DIFFERENT IS GOOD
The Giants are resilient, entertaining and in last place in the NL West
SAN FRANCISCO >> A Giants team that has made stomach-turning, late-inning collapses a theme of its season returned home Wednesday in last place in the National League West.
After four weeks of games, it’s not a surprise to see a team that entered the summer with an overmatched roster four games behind every other club in its division.
But it is something of a surprise to see how the Giants landed here.
Much like the final three teams Bruce Bochy managed, the 2020 Giants under Gabe Kapler will be hard-pressed to finish
the season with a winning record. They play in one of the toughest divisions in baseball and with a logjam at the top of the standings, each of the four other teams sees itself as a playoff contender.
Unlike the last three losing teams, the 2020 Giants are a much more compelling team to watch.
These Giants might not be good, but they’re different. They’re resilient, they’re capable of coming back, and when they lose, their games are typically more entertaining (albeit maddening) if you can handle a tortuous ninth-inning experience.
Fans on social media say they’re swearing off the team because of the way Kapler has managed an inexperienced bullpen, but the funny thing about those fans is they keep coming back to make their point. At least for the first eight innings of a game on any given night, they’re still offering the Giants a chance to capture their attention.
What makes this year’s Giants different? Instead of relying on pitching, defense
and an elite bullpen as Bochy’s clubs so often did, Kapler’s Giants have an above-average offense built around one of the game’s newest stars, Mike Yastrzemski.
A table-setter at the top of the order, Yastrzemski is (statistically speaking) the best two-strike hitter in baseball and his never-say-die attitude sets the tone for the rest of an offense that has exceeded expectations.
“I just grow into a grinding mentality and at that point, it’s over for your own personal at-bat and you start trying to work counts for your teammates,” Yastrzemski said Tuesday. “Try and find a way to get on base and that’s the place that I go. Trying to do it for somebody else as opposed to myself.”
The Giants aren’t suddenly slugging the ball with reckless abandon, but after finishing 28th or worse in team OPS in each of the last three seasons, the club’s .723 mark is within 12 points of the league average and its 21st ranking represents a significant improvement.
Kapler’s Giants rank 12th in runs scored, 13th in batting average and 13th in home runs and have received major contributions from unlikely sources. Journeyman infielder Donovan Solano is one of the top hitters in the league while Austin Slater, a part-time player entering the season, is enjoying a breakout year. Free agent signee Wilmer Flores is the only other offensive player with an above average OPS+, but the Giants have received enough contributions on a daily basis to make the lineup a more entertaining group to watch.
Over the past three days, a handful of Giants veterans have also demonstrated signs of life at the plate. With opponents turning to a run of right-handed starting pitchers, left-handed hitting infielders Brandon Crawford and Brandon Belt have each started three consecutive games and have combined for seven extra-base hits during that period.
“It’s tough, we’re both kind of in the same situation where we’re used to getting consistent at-bats and hitting our way out and playing our way out of slumps,” Crawford said Tuesday. “We’re in the same boat there and sure; we’ve had discussions about that. Not necessarily specific hitting stuff, but the whole situation, and how we just have to work our way out of it.”
An overworked Giants pitching staff has made it difficult for fans to stay optimistic about the team’s progress at the plate, but Belt admitted it’s easier to maintain confidence in the 2020 club’s potential because the lineup is giving its pitchers a chance.
“I really do think we have a lot of facets of our team that work really well and that does give me a lot of confidence,” Belt said. “I had a lot of confidence coming into the season that we could win some ballgames. We’re going through a rut right now and unfortunately we don’t have a lot of time to stay in this rut, so we’ve got to figure out something quickly.”
It won’t be easy for the Giants’ resilience to show up in the standings. Misguided attempts to keep the Giants’ championship window open following a 98-loss season in 2017 that were encouraged by ownership and carried out by former executives cost the team a chance to start its rebuilding process earlier.
When he was hired in November, 2018, president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi inherited a roster that wasn’t ready to compete and wasn’t in a position to be gutted and turned over yet, either. Zaidi has now begun the process of amassing prospect capital and creating opportunities for inexperienced talent, and it’s led the Giants to discovering the anchor of their current team, Yastrzemski.
The process has also led to frustration for fans as inexperienced relief pitchers rarely make for a reliable, consistent bullpen. The late-inning meltdowns are atypical of a Giants team that had a relatively solid relief corps managed by a bullpen wizard in Bochy over the last several years, but they’re normal for clubs that are building toward the future.
In 2020, Giants fans are being asked to recalibrate their expectations and watch a team that’s geared to score instead of defend, see a bullpen that’s a weakness and not a strength and examine a manager who’s still learning as opposed to a strategist who will soon be in the Hall of Fame.
As the Giants proved this weekend, many days will be rough. Others, as the team showed on Tuesday, will be fun. Mostly, it’s just all different.
Also
The Giants recalled lefthanded reliever Andrew Suárez on Wednesday after using five relievers Tuesday night. To clear space on the 28-man roster for Suárez, outfielder Steven Duggar was optioned to the alternate site.