LOS ANGELES - At Dodger Stadium on Saturday night, L.A. hit three consecutive solo homers in the ninth inning to tie a game against the Phillies before adding a run for a walkoff victory.

In San Francisco, the Giants also hit three home runs - their total for the seven games on a 3-4 homestand.

The home run is most definitely back, but the Giants are not part of the trend. The 30 teams combined to hit 863 homers in April, the second-most for that month in baseball history, according to ESPN Stats and Info. The Giants hit 16, second-fewest in the majors behind the Red Sox.

There are lots of ideas on why so many homers are being hit. Theories include teams moving in fences, a livelier baseball, more pitchers coming to the majors who throw a lot of heat but have no command of breaking pitches, players getting stronger legally and players getting stronger illegally without getting caught.

Either way, it's not happening for the Giants, whose team leader in homers is Brandon Belt, with four. Tied for second are Christian Arroyo, Brandon Crawford and Madison Bumgarner (!).

Look, the Giants have not been built to be a power team since Barry Bonds left. Their 2012 team, which pound for pound was the best of their three title teams, ranked last in the majors with 103 homers.

The problem is, the Giants are not compensating for their paucity of home runs by scoring runs the "Giants way," the old "get 'em on, get 'em over, get 'em in" model.

Giants pitchers, as usual, are doing a good job of preventing homers. They have allowed 28, which is fourth best in the league.

But Padres first baseman Wil Myers demonstrated over the weekend what a dagger the homer can be, when he hit a three-run homer against Neil Ramirez on Saturday to cap an eight-run inning then won Sunday's game with another three-run homer off George Kontos in the 12th.

Mark Melancon took the blame for loss because he blew the save on a two-run Hector Sanchez homer in the ninth. That's fair. A closer's job is to close.

But before the Myers homer, the Giants had three chances to walk off with a win after the top of the ninth and failed. At home, a team always has the advantage of being able to win in such situations with one swing.

When you can't, you are opening the door for the visiting team to take the game.

Why have the Giants hit just 16 homers?

Fans are going to scream about general manager Bobby Evans not getting a left fielder over the winter, and that is part of the issue. The Giants knew Jarrett Parker would not be a big average hitter but figured he would run into a few. He did not run into one before he crashed into the wall and broke his collarbone.

The only homer from a left fielder came from now-departed Chris Marrero. The Giants have no homers from center field and just one from right fielder Hunter Pence. That's two from the outfield. The next worst National League team, the Pirates, has seven. The Mets led the league with 20.

The broader issue is the Giants' inability to drive the ball, period, as Pence mentioned in Sunday's postgame comments. They have become a singles-hitting team that needs three hits to score a run. And with all the homers being hit by other teams, the Giants, to borrow a phrase from the Old West, are bringing knives to a gunfight.

The Giants can prosper offensively if they pitch and just get 14-16 homers apiece from their standard sources: Belt, Pence, Crawford, Buster Posey, and maybe 8-10 from Joe Panik, Denard Span when he is healthy, Eduardo Nuñez, maybe Christian Arroyo and whomever they might find from their system.

I have a hard time believing the mainstays mentioned above have deteriorated so quickly that they cannot reach those numbers, or at least start driving more doubles into the alleys and down the lines.

And I am confident it will happen because there are some good hitters here.

The Giants offense is not "old," as some suggest, though it's getting "old-ish." Even so, 361 of those 863 homers in April were hit by players in their 30s. It can be done.

If and when the Giants starting driving the ball, period, some of those balls are going to leave the yard and will help the Giants catch up, take a lead or expand a lead (and if they dare to dream, actually win a game with a ninth-inning comeback for the first time in two years).

If they do not start driving the ball, well, this truly will be a long and unhappy season, and the front office will have to start thinking about becoming sellers down the road and auditioning players for 2018 and beyond who can.

Monday’s game: I would not expect the Giants to drive many balls Monday night, when they face Clayton Kershaw in the opener of a three-game series. Johnny Cueto pitches for the Giants.

Kershaw obviously loves pitching against the Giants, but he’s actually better against them in San Francisco than he is in L.A. The Dodgers have won five of his past seven starts here,but only nine of 16 overall.

Your lineups:

GIANTS (vs. LHP Clayton Kershaw)

Hernandez LF

Arroyo 3B

Pence RF

Posey C

Morse 1B

Nuñez SS

Panik 2B

Stubbs CF

Cueto P

DODGERS (vs. RHP Johnny Cueto)

Toles CF

Seager SS

Turner 3B

Grandal C

Gonzalez 1B

Bellinger LF

Puig RF

Utley 2B

Kershaw P

Henry Schulman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: hschulman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hankschulman