Can the San Francisco Giants bust their teamwide slump?

There are few things in sports more unforgiving than a slump in baseball, and when the whole team is slumping, it's difficult for the baseball-watching world not to notice. It’s 2016, and all eyes were on the San Francisco Giants before the season started after acquiring Denard Span and pitchers Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija entering another even-year season. After a mediocre start to the year, the Giants' pitching found a groove, and the offense looked like it was approaching preseason projections.

The Giants played well in June and fantastic in the first half of July, entering the All-Star break with the best record not only in the National League, but in all of baseball. San Francisco grew a five-game cushion over the rival Dodgers, a team that’s been hit with injury after injury throughout the course of the season. With ace Clayton Kershaw on the shelf with no set timetable to return, the NL West looked liked it would be all but wrapped up by the end of July.

Instead, the Dodgers' bats got hot, and while the starting rotation hasn’t been great, the bullpen has gotten the team out of enough jams to let the offense carry the team to a now three-game lead in the NL West.

For the Giants, it’s been the exact opposite. Heading into the break, Madison Bumgarner and Cueto were the best one-two punch among starting pitchers, while Samardzija was pitching relatively well for the first two months of the season. Since the break, the Giants as a staff have an ERA approaching 5.00, and the starters are a combined 7-18. Furthermore, the bullpen, a stalwart for the Giants during their three title runs, has lost the team more games than it's accustomed to, with things beginning with Santiago Casilla’s walk-off balk in the second game back from the All-Star break.

Things look bleak for San Francisco. In the 35 games since the break, the Giants have lost 24, they’ve lost their lead in the division and now they’re on the verge of losing out on one of the two wild card spots. At the time of this writing, they lead St. Louis by just a half game for the top wild card position and only two games ahead of Miami for the second. They’re in the mix with four other teams total, including the Cardinals, Marlins, Pirates and Mets all within five games of the Giants, all vying for the right to participate in the play-in game.

If there is any silver lining for the Giants, it's that this is a veteran team with a history of playing its best baseball when circumstance calls for it. And if the Giants need just a little bit of extra help, they only have four more series against teams with winning records the rest of the way (two against the Dodgers, one against the Cubs and one against the Mets).

There’s also some history at play here. While the Dodgers have won three consecutive NL West titles, they've also collapsed down the stretch to allow the Giants to take the pennant. The '62 Dodgers blew a four-game lead with 10 left to play even with Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale throwing for the boys in blue every fifth day. The Giants forced a three-game playoff and won in Game 3 after a four-run ninth inning.

The most memorable collapse between the two teams came in 1951 when the New York Giants went 37-7 down the stretch to eclipse the 13.5-game lead the Brooklyn Dodgers held in mid-August. In Game 3 of another three-game playoff, Robby Thompson hit what is now known as “The Shot Heard Around The World” — a three-run home run in the bottom of the ninth to give the Giants a 5-4 victory and a trip to the World Series.

All of the even-year magic that allowed the Giants to win three of the last six World Series won’t mean much if the pitching staff can’t keep balls in the park and the lineup can’t extend leads to make things easier on the bullpen when placed in close situations. Not only will they have to overcome the Dodgers' lead, but they'll also have to work to hold off all comers from the rest of the National League if they're to advance to the postseason. It's been a weird slump but not anything this team has been unable to overcome in its recent mini-dynasty. The Giants had a stretch in which they only won nine of 29 games during the 2014 season, and they still ended the year exactly how they wanted to.

Still, there a few things in sports more unforgiving than a slump in baseball — and the Giants have been slumping for over a month now. Only the games will tell if they can come out of it, but if they do, the baseball-watching world will notice.