Dodgers series kicks off make-or-break road trip for flailing Giants

You wouldn’t think there would be any competition in terms of hostile crowds for the Giants than the one they will face for four games this week at Dodger Stadium.

That is, until they heard it from their own fans over the weekend at Oracle Park.

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“I had never heard that, ever,” outfielder Heliot Ramos said.

Things have gotten so dire in San Francisco that a historically cordial home crowd voiced its frustrations at multiple points in the team’s ugliest loss in an eyesore of a season.

“What would you do?” manager Tony Vitello said in reaction to the rarely heard boobirds. “I think it got to the point where it wasn’t an acceptable effort.”

Heliot Ramos celebrates a solo home run. AP

At the quarter mark of the season, there haven’t been enough acceptable efforts from a team that expected to compete for a playoff spot. Only thanks to a walkoff win in extra innings the following day did they begin Monday outside of the cellar in the NL West.

Time is running out fast to turn things around.

By the time the Giants return home from their first of two 10-game road trips this month, it will be Memorial Day weekend — traditionally an important inflection point in the MLB season.

By then, with about a third of the season behind them, teams have typically separated themselves into contenders and pretenders. The Giants, at this point, are squarely in the latter camp.

Consider this a make-or-break road trip.

“What would you do?” manager Tony Vitello said in reaction to the rarely heard boobirds. Getty Images

“I think this is going to be a good road trip,” Ramos said.

They’d better hope so.

Facing four games against the Dodgers, three more against the AL West-leading Athletics and a third series against another divisional foe ahead of them in the Diamondbacks, the Giants have already dug themselves a deep enough hole — they can’t allow it to get any bigger.

Sunday’s win staved off the distinction of holding the worst record in the majors — the Mets, Rockies, Angels and Astros were all either a half or full game worse — but their amount of stinkers like Saturday’s left them with the game’s worst run differential (minus-48).

In MLB’s wild-card era (since 1995), only a handful of teams have been able to recover from a start as poor as the Giants. Just six have won 16 or fewer of their first 40 games and went on to make the postseason, most notably the 2019 World Series-champion Nationals.

Extend that out to 50 games, where the Giants will be at the end of this road trip, and the list narrows to just three teams with 20 or fewer wins — the position the Giants will be in if they don’t win at least half their games during this stretch.

“This thing is about winning series,” Vitello said. “If you just break our season down into series, you win the first and you win the third, the second one was an embarrassing loss. But it’s not a slam dunk contest. You don’t get extra value or not based on how the win or loss went.”

Not only had the gap between them and the Dodgers grown to eight games entering Monday, they have to make up seven games and overtake as many teams just to get themselves into the picture for one of the NL’s three wild card spots.

A successful series in Los Angeles would go a long way to making up their deficit in the NL West. That could prove difficult for an offense that has scored the fewest runs in the majors, with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani and Blake Snell expected to oppose them.

Heliot Ramos hitting an RBI double. AP

“As a team, we’ve just been trying to find momentum,” said Ramos, who scored the winning run Sunday when Jesus Rodriguez snuck a soft line drive into right field in the 12th inning. “I think we haven’t played our best baseball yet. I think that’s it. (Bad) stretches are going to happen.”

The walkoff win against the Pirates offered some signs for optimism. They got strong efforts from members of their struggling bullpen, including two scoreless innings from lefty specialist Ryan Borucki against a pocket of righties. Rafael Devers and Willy Adames both collected hits and the rest of their lineup provided enough timely knocks.

Could that be the kind of win that finally kickstarts some of that long-lost momentum?

“The last game was really reassuring of what we can do,” Ramos said. “It’s comforting for us to just know that we can carry that from one series to the next.”

San Francisco Giants Heliot Ramos and Willy Adames celebrate a home run. IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

That hasn’t been the case so far this season.

San Francisco has ended its previous two home stands on positive notes, too. In April, they shut out the Phillies in back-to-back games, extended their winning streak to three games in their first game on the road against the Orioles and proceeded to lose their next four contests.

They took two of three from the Dodgers earlier this month and won their final two games against the Marlins. They hit the road and lost all six games they played — without homering.

Entering Monday, they had lost their last seven games away from Oracle Park.

This time around, at least, the road atmosphere could provide a respite of sorts from the pressures of playing in front of a fanbase whose patience has run thin.

That doesn’t mean they won’t hear their fair share of boos inside their archrivals’ ballpark.

“Hopefully it’s the good ones,” Ramos said. “When we’re winning.”

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