SAN DIEGO — The Giants flew into San Diego with the second-best record in baseball. They return to San Francisco with the third-best record in the division, suffering a two-game sweep at the hands of the Padres after losing, 5-3, on Wednesday at Petco Park.
So goes life in baseball’s toughest division.
The Giants (19-12) now return home with an opportunity to feast baseball’s worst team — and an early contender for one of the worst teams in league history.
The Colorado Rockies stumble into Oracle Park for a four-game set against the Giants with an abysmal 5-25 record. They’re on pace to lose 135 games, which would clear the current record of 121 losses that the Chicago White Sox accumulated last year.
The Padres (19-11) and Los Angeles Dodgers have both already swept the Rockies at home this season, and the Giants will have an opportunity to do the same. Manager Bob Melvin said there isn’t additional pressure to sweep the series after San Diego and Los Angeles did so in April, emphasizing the reality that any given team can win on any given day.
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“Every major-league team can beat any other team. We don’t take anybody lightly,” Melvin said pregame. “The Angels beat us two out of three, and that was the only team on that road trip that we had a losing record against. I don’t think there’s more pressure on it. I think you individualize each game and have an expectation to win. That’s the best way to look at it.”
The Giants, as they are wont to do, refused to go quietly. They entered the top of the seventh inning trailing 5-1, their only run up to that point being from Jung Hoo Lee’s RBI single, but solo home runs by Heliot Ramos and Mike Yastrzemski in the seventh and eighth, respectively, trimmed the deficit to 5-3. Against baseball’s best bullpen, that deficit proved too much to overcome.