You follow the San Francisco Giants, so you’re familiar with bad baseball. You’re well aware of it from watching the Giants, both this year and in many other years. But you’ve also become keenly alert to bad baseball through divisional foes such as the woeful Colorado Rockies, who, in most years, make you feel a little better about the Giants.
Through all of this you’ve learned something critical to the baseball-watching experience: there are levels to the badness. There are bad teams and there are bad teams, and there’s a whole gradient betwixt the badness, plus a little something something past the extreme end of the spectrum.
The Giants have been a bad team if you look at the year as a whole, but they’ve sneakily only been a bad bordering on mediocre team in recent weeks. Entering tonight’s game, the Giants were 25-27 over the last two months. Not the stuff dreams or even playoff teams are made of, but certainly not bad.
Well let me tell you something, folks: that might have been a borderline competent team you watched for the last two months, but it’s going to be a downright bad team that you watch for the next two months. That’s just the nature of the beast when you sell at the deadline, as the Giants absolutely, positively, most definitely needed to do and, thankfully, did (and very well, I might).
You don’t get rid of your best position player, your second-best starting pitcher, your fourth-best starting pitcher, two of your best relievers, and your everyday outfielder and expect to get anything other than categorically worse, especially when the haul in return only featured two rostered players, one of which is playing fairly poorly in AAA, and the other of which is injured with no timetable for a return.
That’s not to say the Giants aren’t worth watching. There will be storylines and prospects and debuts and first hits and first homers and milestones galore. But a good baseball team? No. A bad baseball team? No. A bad baseball team?
Now we’re getting somewhere.
That was fully evidenced on Tuesday night, when the Giants took the field against the Texas Rangers. Robbie Ray is gone, and replacing him was Blade Tidwell, someone who has spent the year in AAA for a reason. Heliot Ramos is gone, and replacing him was Eddys Leonard, an infielder who has exhausted all of his Minor League options despite never making the Majors, is on his fifth team, and was making his MLB debut as a left fielder, rather than at his home on the dirt. Luis Arráez is gone, and replacing him was Osleivis Basabe, who is in his fourth season of trying (and failing) to hit league average in AAA. And just for old time’s sake, Buddy Kennedy was the DH so Bryce Eldridge, nursing a sore thumb, could get the day off.
So yeah. You’ve got eyes. You’ve got baseball knowledge. You understand the situation. The Giants will win some games, and they might even entertain the heck out of you, but they are going to be bad.
Which made Tuesday’s loss to the Rangers that much funnier. Because ultimately, it was all those reasons why the Giants should be bad that they almost won … and primarily the reasons why they were decent for a while that led them to defeat.
It sure didn’t feel that way at the onset, though. Tidwell made his first Major League appearance in more than three months, and his first start as a Giant, and it almost didn’t last a full inning. He got ahead of the leadoff hitter, old friend Joc Pederson, 0-2, but ended up walking him. He had a nine-pitch battle with Corey Seager, who roped a 108-mph one-out single. He gave up an RBI double to Brandon Nimmo and an RBI single to Ezequiel Duran, and when he finally escaped the inning you could almost see the oil that he was leaking. He’d thrown 32 pitches. It was ugly.
And then he retired the side in order on nine pitches in the second. And he had a relatively easy third, with just a two-out single, and a relatively easy fourth, with just a two-out single, and a relatively easy fifth, with just a two-out single.
It wasn’t an overpowering performance by any stretch of the imagination: he needed 100 pitches to get through his five innings, and only struck out three. But it was a very solid outing, and if you’re crafting a list of reasons the Giants lost, Tidwell’s name is nowhere to be found.
Shortly after Tidwell’s night ended, the Giants offense finally broke through. After six dominant innings from MacKenzie Gore, the Rangers moved to the bullpen and righty Chase Silseth. Drew Gilbert welcomed Silseth into the game by drawing a leadoff walk in the seventh, and stealing second base. After the Giants recorded two outs, the hottest man on the planet, Basabe, stepped to the plate. The same Basabe who has five home runs in 75 games in the Pacific Coast League this year, where baseballs fly like tennis balls in the dreams of a labrador retriever.
And in his sixth game with the Giants, Basabe demolished his third home run to tie the game.
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A youngster leading a pitching charge. A youngster getting on base. A youngster tying the game with one swing of the bat.
Veterans gave it right back. After Jason Foley cruised through the sixth on five pitches, and JT Brubaker handled the seventh with ease, Brubaker opened the eighth with a walk. With a pair of lefties due up, Reiver Sanmartin entered the game, and promptly loaded the bases by allowing back-to-back singles to Seager and Nimmo. Forced to stay in against a righty, Sanmartin had no choice but to challenge Duran, who punished the very first pitch he saw for a two-run double.
Credit where it’s due, though: with runners at second and third and no outs, Sanmartin got two unproductive outs, before Adrian Houser entered and finished off the inning, keeping the Giants within striking distance.
And strike they did. With, you guessed it, a parade of youngsters in the top of the ninth.
It began in the most improbable fashion: with Gilbert knocking a one-out single off of Jacob Latz. Not just a single, but a single in an 0-2 count.
To recap, for the uninitiated: Latz was an All-Star this year, has a 1.80 ERA on the season, and, critically, is left-handed. Gilbert, a left-handed hitter, entered the game having hit 3-51 against southpaws in his career.
So yeah, naturally he got an 0-2 knock.
Next up was Grant McCray, another lefty, who also fell behind 0-2. McCray who, as a refresher, entered the game having drawn 12 walks in 185 plate appearances in his career. And who also entered the game with a career .427 OPS against lefties.
He worked the 0-2 count to a 4-2 count, putting the tying run on base. And then a somewhat rattled Latz threw a wild pitch, allowing the runners to move over.
And that set the table for the best youngster of them all: Eldridge, yet another lefty, who came off the bench to pinch-hit, and he delivered in style, drilling a game-tying single.
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To the ninth we went, and in came Dylan Smith, who gave up a double on the first pitch he threw. But being something of an unproven youngster himself, Smith remembered the theme of the day. He got an unproductive fly out, then issued an intentional walk to Seager, and then struck out Nimmo. The stage was set for Smith to work his heroics and get the game to extras. He went to work against Duran, getting the count to 2-2. And then Smith briefly won, as Duran hit what felt like a harmless enough fly ball to right field.
And then Jung Hoo Lee took one of the worst routes I’ve seen in my entire life and didn’t even get close to catching the ball, and the Giants lost 5-4.
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And so the Giants, who project to be bad for the next two months because of their reliance on youngsters, got heroics from Basabe and Eldridge, an improbable rally prompted by Gilbert and McCray, a delightful pitching performance from Tidwell, and some magic from Smith.
And those same Giants, who have been surprisingly competent for the last two months because of their capable veterans, got next to nothing from Willy Adames and Rafael Devers, had a mini blowup from the bullpen, and were walked off by Lee not catching a routine fly ball.
Baseball’s a funny sport. Is “funny” the right word?
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