Giants' Melvin rips 'sloppy' play during postgame meeting

San Francisco Giants manager Bob Melvin ripped into his team following their latest lackluster effort in an 8-0 loss to the San Diego Padres on Saturday.

After the Giants were shut out in a third straight contest for the first time in 32 years, Melvin called out his players during a postgame meeting that delayed his press conference. The manager took particular issue with what he characterized as sloppy defensive play by the team.

"We only made one error, but it didn't look like it," Melvin said, according to Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area. "We're out of position too much, we didn't get good breaks on balls. Yeah, it's sloppy."

Melvin added: "It's the big leagues. It looks like instructional league at times."

The skipper especially had a problem with a first-inning miscue by San Francisco's middle infielders on a relay play. Neither shortstop Brett Wisely nor second baseman Marco Luciano were in position to cut off Heliot Ramos' throw on Manny Machado's double, allowing Jurickson Profar to score from first.

"I know we got some guys playing out of position - Wisely's not a shortstop, even though he's played good shortstop this year, Lucie's learning the position at second base - but still, that's not major-league quality what we did tonight," Melvin said.

Melvin added that the team will go back to basics Sunday by running relay drills during pregame, something usually only done in spring training, in hopes of patching up the mistakes and spurring a strong finish to the season.

"It almost feels like it's cratering here," he said. "We're only a couple of weeks left in the season, and we've got too much at stake, and we've accomplished too much, even though it's been disappointing as a whole, but we've accomplished too much to just start playing baseball like this. As a staff, we have to try and do something about that."

San Francisco's playoff hopes, already thin coming into September, are all but over due to the recent downturn. The Giants have lost 18 of their last 30 contests and sit 9 1/2 games out of a playoff spot with 13 remaining.