Anderson continues SF starters' winless trend

SAN DIEGO -- The Giants have cycled through two full turns of the rotation, and then some, without getting a win from a starting pitcher.

With all the walk-offs, extra-inning heroics and bullpen lockdowns, it hasn’t been much of an issue as the Giants ascended into National League Wild Card contention with a four-week run of stellar baseball. And the lack of starter wins doesn’t mean those pitchers haven’t contributed to the team’s success.

But it does mean that not once in the past 11 games have the Giants enjoyed one of those stress-free days when the bullpen denizens practice their skills at spitting sunflower seeds instead of jogging in for high-leverage outs.

Shaun Anderson was the latest Giants starting pitcher to complete a workday without a “W,” and this time the team didn’t have a rally at the ready. The Giants fell, 5-1, to the Padres on Saturday night at Petco Park, which puts them in jeopardy of losing a series for the first time since the Rockies took two of three games at Oracle Park from June 24-26.

• Box score

Consider the Giants unbowed, especially since ace Madison Bumgarner is getting the ball in the series finale.

“Our attitude in here is pretty good,” catcher Stephen Vogt said. “We’re pretty positive. We’re excited to play tomorrow. We’ve got our guy going for us. Any time you’re on the road and you have a chance to take a series with your ace on the hill, you’ll take those odds every time.”

On Saturday, Anderson lasted five innings, plus a leadoff single by Wil Myers in the sixth. When Myers came around to score, the right-hander’s final line included four runs, seven hits, two walks and a loss that left the Giants 18-5 in the past four weeks. But Anderson pitched better than the line suggests.

The rookie recorded seven strikeouts while showing the sharpest slider of his 14 big league starts. Five of those strikeouts came when Padres whiffed at a third-strike slider. In all, Anderson got a career-best 12 swinging strikes with the pitch.

“That’s a very good fastball-hitting team over there,” Vogt said. “His slider’s a very good pitch, so that was kind of the plan to use the slider. But we had to use it a bit more than we wanted to because the fastball command was a little erratic.”

Anderson was unable to solve Padres rookie shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr., who went 3-for-3 off him and smashed a two-run homer in the fifth inning that gave the Padres a 3-0 buffer. Tatis’ 414-foot no-doubter came on a slider away one pitch after Anderson threw a 93.8 mph fastball high and tight that had Tatis spinning to the ground and out of harm’s way.

“We went up and in,” Anderson said. “Tried to throw the next one down and away and caught too much of the plate with it. He's a good hitter.”

The Giants last had a starting pitcher credited with a win on July 15, when Jeff Samardzija and Dereck Rodriguez won both ends of a doubleheader at Colorado. In the 11 games since, their starters have combined to go 0-3. Yet their 3.88 ERA ranks seventh in the Majors in that time.

Perhaps the rotation’s recent 0-fer is a statistical anomaly. For instance, Bumgarner has pitched twice in that stretch and allowed four runs in 16 innings. But both games went extra innings, with the Giants pulling out two victories in a total of 29 innings.

But for all the winning, there are a few cracks showing with the Giants. Brandon Belt is 0-for-15 in his last three games, and manager Bruce Bochy acknowledged he might need a breather. Joe Panik is 0-for-10 over four games. Brandon Crawford is 0-for-9 in his last three games.

In the micro view, the Giants have dropped two of their past three games and scored a total of four runs. That’s a June kind of stat, something the Giants seemingly put behind them. But it’s also a stat that will get no notice in the clubhouse. The Giants are already looking ahead to the series finale.

“That’s a good team over there,” Vogt said, “but with Bum going, we feel pretty good.”