Feeling Pressure, Longoria Goes Hitless in First Series With Giants

LOS ANGELES - If you had asked Bruce Bochy -- given all the injuries late in spring -- if he would have taken a split at Dodger Stadium, you would have gotten a loud yes. Still, Bochy wants his players to take a deep breath on Monday's off day and not think about baseball. That's because of the way they got to 2-2. 

After winning 1-0 the first two nights in Los Angeles, the Giants were shut out twice. They became the first team in 30 years to score just two runs in the first four games of the season and the first Giants team ever to fail to score more than one run in each of the first four games. 

The most glaring issues are at third base, and Evan Longoria sounded eager for the day off. 

"That's my plan," he said, when told of Bochy's words. "Obviously it hasn't been easy sledding for me. The fact of the matter is we won two out of four on the road. That's what we take out of it. For me, I've got a long way to go, but we've got a lot of games left."

Longoria was 0-for-4 in a 9-0 loss Sunday and went hitless in 15 at-bats at Dodger Stadium. He has been the face of a franchise before and played in the postseason, but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel pressure to get off to a good start with a new team. 

"Every (at-bat) that goes by now I'm putting way too much pressure on myself to get it out of the way," he said. 

Bochy believes that once that first hit is out of the way, the Longoria of old will come. He repeatedly said Sunday night that this is a good offense. But it didn't look like one for four days, and the manager wasn't all that eager to chalk it up to facing Kershaw, Wood, Maeda and Hill.

"You have to tip your cap there, but not too much, either," he said. 

The issues are nearly universal. Andrew McCutchen is 1-for-16. Austin Jackson is 1-for-12. Those who are finding hits are not doing it when needed; the Giants are 1-for-28 with runners in scoring position and that one hit did not score a run. 

"It was a rough series for the boys," Bochy said. "The Dodgers put up a lot of zeroes against us."

The Giants went down without a run in 26 of 28 innings, wasting a surprisingly strong start from the staff. For as much as the Giants talked about the fact that they managed to get a split, the truth is this could have been so much more. A depleted rotation allowed just six runs in four games, and this was an opportunity for the Giants to steal a game or two with their best pitcher on the sidelines. 

Instead, they looked very much like the 2017 Giants. Longoria and McCutchen were supposed to fix that, and they have plenty of time to get going. But this wasn't the start they were looking for. 

"A lot of people were looking for me to come out of the gate hot, including myself," Longoria said. "I'm not happy with the way that went, but it is what it is. We'll go back home and start over in a couple days."

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