Surging Giants finish sweep ahead of Trade Deadline

SAN FRANCISCO -- Tuesday’s 3 p.m. PT Trade Deadline just got a whole lot more interesting for the Giants.

With a 5-4 win over the last-place Rockies in Sunday afternoon’s series finale at Oracle Park, the Giants finished off their first four-game sweep since September 2022 (also against Colorado) and pulled within 3 1/2 games of the final National League Wild Card spot.

“Right now, we’re just about in every game,” manager Bob Melvin said. “It was a good series. We knew we had to play well to continue to be in this fight and try to narrow it down to each and every game and not worry about what’s happened in the past and not worry about what’s going forward. There was some fight in all of these games.”

The Giants (53-55) remain two games below .500, but with a surging starting rotation and a soft schedule ahead -- 18 of the their next 23 games will come against teams with losing records -- there’s a case to be made that they should hold on to their biggest trade chips and try to make a run down the stretch.

It will make for a fascinating quandary for president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, who will now have to decide whether the Giants’ statement weekend against the lowly Rockies is sustainable or a mere mirage. If it’s the latter, San Francisco could be compelled to move veterans like Blake Snell, Michael Conforto, Mike Yastrzemski, LaMonte Wade Jr. or Taylor Rogers to acquire a prospect haul and clear more paths for youngsters like Hayden Birdsong, Marco Luciano and Luis Matos to earn regular playing time in the second half.

Alex Cobb, a pending free agent who has also drawn some trade buzz, said his preference would be to stay put and expressed confidence that the Giants still have a chance to get on a roll now that their rotation is finally starting to come together.

Snell has been nearly unhittable in four starts since returning from the injured list (0.75 ERA), Robbie Ray lived up to the hype in his Giants debut last week and Cobb could join the mix as soon as he gets over a right index finger blister that curtailed his last rehab start with Single-A San Jose on Friday.

“I know it’s easy from the outside to write us off, but I just don’t feel like anybody in this clubhouse feels that,” Cobb said. “We just won [four] straight and are [3] 1/2 out of the Wild Card right now. You can see what the potential is of the rotation. It takes so long to form a chemistry in the clubhouse to get to where we’re hopefully, potentially hitting our stride. … We haven’t had that yet. When we do, I see us being right in the mix of it at the end of the year. I think everybody does.”

Matt Chapman, who went 3-for-4 with two RBIs and his 12th stolen base of the year, echoed those sentiments.

“We believe that our best baseball is ahead of us,” Chapman said. “We have a lot of good things happening, I think we all believe in each other. We hope to be able to continue to push for that playoff spot.”

The Giants have been maddeningly inconsistent on the offensive end, but a few of their hitters have started to pick it up as of late, including Chapman and Jorge Soler, who went 3-for-5 with an RBI and is now slashing .280/.347/.486 with six homers, 16 doubles and one triple in 47 games since June 1. San Francisco also got a boost from Casey Schmitt, who opened the scoring with a first-inning solo shot, and newcomer Derek Hill, who extended the club’s lead to 2-0 with an RBI triple in the second.

With their pitching reinforcements in tow, the Giants were able to move Jordan Hicks back to the bullpen earlier than expected. Hicks had been scheduled to make possibly his last start on Sunday, but the Giants decided to scratch him and run a bullpen game instead, with Erik Miller getting his 10th opening assignment of the season.

Miller, Randy Rodríguez and Rogers combined to allow only one run over five innings before Hicks came on for his first relief appearance of the year in the sixth. The 27-year-old right-hander gave up two runs on three hits -- including a solo shot to Michael Toglia -- over two frames, causing his ERA to rise to 4.11 over a career-high 100 2/3 innings.

“It’s not the easiest transition in the world,” Melvin said of Hicks’ role change. “There’s different routines you’re going through, adrenaline is a lot different. You’re not pacing yourself anymore. We kind of want to ramp him down and gave him two innings today. Toglia hits a home run to the opposite field, you’ve got to give him credit there too, but it was nice to see a couple of higher velos maybe than we’ve seen.”