to a 4-9 record. The Giants have lost their first four series for the first time in 36 years, and it's not going to get any better if the core players don't find a quick fix.