SAN FRANCISCO -- On each of the first two nights of the second half, the Giants faced Cody Bellinger in the eighth inning of a tie game. They didn't handle either matchup well, and those failures potentially cost them two games. They also showed off the biggest need for this team heading into a trade deadline that's now a week away.
Juan Soto will suck up all the headlines, but the easiest fix for the roster right now is to find more left-handed relief, something the Giants didn't expect to be doing this summer. That was reinforced on Monday night when Jarlin Garcia and Sam Long faced 10 Arizona Diamondbacks and allowed seven of them to reach base in one of the worst losses of the season.
In Jake McGee, Jose Alvarez and Garcia, the Giants entered the season with three veteran left-handers in their bullpen who were coming off good years, plus Long waiting in the wings after a promising rookie season. McGee is now a Milwaukee Brewer after being DFA'd and Alvarez is on the 60-day IL until at least Sept. 3 because of left elbow inflammation, an injury that may end his season.
Stay in the game with the latest updates on your beloved Bay Area and California sports teams! Sign up here for our All Access Daily newsletter.
That has left the big left-on-left matchups to Garcia, who generally was used in a more mid-game and multi-inning role last year, and Long, who has been used to fill gaps the last two seasons and made six starts in the first half as the "bulk innings" guy in bullpen games.
"This is the interesting piece about Major League relievers," manager Gabe Kapler said over the weekend. "There's a lot of variability year to year with Major League relievers. There's a few who are just the same dude every year, year in and year out -- those are the outliers. The mortals are more up and down year to year."
McGee did not prove to be an outlier, and after saving 31 games in his first season in San Francisco, he posted a 7.17 ERA before getting released. The Giants put him on the IL for a stint and there was hope that McGee could get right with a mechanical tweak, but he still wasn't generating swings-and-misses when he returned.
The end of McGee's tenure in San Francisco was telegraphed earlier this month when Long, not McGee, came out of the bullpen to face Arizona's Jordan Luplow with the game on the line. He struck Luplow out, continuing a weird trend in his first half.
San Francisco Giants
Luplow hits right-handed, and this season Long has held righties to a .152 average. But lefties are hitting a whopping .457 off him, including Bellinger's grand slam on a hanging curveball that buried the Giants on Friday. Long said that night that he continues to work with the coaches to try and figure out how they can find more success against lefties, a process that has included a change of where he digs in on the mound.
"He's got three plus major league pitches. We haven't quite figured out collectively the formula of how to make those pitches play as swing-and-miss pitches," Kapler said. "But there's no reason Sam can't develop into a guy who you give the ball to in the seventh inning and let him take you through seven and eight against a lineup like the Dodgers are running out there. He's not there yet, he's developing. Jake was already there and was that guy last year, but he wasn't that guy this year."
For Garcia to be that guy, he'll need a different type of adjustment. The Giants are working with Garcia on having a more aggressive mindset. They turned to him with Bellinger coming up and two outs in the eighth on Thursday, but Garcia nibbled instead of going at Bellinger and making a guy batting .204 to put a ball in play. Bellinger walked on four pitches and that forced Garcia to face Mookie Betts, who hit a three-run homer. On Monday night, Garcia faced three Diamondbacks and didn't record an out.
Smarter executives generally do not like trading for relievers, but there are options on the market, and the cost for a left-handed reliever would be a lot less than having to fill a rotation spot -- which the Giants do not currently need to do -- or finding an everyday player who can upgrade the lineup and defense.
Detroit's Andrew Chafin, who seems to be in rumors every deadline, is perhaps the best available option. Old friend Matt Moore has a 1.61 ERA out of the pen for the Rangers and would come with the added benefit of potentially reversing the Curse of Matt Duffy.
RELATED: Why Logan Webb loved delivering a big hit in high school
When he spoke about reliever trades a couple weeks ago, president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi pointed out that, because so many big-name relievers often flame out after deadline day, the best deals are often made because you had the right scouting report on someone else's reliever. The Giants surely have a list of options who could help, and it doesn't seem a coincidence that in recent weeks they added lefties Alex Young and Ben Bowden to their Triple-A roster. Either could get a look soon.
No matter how they do it, the Giants need to find a solution. A year after they had one of the best left-handed groups in baseball, injuries and ineffectiveness have forced them to go back to the drawing board.
Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast