The Giants reached a new low point for the season in a game of everything that can go wrong did go wrong to reach blowout proportions by the middle of the second inning. Key Lines:
The Giants lineup managed just 5 hits and a walk off Nick Pivetta RHP with Jung Hoo Lee's triple being the only XBH.
Kai-Wei Teng RHP- 1.2 IP, 4 H, 7 R, 6 ER, 4 BB, 0 K. ERA= 9.90. Teng dug himself a hole in the second inning loading the bases with one out on a single and two walks. A GIDP helped him get through a scoreless first inning and it appeared he had another one when Jake Cronenworth's ground ball that was headed straight for a waiting Willy Adames SS, it hit the 2B bag and caromed over Adames' head into shallow L-CF. What would have been an inning-ending play scored two runs and there was still just one out. Another walk, single and Sac Fly made it 4-0 with 2 outs. Manny Machado then hit a line drive to the LF wall which Heliot Ramos LF fielded cleanly, whirled and inexplicably yanked it into the ground and it rolled slowly toward 2B while another run scored. At this point Spencer Bivens RHP was once again brought in and thrown to the wolves. Jackson Merrill CF singled and with Xander Bogaerts at the plate, Patrick Bailey C whiffed on a shoulder high fastball that went to the backstop and a 7'th run scored. Of course, everybody knew the game as over when Cronenworth's ball popped up over Adames' head and the rest of the inning just emphasized the point. One of the most disastrous innings I've witnessed and we seem to be saying things like that a lot these days.
I think I sort of said this yesterday but I witnessed the open player revolt that got Gabe Kapler fired in 2023 and last year's collapse that led to FZ's firing. I have not seen a more moribund team in recent memory. I think you have to go back to the days when Tom Haller was the GM and Jim Davenport was the Manager to find anything comparable. Even Kruk and Kuip were openly talking about how part of being a MLB ballplayer is keeping your head up and continuing to make adjustments in these situations. One of them said "something has to change". When Kruk and Kuip say something like that, best to take it seriously.
The Giants get a day off to lick their wounds, look at themselves in the mirror and meditate what they can do as individuals to get better before the Tampa Bay Rays arrive for a weekend series with Landen Roupp RHP facing Joe Boyle RHP who is 6' 8", 250 lbs and comes in with a 3.82 ERA. That does not sound particularly hopeful for the Giants.
The only crisp plays were DPs initiated by Dom Smith and Spencer Bivens, who is showing he is well schooled. Ramos is relying on talent to make up for lack of baseball smarts, but he is increasingly a liability. I think this team is looking for leadership because they seem to be rudderless and purposeless. Not to dis BoMel, but in this situation it means fire the manager.
ReplyDeleteIt was a defensive mistake by Ramos but I should have added that a contributing factor was the cutoff man was not in the right position which is a big part of the reason he spiked the throw. So, is someone is going to get benched it probably should be the guy who was out of position but I have a feeling that player is making a whole lot more money than Heliot Ramos.
DeleteA perfect example of the ripple effect of mental mistakes.
DeleteI wish I could disagree with Bill, but I cannot. The time has come for a management and coaching change.
ReplyDeleteI think Buster has to make major changes this offseason. I'd give Mark Hallberg the rest of the season as the interim manager and see if he's more willing to break out the whip on the bats. I'd look to bring in a platoon partner for Bailey next year, the bat has been better but, the defense has regressed. Chapman needs to be on the hot seat next year and if next year is more of the same, Buster may need to eat a bad contract. The Farhan holdovers in Sacramento needs to be purged after the season.
ReplyDeleteStatistically Bailey is still the best defensive C in MLB by a large margin. He one defensive weakness has always been Passed Balls which is almost by design because the one-knee-down crouch improves framing while sacrificing Passed Balls. Chapman has likely been fighting a sore hand every since the injury. Hopefully a full offseason of rest will let it fully heal. Q: How do you put a player who is guaranteed $25 M/yr for the next 5 years in the "hot seat"?
DeleteChapman on the hot seat? with all those years and $$$? Too bad they didn't wait on Schmitt to be ready. He is now. And who are the "Farhan holdovers" at Sac? Seem a fungible bunch there, not Farhan holdovers.
DeleteWho are "The Farhan holdovers in Sacramento"?
DeleteAh, Hunter Bishop & Jerar Encarnación! Trevor McDonald?
If the sore hand is still an issue, it would be best to shut him down for the year. I'm hoping that bringing in a coaching staff that will actually hold players accountable is the solution. The Wiselys and the Lucianos down in Sacramento are the guys I'd let walk after the season.
DeleteLuciano is not a Farhan holdover. Although not mentioned, nor is Matos.
DeleteI even like the effort of Koss, Koss is a great contact hitter and you can plausibly have a capable infield of Schmitt at third and Koss at second. I want Chapman to cut down on strikeouts and hit for contact. In 2026, it needs to be put the ball in play or risk losing playing time.
DeleteOutside of injury concerns, Chapman's playing time is most definitely not at risk.
DeleteThere is some criticism out there towards Buster and some of his moves in his first season. I think he is still trying to dig them out of the mess Farhan created. What other options did Buster realistically have? Melvin was already the manager so can’t blame that on him and the extension he gave him was a formality. We had no left side of the infield and the options out there were to pay Chapman and Adames or role Schmidt and Fitz out there all year instead. Clearly that would have been an inferior option. Trading a bunch of crap for a top 15 bat in the league was a pretty cool move especially since no big free agent bats want to sign here and nobody wants to trade our best prospects for one. The trade deadline could have been really interesting if this team hadn’t completely fallen apart. My point is that there were no other better moves for Buster to make. There is no other realistic situation out there that would have put us in a better position this year than what he did. The only other alternative which I have been asking for is a rebuild but obviously that will never happen here.
ReplyDeleteDr B: What was the nature of the "open player revolt" that you saw?
ReplyDeleteA lot of it is admittedly rumor, innuendo and hearsay but there was no shortage of signs. There was Zack Littell showing up Kapler on the mound(I think that was 2022), the Brebbia "joke" that wasn't really a joke. Mike Yastrzemski said there was a "fend for yourself atmosphere". Mauricio Dubon went public with some issues. Just days before Kap was fired, Logan Webb called for changes to foster a winning culture. The next day Webb and Kap were seen walking the outfield in deep conversation and Kap was fired a couple of days later. It's also when the beat writers reported that a group of players led by Webb and Thairo Estrada took issue with Joc Peterson, who by that time was a jiggly tub of goo, organizing the Filipino card game which they felt participants were more interested in than baseball. It was implied that Kap refused to address it. At one low point one of the players made an impassioned clubhouse speech and at the end all Kapler did was give a thumbs up and retreat to his office. Open player revolt may be a little hyperbolic but I'm not sure how much more evidence one would need to conclude that.
DeleteOkay 2023. I misread the post
DeleteIf you are referring to the Tom Haller-Jim Davenport days, that would be 1985, the 100 loss season. That is a pretty low bar.
ReplyDeleteIf we are talking about lowest points in franchise history, the 1985 season is very tough to dislodge from the top spot.
DeleteI don’t see how they come out of the day off with BoMel at the helm. He’s getting nothing out of the talent in the lineup. They’re constantly making mental mistakes. He’s trying to kill Bivens.
ReplyDeleteLOL "trying to kill Bivens."
DeleteWhy did Drew Gilbert get pushed ahead of Doc's Fav McCray or even Homer Luciano?
ReplyDeleteBecause Gilbert is a contact hitter and Buster thinks contact hitters are the way to take advantage of the home ballpark.
DeleteFor a contact hitter the young man sure seems to have a hard time making contact.
DeleteBottom line is MLB is HARD!
DeleteThey need to undo the Kap/FZ era, pronto. I never supported Kap as a manager. The '21 'smoke and mirrors' season was perhaps the worst thing that could've happened for the franchise. They need to undo everything related to the era. Some good players. But Melvin has not proven to be up to the task. I'd love to see Bochy come back (along with Righetti as the pitching coach). But it'll probably continue to get worse. I trust Poseys decision making in this matter.
ReplyDeleteNo disrespect to Bochy who is absolutely a HOF manager, I'm not sure trying to relive the glory days is the right way forward. I have no idea who out there is the next great manager but I do think the Giants need a younger guy with progressive ideas in the manager's office but maybe not one quite as rigid with analytics as Kap and obviously one who has a proven ability to communicate and give effective feedback.
DeleteSmoke and mirrors. smh. 107 wins. Most in franchise history. Took the Dodgers to the 5 games in the playoffs. You all going to vilify Kapler for '23, you damn well oughta give him credit for '21.
DeleteAnd Melvin was the savior, right? Back to old school baseball. Get everything back on track. Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure.
You all think Bochy is foolish enough to walk back into this mess?
Under the broad category of "what's wrong," I'm tempted to say that Buster didn't make good judgments with the Chapman and Adames signings. Sure, each has some pop (when healthy) but neither is a great hitter, and neither is the sort of of hitter that Buster has since championed for Oracle Park. They both have a ton of swing-and-miss in their games, including swings and misses with RISP. Each has an aversion to two-strike adjustments, neither seems to like hitting to right field. That has always been Chapman's game, having been trained in the A's three-true-outcomes system. I had hoped for more from Adames. Adames's defense is also mediocre at best. Chapman of course makes a lot of highlight--reel plays at 3B, but he also makes a surprising number of bumbling errors. They're both great guys, they say. But they're both eating up too much of the budget, and for too long, and blocking younger, cheaper players whose performance they Adames and Chapman only approximate without greatly exceeding. There's no way to move them, so one can only hope they'll get better, which isn't encouraging.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking along the same lines when I said in a previous post that Buster needs to quickly figure out what kind of team he wants and it's already getting late for that with the long term contract commitments.
DeleteI'm not trying to knock FZ, but Buster deserves a lot of credit for acquiring an impact hitter like Devers that FZ tried 6 years to get. I think they're better off with Chapman and Adames for now , they don't have anyone better then them in their system that they're blocking. Free agent signings are exciting but teams usually overpay the length and amount of the contract. Buster has said he wants a team built on pitching, defense, timely hitting. He showed in the 2025 draft that he values hitters who dio a good job of putting the bat on the ball. Same with the trade deadline getting Gilbert and Rodriguez. I'll be disappointed if he doesn't acquire a couple of veteran high average contact hitters to supplement the core they have.
ReplyDeleteBuilding an offense on "timely hitting" is a thin, thin reed to lean on. I can buy contact hitting over power in a park like Oracle but there probably is no such thing as "timely hitting" over a large sample size. The Giants got timely hitting early this season but then it disappeared as it always does.
DeleteThis is sooo depressing
DeleteI really don't believe in the terms "clutch hitting" or "timely hitting". Usually the best players who have the best clutch or timely skills are the best hitters. There is not a true consensus on what determines a "clutch" situation. There was a study done in the 1970s by Dick Cramer who noted that players who had good clutch stats in one year tended to go down the next. Pete Palmer found the performance in clutch situations to be almost identical to random situations and Rob Neyer felt the deviations were not significantly different. Late inning pressure situations tend to be small sample sizes.
DeleteGetting players who identify as good hitters is one thing but probably not a good idea to stock up on players who are labelled only as "clutch" or "timely" hitters. The 2025 Giants team is a good demonstration of small sample size.
Good points. If they can add a couple of good professional hitters who hit 270 or higher that would help this lineup. It doesn't have to be homerun or strikeout hitters.
DeleteBack in the dark ages, the Giants had guys like Champ Summers, Jim Wohlford, and Harry Spilman who were considered "clutch" but really did not have much sustained hitting success. In recent years, Cody Ross and Marco Scutaro were considered "clutch" because of their postseason heroics and both were re-signed as free agents. Ross regressed back to normal in 2011 and had injuries. Scutaro had a good 2013 before he hurt his back. Its better to pursue professional hitters instead of going after players who are considered "clutch" but don't regularly put up good numbers.
DeleteThe series with the Rays is a battle for 20th place in MLB: the winner of weekend will have it.
ReplyDeleteThis assumes that neither Miami nor Minnesota (underdogs) sweep their games which would propel one or both of them ahead of this weekend's loser.
Should the Giants be swept, well, pretty sure that will bring a vacancy in San Francisco.
Kai Correa is not available.
It's hard to easily dissect the black box of batting, but to my untrained eye it seems like the hitters have a harder time with pitch recognition. The analytics seem to suggest that the Giants rank lowly in strikeout percentage and called strikes taken-- I am not sure if that boils down to philosophy of approach at the plate or coaching to the pitch recognition but I would favor a change in coaching.
ReplyDeleteMatt Chapman Injury: Absent from Friday's lineup
ReplyDeleteWritten by RotoWire Staff
Chapman (hand) is not in the Giants' starting lineup against the Rays on Friday, Justice delos Santos of The San Jose Mercury News reports.
Chapman will miss a second straight game due to right hand soreness, though he could be available off the bench for Friday's series opener. With Chapman out of the lineup, Casey Schmitt will shift to the hot corner while Christian Koss starts at second base and bats seventh.
One thing to look out for tonight: Stolen bases.
ReplyDeleteThe Rays have 178; the Giants, 52, led by Fitzgerald with 9.
The Rays have 7 players with 14 or more (their leader, José Caballero, was traded at the deadline).