KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Coming off their most disappointing home stand of the season, Bob Melvin had a directive for his club.

“We realized that we can’t just let the season end,” the San Francisco Giants’ skipper said before their series finale against the Royals. “We’ve got to win some games and dig a little bit harder.”

Message received.

On the same road trip they were mathematically eliminated from postseason contention, there’s a strong case to be made the Giants (77-79) are playing their best baseball of the season. Their series against the playoff-hopeful Royals (82-74) ended the same way as their series against another American League contender began, with a shutout win — 2-0 — behind Blake Snell in tip-top form.

“Getting two in Baltimore, then sweeping the Royals — those are playoff teams — there’s nothing better,” Snell said. “It’s frustrating because we know how good we are, so for us to not get it done the way we could (earlier in the season), that’s frustrating.”

Snell yielded just two hits and one walk over six shutout innings while striking out nine as the Giants swept only their third series of the season. The damp Sunday matinee represented the Giants’ 12th chance this season to complete a sweep but they had been successful only in their two tries against the lowly Rockies.

“It’s just nice to get a sweep,” Melvin said afterward.

Despite objectively having less at stake than their opponents, the Giants have gone 5-1 and outscored them 31-9.

“It speaks a lot about how we want to win, we’re not just going to cave in,” Snell said. “We’re want to play, we want to win, we want to make it hard on these teams to beat us. We’re doing a great job of that. We’re all playing for a lot right now. Bob has made that very clear.”

“We’re just playing well right now,” Melvin added. “That’s all. That’s all we need to worry about. It’s a much different group right now than what we saw earlier in the season, what we started with. I’m just happy that some of the younger guys are developing, and quite of them are. I think that bodes well going into next season.”

One important asset that only showed up in the second half of the season is Snell, who only recorded his first double-digit strikeout game of the season on July 27 and yet still came one punchout away from matching Chris Sale, Garrett Crochet and Tyler Glasnow for the most in the majors (six).

Snell issued his lone walk to lead off the second inning, then responded by striking out the next five hitters he faced. He used his curveball to put away six of his nine strikeout victims and said he “found some things out the last two days” after ditching the pitch for a slider-changeup combo in his last start against the Orioles, when he struck out 12 over six scoreless innings.

In 14 starts since returning from the injured list July 9, Snell has a 1.23 ERA with 114 strikeouts in 80 1/3 innings. With one start left this season — Saturday against St. Louis — he has lowered his season ERA in the 20 total times he’s taken the mound to 3.12, after it sat at 9.51 when he landed on the IL for a second time June 2.

“I wish I could’ve done it sooner,” Snell said. “I wish I was healthier. I wish I would’ve slowed down and listened to myself more. But it’s learning moments. Everything that happened, I’m happy about it. I learned a lot. I got better.”

As a team, the Giants have thrown three shutouts through the first six games of the trip after doing it eight times in their first 150 games of the season. Following a 9-0 win Saturday, they recorded back-to-back shutouts for the first time since Aug. 2, when Snell threw a no-hitter.

They’ve limited the Royals and Orioles to nine runs in six games, a team ERA of 1.51.

“Starters showed out, bullpen showed out, two shutouts, and what, one run the first game?” Snell said.

Informed that, in fact, they had tossed three shutouts on the trip, Snell let out an extended “Ooooooooh.”

“That’s huge,” he said.

After a sloppy home stand in the field, they also have gone the first six games of the trip without committing an error.

And although their bats produced only two runs in Sunday’s series finale, the offense also appears to have woken up after being shut out three times while dropping their previous four games at Oracle Park. They have recorded two of their top 13 single-game outputs of the season and scored first in every contest.

Against Seth Lugo, who shared a rotation with Snell under Melvin in San Diego last season, the Giants put up a two-spot in the second inning for all the scoring they would need to secure their first sweep since they took four from the Rockies in the final week of July.

Jerar Encarnacion got things started with a sharp single to center field and scored from first base when Grant McCray tripled into the gap in right-center field. With the speedy McCray on third, Tyler Fitzgerald fouled off two bunt attempts and went down swinging, but Brett Wisely delivered a piece of timely hitting to extend the lead to 2-0, poking a two-strike, two-out curveball in front of Tommy Pham in left field.

“That’s just two-out, two-strike hitting,” Melvin said. “It’s something that we have, at times, not been great about this year — two-out RBIs. That was a key one because one (run) to two (runs) feels like a big swing with Blake on the mound.”

Notable

Encarnacion laced his second-inning single at 115 mph off the bat, tying him with Joc Pederson for the Giants’ third-hardest hit ball of the Statcast era (since 2015).

At the behest of Matt Chapman, the Giants’ rookies were all dressed up as Oompa Loompas for their flight to Arizona. Except Sean Hjelle. He was Willy Wonka, replete with a top hat and cane. “It’s because I’m their favorite rookie,” Hjelle said. Or because his 6-11 frame was too large for another costume.

Up next

The Giants wrap up their final road trip of the season with three games against the Diamondbacks. RHP Hayden Birdsong (4-5, 4.74) flew there ahead of the club (getting a pass on rookie dress-up day) and will start the first game of the series against LHP Eduardo Rodríguez (3-3, 5.09). First pitch is scheduled for 9:40 p.m. ET.

____

©2024 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at mercurynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.