Bonds, Giants Can’t Produce the Expected

SAN FRANCISCO — Here’s your San Francisco Giants update: They lost again and Barry Bonds didn’t hit a home run.

Now, stay tuned for the post-game show ... Sure, there’s still plenty of time left for the Giants, but now that the playoff race has started up again, you would have to say they’re slow getting out of the blocks.

It’s 16 games to go and counting for the Giants, who lost their second straight to the Houston Astros, this time, 10-3, before 40,322 Wednesday night at Pacific Bell Park.

Meanwhile, Bonds was one for three with a single and a walk. Only the St. Louis Cardinals have a better home record than the Giants in the National League, but there was certainly no home-field advantage in the first inning. The first four Astros reached base against Livan Hernandez and they all scored to put Hernandez and the Giants into an early hole.

The Arizona Diamondbacks had lost and the Cardinals had won by the time the game started, which presented the Giants with a chance to make up ground on Arizona and remain only a game behind St. Louis.

It didn’t happen. The Giants stayed two games behind the first-place Diamondbacks in the West, but dropped two games behind the Cardinals in the wild-card race.

As for Bonds, through 146 games, he remained stuck on 63 home runs, which of course is a comfortable predicament.

The Giants’ 39th consecutive sellout crowd came to see if Bonds could move any closer to Mark McGwire’s record of 70 home runs.

Bonds flied out to left field in the first and came up again in the fourth. After chords from Phantom of the Opera served as his introduction, Bonds drew a walk. He grounded a single in the sixth, somehow finding a hole in the defensive shift that had three players between first and second base.

But a single is three bases short of what the Giants needed and the fans wanted, especially since the Astros already led, 6-0.

In the eighth, Bonds hit a pop foul caught by third baseman Vinny Castilla.

Bonds may not have hit a home run, but Jeff Bagwell and Moises Alou did, with Alou’s three-run homer in the ninth all but emptying the stands.

The Giants were shut out on three hits through seven innings by Dave Mlicki, who came into the game with a 4.76 earned-run average and hadn’t pitched in 14 days.