Lincecum's struggles return, Red Sox win series

(06-27) 19:40 PDT -- The nearly 130,000 fans who filed into AT&T; Park over the weekend to watch the Red Sox take two of three from the Giants could not have witnessed a clearer divide between one team primed to make a run for a division title and another that is treading water.

The headline from Sunday's 5-1 Boston win was Tim Lincecum being knocked out before the fourth inning for the second time in 105 major-league starts, leading to the Giants' third consecutive series loss.

For the record, manager Bruce Bochy and Lincecum said the two-time Cy Young winner is not hurt.

"He didn't have it, so he came out after three," Bochy said.

Lincecum was off kilter almost throughout his 79-pitch, four-run day, reverting to the struggles he had in May before winning three in a row.

The best evidence was not the splash home run he allowed to David Ortiz in the first inning, after Big Papi got a favorable call from home-plate umpire Mike DiMuro on a 2-2 check swing. A better clue was Lincecum going 3-1 on Jon Lester before the Red Sox pitcher blasted a 415-foot sacrifice fly to right-center in the second, helping himself during a complete-game victory.

"In the second inning, I kind of lost my stuff," said Lincecum, who can take some comfort in knowing these Red Sox also battered Ubaldo Jimenez and Roy Halladay this season.

There was no consolation for the Giants in falling 4 1/2 games behind first-place San Diego, matching their largest deficit of the year with the Dodgers arriving tonight for their first 2010 visit to San Francisco.

The broader headline for the Giants is how they do not have the look of a playoff team - in contrast to Boston.

They compete for nine innings. You have to give them that. And their rotation will keep them in the hunt.

But offensively, they do not have the speed to run or stay out of double plays. Aside from Juan Uribe and Aubrey Huff, they rarely slug. They leave far too many runners on base and score too many runs on outs instead of hits. All three of their runs Saturday and Sunday were produced that way, Andres Torres scoring Sunday on a Huff groundball after an infield hit and two steals.

The Giants enjoy a Torres hot streak here and a Freddy Sanchez pick-me-up there, but too few of them have hit consistently enough to sustain any kind of momentum.

Even a member of the Giants family wondered aloud whether the team as constituted could rip off a long winning streak, as the Dodgers did in May and the Rockies typically do every season.

Optimism about "getting these bats going" sounds less convincing when the midpoint of the schedule is a week away.

The Giants have feasted on weaker opponents. Early in the season, they beat some good teams, but they have lost their last five three-game series against those that currently have winning records. Their last such series win came April 30-May 2 against Colorado. Since their 6-1 start, they are 34-33.

The Giants will face a lot of winning teams before the trade deadline, and one wonders if they can hold on while general manager Brian Sabean tries to swing a deal for an impact bat, which has become difficult in the wild-card era, with so many teams remaining in the hunt.

"We've talked about it," Bochy said. "This is an important stretch for us. This is a part of the season that could determine where you're at."

E-mail Henry Schulman at hschulman@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle