In year of changes, how Giants made push for playoffs
From the spring training shutdown in March, through seemingly endless negotiations to create a 2020 season, the twoadays of practice at an odd summer camp, to a season that began with controversy over one knee that did not touch the ground at Dodger Stadium, through a year of twicedaily coronavirus testing and one falsepositive test, the Giants had so much to endure.
As a bonus, they had to navigate the strangeness with a new manager and outsize coaching staff that brought sometimes radical changes, and play 60 games with no fans and canned crowd noise.
The Giants got through it in every way, minus the one win they lacked to reach the playoffs, and turned in one of the two most surprising performances of the truncated season, a close second place to the
Marlins’ successful postseason bid.
Outsiders were banned from the clubhouse, so reporters could not gauge firsthand how the players coped, or whether there were tensions at times that needed to be quelled.
But Sunday’s exit interviews painted a portrait of a staff that successfully sold new ways of looking at the game, at least for San Francisco, and players who understood that exigent pressures could sabotage their season if they strayed from daily messages of unity.
“Nobody’s comfortable,” Giants outfielder Mike Yastrzemski said. “Nobody knows what was going on throughout the entire season, and to just have everybody behind you and supporting you no matter what was going on through the world, that’s what kept this clubhouse sane and moving in the right direction, keeping us playing important games.”
The Giants had no true positive coronavirus tests. No stories emerged of rogue players who said “damn the protocols” and engaged in risky behavior that could threaten the team’s onfield hopes.
Tensions rose when reliever Sam Coonrod was the lone player from either the Dodgers or Giants not to kneel during a Black Lives Matter ceremony minutes before the season’s first pitch.
They heightened over disagreements within the clubhouse on whether to play or boycott a home game against the Dodgers following another police shooting of a Black man.
However, comments from potential free agents Drew Smyly and Kevin Gausman, as they sent strong signals that they would like to resign, suggest that the overall vibe was good.
“It was easy to show up and try to get the win,” Smyly said.
“When you have a locker room like that and a culture that you’re excited to play every day, and you know guys behind you are going to come in and pick you up, it makes showing up at the park really fun.”
It would have been more fun with people in the seats.
Third baseman Evan Longoria said the playoff push was “as invigorating as it could have been” without the faithful in house.
“I think a lot of guys battled through not having fans on a daily basis,” Longoria said. “It was tough to get motivated at times. I think we take for granted at times how valuable the fans are, how beneficial it is to have a cheering crowd at home in that environment, one that you feel like you can thrive off that energy.”
Even without the stress of the coronavirus and differences on social issues, the managerial transition from Bruce Bochy to Gabe Kapler would have been a hurdle to leap, particularly for the few holdovers from the championship years.
While spring training ended prematurely, the Giants benefited from four weeks to learn a new staff.
Longoria said there was “an adjustment period for sure. I was expecting it to be different, obviously, because Boch is definitely on one end of the spectrum and I think Gabe might be near the other end, the way they approach the game from an analytics standpoint, and just their beliefs in general.”
Once the season began, the Giants got accustomed to more platooning and ingame moves, unusual lineup constructions and pitching decisions that Longoria said “worked out in our favor a lot of the times.”
Yastrzemski said Kapler and the coaches “made us feel comfortable. They gave us every opportunity to make use of new tools, new technologies. Everybody was open to it and showed how it was going to benefit us.”
Shortstop Brandon Crawford offered a telling comment: He said the young hitting coaches provided much more detailed analyses of how they expected each opposing pitcher to tackle each Giants hitter, “which maybe was a little different from years past.”
Crawford improved greatly in 2020. At age 33 he posted a career high in OPS (.792). His OPS+, which measures a player’s onbase and slugging abilities against the rest of the league, with 100 being the average majorleaguer, soared from 74 last year to a careerbest 116 this year.
Brandon Belt had a career year, too, with a 1.015 OPS that raised him to elite status and will earn some MVP votes.
The 2021 season likely will be the last in San Francisco for Belt, Crawford and catcher Buster Posey. The best they can hope for is one more playoff run. But playing 162 games in front of fans would be a close second.