If there's one player on the San Francisco Giants who is excited to leave San Diego, it's Johnny Cueto.
Due to a flurry of pitchers being unable to pitch, including teammate Madison Bumgarner, New York Mets manager gave Cueto what could be the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to start the All-Star Game, the first Giant to do so since Tim Lincecum.
With all the spotlight on the Dominican native, Eric Hosmer and Salvador Pérez, launched two home runs off of their former Kansas City Royal teammate, taxing Cueto for three of the American League's eventual four runs.
On Sunday afternoon, the San Diego Padres handed him his second loss at Petco Park in five days, scoring four runs off the All-Star to complete the sweep of the Giants and win 5-3.
This past series marks the first time this season Bumgarner, Cueto, and Jeff Samardzija have all lost consecutively.
Just like in the All-Star Game, Cueto's biggest downfall was the longball, as the Padres hit a pair of dingers in the bottom of the fourth by way of Matt Kemp and Christian Bethancourt.
Yangervis Solarte added a home run of his own in the eighth.
The series sweep could have been an even bigger shot to the team's morale as Edwin Jackson no-hit the Giants through 6.1 innings before Conor Gillaspie got the orange and black into both the hit and run column with a three-run blast in the seventh.
Just like his no-hit bids in the past, Jackson's outing wasn't pretty, as there were plenty of walks to go around, as well as an error by San Diego second baseman Ryan Schimpf.
By the time manager Andy Green took the ball from his starter, Jackson was at 90 pitches and had already faced 26 batters. Nonetheless, he'll take the outing any day of the week.
Jackson contributed to the offense as well, knocking in a run with a single against George Kontos.
Even with Gillaspie's home run, the Giants were only able to muster one more hit, which came off the bat of Ramiro Peña. Gillaspie and Peña both have the same birthday, July 18th, but the hits were their gifts to the Giants to save them from being no-hit.
The Giants have sputtered out of the All-Star break and haven't been able to get back on track since the mini-vacation.
Although the team somehow still has the best record in baseball at 57-36, San Francisco clearly is ways away from being able to coast, especially since the second half of the season poses much more of a challenge.
The hope is that the team is simply a little rusty coming out of the break and will return to form on the upcoming east coast road trip against the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees.
San Francisco is in for a bit of good news, as Matt Cain is set to return Wednesday against the Red Sox, which would be his first appearance in the bigs since June 13th.
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