Kurtenbach: The SF Giants have been treading water. That’s not good enough moving forward ...Middle East

If the goal of a baseball season is genuinely as simple as winning more series than you lose, the San Francisco Giants just capped a strong road trip.

They won two of three series, after all.

But anyone who watched, listened, or merely checked the box score of the Giants’ nine-game, three-city Eastern Time Zone excursion knows that the devil lies in the details of that 4-5 stretch.

It has been half a month since the Giants scored five runs in a game. They averaged two runs per game on the road trip, and in their last 14 games, the Giants posted six in which they scored one run or fewer.

The Giants’ offense is, in a word, putrid.

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No one wants to hear the spin cycle from the team and their paid defenders about good at-bats or hitters being “just on the verge” anymore. The people want runs, and they want them now.

And while the Giants were never built to be an offensive juggernaut, they surely cannot keep living — or winning — like this.

It’s frankly incredible that San Francisco has been able to keep their head above water this long. They can thank lights-out pitching and just enough defense over the last two weeks.

Ultimately, this awful hitting stretch could be a forgettable blip amid a long season. The Giants are full of streaky hitters, after all — what are the chances that all of them (save, it seems, for Wilmer Flores) could slump at the same time? (Does the McClintock effect apply to bats?)

Surely there will be regression to the mean, and the Giants are about to hit the cover off the ball for the next two weeks, right?

The Giants better hope so, because such a positive streak looks necessary.

Save for a three-game stretch at Colorado on June 10 to 12 (the Rockies won three games in May and are well on their way to being the worst big-league team of all time), San Francisco is looking down the barrel at three of the National League’s most talented teams between now and June 15.

If the Giants are really contenders, and not just early-season pretenders, this would be the ideal time to show it.

Four games against the Padres will be a massive test for San Francisco. It’s one thing to play uninspiring baseball when you’re taking on the Royals, Tigers, Nats, and Marlins — those teams play in a different division or a different league altogether.

But four in the division? Those games count double.

Not that the division or Wild Card standings matter too much right now — there’s no reason to freak out about the Giants being two games back of San Diego going into Monday’s series opener or tied with the Cardinals for the last Wild Card spot in the National League — but there’s no disputing these games are crucial. Both teams could easily look back in September and regret their play at the beginning of June. These games have stakes.

And while the Padres are assuredly feeling good about their chances against the noodle-bat Giants, San Francisco has to feel pretty good about the pitching advantage, particularly with starting pitching, they should hold in this series.

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The Padres are banged up and searching for arms to start games. Stephen Kolek allowed five runs in the first inning of his last start. He’ll go on Monday for the Friars. The Padres don’t even know who will be starting on Tuesday. It might be 32-year-old quadruple-A pitcher Kyle Hard, who allowed five runs in 4.2 innings in his start against the Marlins. It might be a Johnny Wholestaff game.

Save for Nick Pivetta on Wednesday, the Padres are starting question marks. Even once-outstanding Dylan Cease is looking for his stuff — he was unable to go five innings against the Padres last week.

Meanwhile, the Giants will toss two top Cy Young Award candidates — Logan Webb and Robbie Ray — alongside Landen Roupp (one earned run in his last start) and Kyle Harrison (who looked fantastic against the Marlins). Pair that with the best bullpen in baseball, statistically (the Padres might have the best arms), and you should have a significant advantage in a big series. Such a significant advantage, I’d argue, that even mediocre hitting will get the job done.

We’ll see if the Giants can even provide that.

They’ll need more than just mediocre hitting in their weekend series against the Braves (June 6-8) and Dodgers (June 13-15). Atlanta might be sub-.500, but that is a team poised for a breakout — the talent is simply superb. The Giants better hope they catch the tail end of this ATL slump, because their roster — even with the great starters and elite bullpen — doesn’t match up.

And I don’t need to warn you about the Dodgers.

The Giants are minus-4 in run differential over the last two weeks. That’s a feat itself, given that they are dead last in runs scored in baseball over that stretch. (And by a wide margin.)

We’ve seen this team play better. It’s fair to believe that kind of baseball is still in them. It would surely be a waste of brilliant pitching if that turns out not to be the case.

That better baseball needs to show itself.

Because these seas are about to get choppy, and simply treading water won’t do any longer.

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