Giants trying to shake off the odd-year blues

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Famously and handsomely decorated every other Fall since 2010 – which is maybe not so much a dynasty as it is a live-and-die-nasty, maybe a bi-nasty – the San Francisco Giants now aren't very good in odd months either.

March is an odd month. Not odd in the sense that it observes something called Employee Appreciation Day that no employee has ever heard of, not even at Hallmark (we're guessing), but odd in that it's the third month. The season starts in the fourth month. The Giants are 5-12, and while not a single person has once looked at spring training standings and thought, "Yeah, that's pretty much how the next six months will go," Bruce Bochy did the other day look at a 10-0 loss, the manner of the losses before it, and the way the club had performed for two weeks and observe, "We're not doing anything very well right now. …We're not even close to being ready."

Which is mostly fine, because the season isn't even close to being started.

Except these biennially fallow seasons were on Bochy's mind more than a month ago, when guys were just beginning to show up.

"We're pretty well set," he'd said then. "We're in a good place. Sure, we'd like to have fun in an odd year. We'd like to change that up."

Then he went across the street and had heart surgery.

Almost four weeks later, the word around camp – forget the record, of course – was the Giants weren't pitching, hitting or catching the ball with any sort of urgency or consistency. So, for the moment anyway, the record (forget that) sort of accurately reflected how the Giants had come out of their third championship offseason in five years.

Which might explain why Bochy was a little cranky.

Hunter Pence's left arm is in a cast. Tim Lincecum is suffering from a sore neck. Angel Pagan has lower back issues. Again. Pablo Sandoval is in Fort Myers, Fla., where he remains wounded by the championship experience, the daily love, the tens of millions of dollars he was paid and the tens of millions more he was offered to stay. His solution was to strafe his former franchise with friendly fire, which the Giants answered with a weary shrug. Tim Hudson (offseason ankle surgery) is slightly behind schedule, as is Lincecum. Madison Bumgarner, given the 270 innings he threw last season, is tiptoeing toward opening day. And Matt Cain, in the final stages of recovery from elbow and ankle surgeries, pitched Thursday in a minor-league game.

All piled up like that, this could appear worrisome, certainly to the worrier sort. Course, the worrier sort might not get past the ERAs (they're big). Or wonder where the offense is going to come from. Or, hell, skip straight to the odd-year vibe.

So, anyway, Bochy called them out, they had an off day, they piled into a bus to Maryvale for a Thursday afternoon game under threatening skies and a brooding manager and they played the Milwaukee Brewers. Ryan Vogelsong, listed sixth on the depth chart, started. And the second batter he faced – Scooter Gennett – lined a ball off Vogelsong's left shin, which was no way to launch the newly committed, charge-into-April Giants. Bochy and the trainer didn't get to the foul line before Vogelsong waved them back.

"I didn't come over here to face two hitters and come out of the game," he said later.

The Giants presumably know better than to obsess over March. There are no heroes in March. There are, however, lifeless fastballs and listless at-bats and balls that probably should be turned into outs, all of which were eating at Bochy more than any final score could. Vogelsong, who is 37 years old and has seen his share of spring trainings all over the world, including more than a few here under Bochy, said Bochy's observations registered in a clubhouse that just added a bunch of new rings.

"It did with me," he said. "I read it. It affected me a little bit today. I wanted to have a good outing.

"He's right. It's time to pick it up. All facets. … It's getting close. You might as well start doing it now."

By late Thursday afternoon, when Sergio Romo had staggered through a ninth inning that turned on a strikeout of a guy without a name on his jersey, the Giants were 3-2 winners. More, way more, they'd played a reasonable end-to-end game.

In the very large, very long scheme of things, it was a start. Vogelsong was very good, while Cain threw in a minor-league game and Lincecum threw a side session. Hudson is scheduled to pitch Friday, Lincecum on Saturday and Bumgarner on Sunday. Pagan took an injection in his back. Pence inched a little closer to throwing that cast away. Everybody seems to love the guy – Casey McGehee – who took over for Sandoval at third. Bochy seemed, you know, pleased, in that OK-do-it-again way.

"All of us," he said. "It's a message to all of us. We gotta get ready. This is one game, but we gotta turn up the volume how we do things."

Yeah, it's March. Yeah, they seem to figure it out often enough. But a baseball man can only watch crummy baseball for so long.

"You've still got to mean business when you go to hit a baseball," Bochy said. "I think we've been a little passive up there."

Three runs apparently was progress, so he'd take that and start over again Friday, the way he has for decades now, and live with the odd misstep. Besides, he knows how these things eventually even out.