If you’re wondering why the San Francisco Giants have won just three of their first eight games, well, the answer is very simple: they’re playing remarkably sloppy and dispirited baseball.
If you’re wondering why they’re playing remarkably sloppy and dispirited baseball, well … that answer is not so simple. The search for that answer keeps Buster Posey up at night. The search for that answer keeps Tony Vitello up at night. The search for that answer does not keep me up at night, because thankfully
my salary is not contingent on the Giants winning games. You poor people are stuck reading my words in baseball sickness and in baseball health, and my goodness are the Giants a deathly sick bunch.
The Giants tried to remedy themselves on Monday, and my goodness it almost worked. They even had a few folks fooled for an hour or two, yours truly most certainly included.
Because here’s what the Giants have been doing all through this two-week slump to start the year: missing the cut off man, missing the tags, making bad throws, forgetting how to hit in situational at-bats, and struggling to stack hits on top of each other.
You know: the basic stuff. The fundamentals. The things that you expect the highly-paid baseball players to do with the baseball during the baseball game.
But on Monday, as they welcomed the Philadelphia Phillies to town, they didn’t do those things. Not at the onset, at least. They played clean, crisp, and sound baseball for quite a while, even when the results weren’t good.
Take the first inning, for example. In the top of the inning, Bryce Harper ripped a liner down the third base line, which felt like an automatic two-bagger. But Heliot Ramos played the carom brilliantly and fired a strike in to second base.
Did it work? Nope. Harper was safe by the slimmest of margins. But it was good baseball.
In the bottom half of the inning, Luis Arráez and Matt Chapman strung together back-to-back hard-hit one-out singles against Andrew Painter, as the offense looked like it knew what it was doing.
Did it work? Nope. Rafael Devers popped out and Ramos struck out, and the Giants didn’t score.
For the first time in a while, the Gians were playing fundamentally sound baseball, and it was fun to watch, even when they flirted with trouble. Like in the top of the third, for instance, when J.T. Realmuto led off with an infield single that was almost a sensational play by Chapman, but his throw was off line. Realmuto took second on a wild pitch before Adrian Houser walked Justin Crawford, putting two runners on base with no outs.
No matter. He struck out Trea Turner, then struck out Kyle Schwarber, then got Harper to ground out. It’s amazing how much more fun baseball is to watch when the team is capable of climbing out of holes and not shooting themselves in the foot.
But it was the bottom of the third where we really saw the Giants play honest-to-goodness, this-is-how-it’s-supposed-to-be-done baseball. It began when Willy Adames showed signs of slump-busting by leading off with his first of two doubles on the day. Arráez followed it up with a single, but the true sign that the Giants had exorcised their sloppy demons was when Arráez read the throw perfectly, and took second base when Crawford’s throw allowed him to.
Suddenly the Giants had two runners in scoring position and no outs, and before you could even make your “let’s see how they blow this” jokes, Chapman had lifted a first-pitch curveball from Painter into triple’s alley, which proved to be very aptly named on this occasion.
The thing about Chapman’s triple, however, was that it put him on third base, and the Giants are not good at scoring the runner from third base. But the Giants scored the runner from third base this time, thanks to a timely single flopped up the middle by Ramos. It was a three-run inning, which broke a streak of 36 straight innings without scoring three or more runs.
Not a good streak to have. But a very good streak to end.
History repeated itself in the fourth inning. Houser again allowed a leadoff single, and again that runner moved to second on a wild pitch, and again the veteran righty got out of it unscathed. And again they rallied in the bottom half of the inning, this time when Harrison Bader and Patrick Bailey bopped back-to-back one-out singles, followed by an Adames walk to load the bases.
Up came Arráez, who sure is a delightful antidote to the team’s situational woes. Who better to knock home a runner on third with just one out than the player who can put the ball in play more reliably than any other human being alive?
Arráez did exactly that, in bittersweet fashion: known more for his dinks and doinks than his power, Arráez absolutely put a charge in a Painter slider, driving it out towards triple’s alley.
It had the sound of a grand slam and, according to Statcast, it would have been in three parks — including the one that the Phillies spend half of the season in.
But Oracle Park giveth and Oracle Park taketh away, and Adolis García — who in the second inning had a similarly-hit ball knocked down by the wind for an out while he was in his home run trot — tracked down Arráez’s fly ball, limiting him to a sacrifice fly, but pushing the lead to 4-0.
That was all they’d score in the inning — and in the game, it would turn out — but the point still stood. The Giants were playing baseball competently. They were playing baseball cleanly. It was fun. More importantly, it was as it should be.
It was also temporary.
Houser’s bend-but-don’t-break approach backfired in the fifth, when he flew too close to the sun by allowing another leadoff single, with Realmuto once again being the offending party. This time Crawford followed with a double, and suddenly the Phillies had two on, no outs, and the top of their potent lineup coming up to bat.
The two sides reached a compromise when Turner grounded out, and a run scored in the process. But after Houser walked Schwarber, Harper made the Giants pay with his second double of the game, scoring a second run in the inning.
Houser would get out of the inning without any further damage, but the dam had cracked, and it was making way for the mistakes that have plagued them in recent games and weeks. And after a quick jaunt through the sixth, we reached the point in the game where it would cave away completely.
With Houser still in — he’d needed just 84 pitches to get through six innings — the Giants once again (and you’ll be shocked to hear this), gave up a leadoff runner, this time on a Crawford single. With Schwarber and Harper — two of the game’s most potent lefties — looming, it was clear that Houser would only be allowed to face one more batter. That batter, however, was Turner, who singled, sending Houser off the mound with a full-on rally started.
Vitello walked to the mound, and when he walked off it, Ryan Borucki had replaced Houser.
If you haven’t been watching the Giants this year (great choice in hindsight), the Borucki experiment has gone something like this: not well. More specifically, it’s gone quite awfully.
Borucki is on the roster because he’s quite good at getting lefties out, but in this era of pinch-hitters and three-batter minimums, it’s very difficult to have lefty specialists that aren’t frequently exposed to right-handed hitters. And Borucki should never, ever, ever face right-handed hitters.
So Vitello at least brought him in this time to face the lefty beef. The tragic error, however, was that Borucki hasn’t been good against lefties, either, this year. And so he walked Schwarber on four pitches and then gave up a game-tying, two-run single to Harper.
Just like that, Borucki had faced the left-handed power, but he hadn’t faced the minimum of three batters, and thus had to stay in to face Alec Bohm, who consequently doubled to score a run. Borucki would stay in to face one more lefty — Bryson Stott — and get his first and only out, before giving way to Caleb Kilian, who allowed one of the inherited runners to score on a sacrifice fly.
It was not pretty baseball by any stretch of the imagination, and the four runs had turned a two-run lead into a two-run deficit.
Fittingly, the offense had run dry during that time. The Giants didn’t have a baserunner in the fifth, sixth, or seventh innings, and their rally attempts in the late innings only came with two outs: a single by Jung Hoo Lee in the eighth, and a double by Adames in the ninth. Neither went anywhere, and so the Giants lost, again, this time 6-4.
