Mets 5, Giants 2: S.F. calls up infield prospect Ryder Jones.
The Giants’ landscape has changed a lot since the start of the season. Christian Arroyo, Austin Slater, Kyle Crick and now Ryder Jones have been brought to San Francisco far earlier than anyone would have predicted on Opening Day, when the 2017 nightmare began with a blown save and a loss in Arizona.
The Giants show no signs of waking up, either. Incomprehensibly, they lost their 50th game Saturday, 5-2 to a Mets team that was staring at the reaper itself before arriving at baseball’s Lourdes and collecting two wins.
More changes will come, with players traded and the Giants beginning to audition some of the starters they have in Triple-A, such as Tyler Beede and Joan Gregorio.
As the Giants turn toward youth, as best they can with so many older players under longterm contracts, they have an obligation to their fans to scrap out as many wins as they can. They have one in the past two weeks to go with 11 losses.
“We have a lot of baseball left, and these guys have a lot of pride,” manager Bruce Bochy said after a bullpen that engenders no confidence coughed up four runs over the final two innings after Brandon Belt tied the game 1-1 with a seventh-inning homer against Jacob deGrom.
“The last thing we want is to keep this thing going. For some of the guys in there, this can be embarrassing at this point. The only thing you do is keep going, keep playing, keep fighting, and they are.”
Bochy rarely uses a word like “embarrassing” to describe his team’s play. Belt, who has a .228 batting average despite a teamleading 14 homers, had no counterargument.
“I think that’s a pretty good word to use,” he said. “It is embarrassing to come out and lose every day, especially with the guys we have. That’s why we’ve won World Series. We want to come out here every day and win. We’ve got to try what we can to turn this thing around.
“The way I look at it, we had a great first half last year and a bad second half. Hopefully we reverse it this year and have a good second half.”
To convert Belt’s words into numbers, the Giants are 57-92 since they rolled into the 2016 All-Star break with the best record in baseball, 57-33. That is more than enough sample size to conclude that the roster as constituted is not going to cut it. Management’s job is not deciding whether to rebuild, but how, and concluding whether the Giants should build for 2018 or 2019.
Looking at younger players who excelled at Triple-A this year is a good start, ergo Jones, who was tearing up the Pacific Coast League before the Giants summoned him to be the everyday third baseman — at least until Eduardo Nuñez comes off the disabled list.
Jones went 0-for-4 in his debut, but he made three of those outs against deGrom, the reigning National League Player of the Week, who held the Giants to Belt’s solo homer over eight innings and has a 0.72 ERA over his past three starts.
Johnny Cueto bolstered his trade value with one of his best starts of the year, allowing only Wilmer Flores’ solo homer over seven innings.
Minutes after Belt tied it, Sam Dyson, Steven Okert and George Kontos all pitched in the eighth, and each allowed a hit to his first batter, starting with Curtis Granderson’s triple off Dyson. The Mets ended the inning with a 4-1 lead. The Giants’ 50th loss was in the bag.
“It is hard to believe,” Bochy said. “It’s hard to make sense of it, to be honest. We do have a lot of talent here. It shows you how every year can be different than the year before. You need normal years from your guys and some surprises, and we haven’t had that.”