DENVER — Matt Chapman had to catch himself recently while trying to speak hope into existence of what is increasingly looking like one of the most dreadful seasons of the nearly seven decades the Giants have played baseball on the West Coast.
“It’s been a rough start to the season — I guess we’re past the start of the season,” he said. “It’s been a rough first half of the season.”
As the losses pile up, it’s increasingly clear: Not only were their playoff expectations wildly misplaced, this team just plain stinks. At 36-50, there have been just six other teams in the San Francisco era to start this poorly. Their average finish: 68-94.
“It just hasn’t gone the way we envisioned it,” Chapman said. “I didn’t see us being here at this point in the season.”
Let’s examine the reasons why:
1) Less than two years into Buster Posey’s tenure as the club’s top baseball executive, his two biggest moves already look like sunk costs.
The fact that the Giants are reportedly looking to get off the contracts of Willy Adames and Rafael Devers just a season after acquiring them — and that interest from the other 29 teams is expected to be tepid at best — should tell you all you need to know.
Devers, at least, has found his power stroke more recently and is one off the team lead in home runs with 15. He leads the league in doubles. But his .306 on-base percentage is on pace to be his lowest since he was a 21-year-old in 2018 — 40 points below his career average.
There’s a case to be made that Adames has been the worst everyday player in the majors. His defense at shortstop — a premium position — has been the worst in the sport, per Outs Above Average (minus-13). He accounts for more than a quarter of the outs the Giants have made on the bases, three more than any other player, while also taking the extra base on fewer of his chances (31%) than any regular on the roster besides Bryce Eldridge.
His at-bats have, for the most part, been atrocious. Adames is swinging at pitches outside the strike zone at the highest rate of his career (32.1%) while simultaneously attacking pitches in the zone at his lowest rate ever (65.7%). That’s resulted in his walk rate plummeting to 5.6% with a higher strikeout rate (27.8%) than any of the 16 qualified hitters who walk as infrequently.
Maybe the biggest problem of all has been the example set by two players who, at least by their place on the payroll, are expected to be leaders on the team and yet have been anything but, either forgetting the number of outs or publicly disrespecting their rookie manager.
But, hey, only a combined 13 years and $375 million to go after this one.
Just imagine that you heard in spring training the Giants would get breakout seasons from Jung Hoo Lee and Casey Schmitt, Eldridge would arrive and look like the real deal, and that Luis Arraez would be more than competent at second base.
That might inspire dreams of October baseball.
Or, you’d smartly ask: What about the pitching?
2) In addition to the unexpected struggles from their top-paid players, the most predictable problem has played out over and over again.
The failure to invest in what has been among the least reliable bullpens in the league doomed the Giants — and especially Tony Vitello — before they even got started.
Operating without a closer, or hardly any defined roles at all, for most of the season, Giants relievers have either walked or hit the first batter they faced 46 times, tied for the fifth most in the majors. That probably has something to do with the 49 inherited runners they have allowed to score, also the fifth most in the league. They have blown only 10 saves, mostly because they have had only 27 save opportunities, fewer than all but two other teams.
This should sting its hardest next week when the Blue Jays visit town. Not only will it mark the return of Tyler Rogers, who has been reliable as usual (41 games, 1.82 ERA), but it will be Spencer Miles’ debut at Oracle Park.
It’s only coming in a road uniform because the Giants left Miles unprotected in the Rule 5 draft. The 25-year-old right-hander now has a 2.83 ERA in 23 appearances for the Blue Jays, with an upper-90s fastball, two nasty breaking pitches — and a walk rate (2.8 per nine innings) that would be the lowest on the Giants’ pitching staff besides Logan Webb.
3) Posey opted to devote resources in two back-of-the-rotation arms who have performed about the way their contracts would indicate. Tyler Mahle and Adrian Houser, both available on one- or two-year deals, have a combined 5.52 ERA with the Giants going 10-19 in games they appear.
4) It probably didn’t help the pitching staff to trade a highly respected starting catcher six weeks into the season, Patrick Bailey’s offensive shortcomings notwithstanding.
When Posey made the seismic move to send Bailey to the Guardians, netting the No. 29 pick in the draft later this month and a promising pitching prospect in Matt “Tugboat” Wilkinson, he said it was about “the confidence we have in Jesus Rodriguez and Daniel Susac.”
Before the trade, Bailey was hitting .146 with a .346 OPS. Since, Giants catchers have combined for a .187 average and a .539 OPS. Rodriguez’s defense was so poor he’s no longer on the roster, while the new catchers have struggled so mightily to catch up to Bailey’s knowledge of the staff that starters are being encouraged to call their own pitches.
5) The verdict is still out on Vitello, particularly given the tools at his disposal, but if the decision to go in a different direction from his experienced and respected predecessor was intended to clean up their fundamentals, it’s been a failure so far.
Putting aside the perpetually sloppy play that has resulted in the second-most errors in the majors (60), just look at the little things such as the running game. The Giants have, effectively, granted their opponents an extra 51 free bases purely from the discrepancy in the bags they have swiped (28, tied for 30th) versus the steals they have allowed (79, tied for third).
Attention to detail has seemingly been absent at every rung of the organization, from the “inadequate” communication to their players surrounding Pride Night to mistakenly hiring a first-time third base coach who quickly became overwhelmed — even manager’s challenges, which Vitello has been successful with only 40% of the time, ahead of only the Angels’ Kurt Suzuki and the Pirates’ Don Kelly.
But then again, what were the Giants expecting when neither the person in charge of constructing the roster nor the man responsible for managing it had ever done it before?
