Giants' losing streak is as bad as any stretch in recent franchise history

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SAN FRANCISCO -- A few minutes after Homer Bailey's final pitch, Bruce Bochy tried to put the bewildering stretch into words.

"Hopefully this is rock bottom," he said that night. "You hope this is as low as it gets."

The year was 2013, the date was July 2. Bailey had just no-hit the Giants, handing them a 13th loss in 17 games. The reigning champs had dropped from 35-31 to 39-44 in less than three weeks, and Bochy figured it could only get better from there. He was wrong, unfortunately. 

The Giants would get walked off by the Reds the next night and then blown out by the Dodgers when they returned home. They responded to the no-hitter by dropping six of seven and that team went on to lose 86 games. 

That provided a lesson to an organization that was two titles deep at that point: You never know how deep the hole really is. 

Right now, the 2019 Giants continue to search for rock bottom. An 11-3 loss to the NL-worst Marlins on Tuesday was the sixth straight. The Giants have been outscored 59-17 during the losing streak. 

This is one of the least competitive stretches in franchise history, and ranks right up there with some other infamous ones in recent memory:

2013:

That 5-19 stretch, with the no-hitter mixed in as a cherry on top, was brutal at the time. But the Giants actually only lost five games in the NL West standings during all that and were still 6 1/2 games out at the time. 

They walked off the field Tuesday in Miami a whopping 14 1/2 games out of first and just 2 1/2 ahead of the Marlins at the bottom of the NL. 

2016: 

How about going into the All-Star break with the best record in the league and coming out by losing 11-of-13? That's up there in the rankings. The Giants followed that skid by trading Matt Duffy, although the 2016 team did make the postseason, which ultimately is the goal. And then Game 4 happened ... 

2017: 

The entire season. The entire season was #RockBottom. 

Mark Melancon blew a save on Opening Day, the Giants lost 10 of their first 16, Madison Bumgarner crashed his dirt bike, and then the team got swept in Colorado by a combined score of 26-8. It went on and on from there.

The scary thing is that the 2017 Giants, a 98-loss team, were 22-31 through 53 games. The 2019 Giants are 21-32.

2018: 

You know, 2018 wasn't that bad, all things considered. 

The Giants were 61-60 on August 14 and only five games out, but then they lost six of seven, including an ugly sweep in Cincinnati. Buster Posey had season-ending hip surgery, Andrew McCutchen was finally traded, and a team full of fill-ins lost 11 straight to begin September. 

The Giants went 5-21 in September, getting outscored 126-69. But it's hard to feel too rock-bottomy when it's the final month and you're not in the race. 

2019:

This current stretch is as bad as the Giants have ever played under Bochy. In the six games, they have allowed 76 hits and 14 homers, while hitting just four themselves. The opposition has a .889 OPS in the six games, which would rank 20th among all players in the National League this season.

The Marlins entered the series last in the league in runs and a distant last with just 36 homers. They hit three on their first night with the Giants.

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"It's not (pitch) selection. You look where these balls are, those balls can't be there in that situation," Bochy told reporters after the loss. "We just made mistakes and they took advantage of it."

That was the case all weekend against the Diamondbacks. It seemed like it could only go uphill from there, but as we've learned a few times over the past decade, sometimes the search for rock bottom is a long one. 

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