The Giants stumbled badly in the final stretch but it's OK, they fired the manager and solved the problem. Interim manager Kai Correa finishes the season with a 1-2 mark after today's loss in the final game of the season. Rookie Kyle Harrison pitched five shutout innings and rookie Casey Schmitt hit two homers. Brandon Crawford started and hit leadoff but went 0-for-4 in what is likely his final game in SF, maybe his final game ever.
Here are the team's runs scored for the final eight games (they went 2-6): 0, 2, 2, 0, 2, 2, 2, 2.
The final tally is 79-83, fourth place, 20 GB.
The 84-78 Diamondbacks finish second (15 GB) and get the final Wild Card spot despite losing their last four games. The Padres edge the Giants for third place.
--M.C.
19 comments:
Amazing that teams like the Cubs and the Padres have a run differential of about plus 100, and the Marlins have a run differential of about negative 50, and the Marlin's make the playoffs. Baseball can be weird some times. I think there are a few reasons how the Fish made it to this point, despite the odds. The giants finished the season making every pitcher they face in the last few weeks look like Walter Johnson and Bob Gibson. I cannot remember such a prolonged slump on any giants team that I have watched, and I became a fan during the polo grounds era in 1951. Good to see Brandon Belt hit his 19th dinger today, although he did strike out an inordinate amount of times. We all know that when the Marlins get into the playoffs they have been dangerous. It is strange, that the betting odds on yesterday's game with Kershaw pitching against the giants were astronomically in favor of the dodgers. That is the time for gamblers to go in the opposite direction.
Hoping Casey Schmitt turns out with a career more like that of Matt Williams than that of Chris Brown.
Now that the Giants season is over, I've got a question for you baseball aficionados. It has to do with what I consider a "stupid" baseball rule, and one that in my opinion, should be changed. I'd love to hear your opinion to my rant.
A batter has an 0-2 count and he swings and misses at the next pitch and he's out. Grab some pine meat. But........the catcher drops the ball, it rolls away from him, the batter runs to first and beats the catchers throw to the base.
He gets a second chance? WTF? You're fooking out.....sit the fook down.....grab some pine meat and wait 'till your next at bat.
What's up with this idiotic rule? Why should a batter, who's clearly out, get another chance just because there was a wild pitch or a passed ball? Who dreamed up this stupid rule?
Dazed and confused on the Russian River.
It is an idiotic rule, I agree. But it happens so infrequently that no one really questions it. In today's game, with the very large number of strikeouts relative to previous eras, it seems like any help the batter can get is a good thing!
How the rule evolved I don't know. I can imagine pitchers, in the early days, trying really wild, unorthodox pitches to see if they could induce a swing-and-miss. Perhaps it was a "fair play" notion, that a batter should not be put out by trickery, the pitch had to be catch-able in order to be acceptable.
The last time the Giants had an offense this bad I think was 1985 when they lost 100 games. The 2008 Giants were pretty damn bad, too. This 2023 team has without a doubt the biggest collapse. It was a decent offense before the Break before it disappeared completely.
You guys remember Zack Littell? He was a reliever for the Giants, very effective in 2021, not so much in 2022. He had an on-the-mound spat with Kapler that year and was later released.
He went to Boston and was released and is now with Tampa Bay. He was in the bullpen but then got moved to the starting rotation where he's been effective. Here's what he had to say to David Laurila (FanGraphs):
For Littell, his unexpected breakthrough is evidence that what you see isn’t necessarily what you’re going to get. Players can and do evolve.
“You develop a reputation after you’ve played in the major leagues a little bit,” said Littell. “You’re this type of pitcher, whether it’s a sinker-ball guy, a carry guy, a command guy, a strikeout guy. Whatever. I’ve also kind of been in a boat where it’s ‘He’s a reliever.’ This is an example of how development never really stops, no matter how long you’ve been doing it. In five more years I’ll probably be a completely different pitcher than I am today, just like I’m a completely different pitcher now than I was five years ago. I’m adapting with the game, which is something that will always go on.”
This is something Kapler preached endlessly, that players can evolve and do evolve. That was not "conventional wisdom" when I was younger. I like to see players re-invent themselves and continue to grow.
Whoever the Giants plug in to the manager spot I hope he has a similar philosophy to Kap's.
Players always could evolve and many have over the years. Pitchers have gone from strike out guys to control guys etc. From fastball slider guys, to predominately change up guys etc. Some hitters have evolved too, but that usually requires a new approach at the plate, and a new swing path. I am a strong believe in a shorter quicker swing path for most batters, unless the players makes frequent contact with a long uppercut or loopy swing. I played ball up until rookie league. Always hit well, but back in the 60's there was not much money in baseball, unless you were going to be a superstar, and as a good student I chose college, and a major that made playing collegiate sports difficult. Had baseball and tennis scholarships which I did not take. Hitting a hard ball was one of my special skills. Being relatively late on having my growth spurt, I was small, and skinny and could not muster up significant power for the scouts. But I could hit for a very high average, walk a lot, and rarely strikeout. One drill I used to do, is have some one throw a paper clip overhand, fast, and I would hit it with a pencil. It trained my eye, and my ability to get bat to ball or pencil to clip. The modern physiological approaches to hitting work for some players and not for others, Mostly they are designed to offer the hitter maximum power. I remember playing softball with some guys twice my size who could hit a ball a country mile, but when we played hardball, most of them could not even see the ball when a good pitcher was on the mound. Even back in the 1960's scouts put a major premium on power. That is one reason why I really respected, B. Butler's persistence and ability to be a good major leaguer. He was not a big guy, did not have a lot of power, but was persistent enough to not give up and to play with confidence in his skills and he made it to the big leagues, He was a very decent player. Altuve to me is amazing because he has tremendous power for a short stature guy.
Altuve is thick. He's short, but he's not short on mass or muscle. He has huge legs, for example.
I remember watching hitters get older and start to sacrifice contact for power. They became more selective and walked more but started to stay away from pitches they couldn't drive and pounced on pitches they could clobber. So their BA drops but they maintain their OBA (K and BB both up) while increasing SLG average. A lot of guys stayed in the league that way.
But it's rare to see a player re-invent himself. Pitchers, if they are lucky enough to stay healthy, can adapt to losing velocity, but it's hard. Most guys don't make it. We see the survivors and assume it is easier than it is. That's why this anecdote about Littell struck a chord with me. He's not a star, just a "regular" major-leaguer, his numbers are perfectly average (career 4.09 ERA, 4.44 FIP). He's 27 and should be at his baseball peak age so it will be interesting to see if he can succeed as a starter.
I remember two players when I was playing in high school who were scouted. There actually were quite a few more but for various reasons. Most of them had very athletic physical atributes. 3 I know who were friends. One: R.B. who unfortunately passed away last year from pancreatic Cancer, Had as much raw power as anyone I had ever seen. The scouts drooled over him from the time he was 12. He was a prospect on the rookie Cards in N.J. He did hit a few tape measure home runs, but he only hit 180. He never could hit a breaking ball, and as he advanced up past the Babe Ruth leagues, the pitchers started having much better breaking balls. The other player was J.S. he is still alive. Was only about 5ft.8in. and weighed about 165 lb. in high school. But, he was a short twitch muscle guy, with great speed, and surprising power. He hit multiple home runs over 400 feet. He was also sought after and scouted in several sports. The odd fact with J.S. is that he could have excelled in multiple sports. By the way he also hit for a high average. Fortunately or unfortunately for him his parents were immigrants, and did not find professional sports as an honorable profession. A third player who was very good as high as the rookie leagues, in the early 60's before the draft, was given a try out by none other than the Yankees. They decided to take a pass on him. I do not think he ever played higher than the minors for any team. Not sure what would happen in today's world. Would they have been able to train R.B. to hit breaking pitches, would J.S.'s parents change their minds based on the income professional sports people make? Not sure. Would even someone like myself, who was not a great athlete, but could hit A mexican Jumping bean thrown at me with a skinny stick, not go into something else, just because of the potential salary differential? I loved baseball, and loved to play, but other options came their way. I wonder what the early years prior to professional sports was like for a guy like Altuve? Wonder how much encouragement he got, and how much discouragement he received. Turns out baseball is better for his major league career.
He's from Venezuela which is like the Dominican Republic in terms of baseball. I suspect people saw him at a very young age. Astros signed him when he was 17. He was in the majors at age 21.
Good stuff from Jay Jaffe at FanGraphs on the firings of Kapler and Buck Showalter.
When teams underperform, fire the manager. Jaffe nicely describes the situation Kapler faced which was a roster that demanded a continuous platooning system to get the best matchups. Unfortunately everyone--players, fans, writers--hated that style of play. People have assumed that Kap LIKED using openers and bulk guys! It's obvious he had little choice as the presumed starters (besides Webb and Cobb) either got hurt, pitched really poorly, or both. He spent the whole year scrambling to fill voids.
And that's on the PoBO and the GM. They built the roster and it wasn't good enough. They had to panic at the end and plug rookies in to every spot even though some were clearly not ready.
So, is the new manager going to get an upgraded roster? Where do you start? And how do you replace the guys we have with better guys? More churning?
It's nice to take a little break from all that. The Kapler thing left a sour taste in my mouth, it was handled badly, and it looks panicky, too. I'm sure they'll find a capable and more amenable person to handle the manager-job stuff. There's always a few guys out there ready to step in, I hope they can get one quickly and without a lot of fuss.
I think the Giants need to take a hard look at the rebuild-while-still-competing philosophy. It seems they fielded a mediocre team hoping to sneak into the playoffs while hoping the youngsters would mature with a few at bats every now and then. I think it was Jed Hoyer (Cubs GM) who criticized this approach some time ago, when he let Schwarber, Bryant, and Rizzo, all part of their core, walk. The Cubs just missed the playoffs this year, but missed them in a much different fashion than the Giants just missed them.
I'd like the see the Giants clear out the chaff and give the field to the young players. Some might wash out, but at least they brought a bit of energy and style to the club. They'll probably have to trade pitching prospects for any more hitters if they can't snag a decent free agent, but so be it.
I agree that Kapler's firing was handled poorly, but I am not sad to see him gone. He was so fucking weird, with his tatooed hands and all. He sounded like a bunch of corporate annual reports and TED talks fed into ChatGPT. He looked like a real person, though.
Yeah he had his own lingo. I called it KapSpeak. I thought it was perfect for the Bay Area, but I guess baseball fans aren't the weird part of the Bay! I wonder if he will stay in baseball. Seems like he has other stuff on his plate.
Yes I agree it is the rebuild-and-compete scheme. I've felt the same way all along--just play the rookies and let it all hang out. But ownership seems to have been scared of that, figuring they'd fail to sell tickets. Well, that happened anyway.
I think fans misunderstood Kaplers genius. Perhaps some of the players did as well. The guy would find and advantage under every stone, and he seemed to leave no stone unturned in trying this team to get wins. The team over the last 2 months just did not hit, and if they did not have Flores, their hitting would have been bad to the extreme. Injuries probably had a lot to do with it, but the launch angle hitting approach just did not work any more. It seems although young, Matos turned his hitting style around, and is more selective at the plate this year than he was in the past. Can a guy like Thairo become a tad more selective at the plate? I think it would take him from a guy who could be a borderline guy who might make the all star team to an true all star player. He has speed, and power, and his fielding has improved, but his hitting remains pretty much the same. I think the only reason the giants did not lose a lot more games, is that their pitchers just did not walk a lot of guys, and that helped keep the opponents runs down. I think what they got out of this pitching staff as a whole was amazing. What they got out of the hitting was wore than pathetic. The fielding showed a few flashes of brilliance, but mostly was unbelievably bad, and the 117 errors does not account for all the mental mistakes.
Kap was smart, no doubt, and he was great at looking for edges. It was "all-in" baseball, where you shoot every arrow in your quiver.
Fans apparently didn't like it. They don't want to see a lot of substitutions, I suppose.
Some fans did not like it. Some loud fans who complain all the time on their limited media outlets. Did not seem to drive attendance one way or the other. Not a good reason to fire a guy who may have gotten 10 extra wins from a team leading the N.L. in errors, with the worst batting average and OPS in the N.L. with the least amount of stolen bases in the majors, and that is not Kapler's fault, it was the team he was given, a station to station team, and even guys like Slater who have some inherent speed, is always on the verge of a hamstring injury as is Yaz, so they do not have these guys running. Davis and Flores are slower than Posey, and even the young Bailey has the running speed of a turtle. Matos has average speed, as does Casey. Not sure about Luciano. Fitzgerald may have some base stealing speed, but the teams altheticism is not great. In today's game with the large bases, the 2 plus disengagements, the running game has become more important and Zaidi's talent meter did not get enough guys who are athletic and could still play baseball. Giants have a bunch of good ball players, without significant speed. One player on Altanta had 16 more steals than the entire giants team. To me it seems if Kapler would have managed Atlanta this year they may have won close to 120 games.
Sounds to me like you're making an argument to fire Zaidi.
I hope they don't fire too many more people.
PoBO, GM, manager, those are all hard jobs. No one gets it right from the get-go. They all have to make mistakes. The key is to evolve, and get better. I thought Kap deserved another season but the fans and owners said otherwise.
I don't really care who fills those jobs as long as they can all work together. This falling-out with the Captain and his hand-picked Lieutenant looks bad. It looks like a Front Office that's not pulling on the same rope. That's the only thing that really matters at that level: be on the same page!
If we’re gonna win, the players gotta play better, the coaches gotta coach better, the manager gotta manage better, and the owners gotta own better.
George "Boomer" Scott
I would be willing to give Zaidi one more year, although I do think that he and his general manager, given whatever they have been given by the owners, have not done a great job. I think last year when there was a decent free agent class, he was late in on other decent talent after Judge and Correa, and once those offers fell through, he was not left with much. I always thought that pitching is a premium and I was upset when the let Gausman go. To Zaidi's credit, I was also upset when they let Rodon go, but given Rodon's health history, It was less upsetting because I did not expect that contract to be matched. Given the weak depth to this year's free agent class, the dangling of 1 year plus a player opt out, does not seem so smart at this point. If this year also had significant free agency depth, it would have made more sense. Let's face it, for whatever reason, we are not the same team since we lost Dubon. Just like in 2016 we were not the same team after we lost Duffy. Who can explain it? Coincidence? Well some folks say Kapler was fired because of clubhouse issues. So, are clubhouse issues important or not? Is team chemistry important or not? If it is, perhaps the Duffy and Dubon moves, had a severe negative effect. Or if clubhouse communication is not all it is cracked up to be, then Kapler was clearly nothing more than a scapegoat. Of course correlation is not causation, at least in the part of the universe that is not the quantum universe. Not sure where baseball fits in.
I think team chemistry is important. It's a workplace. You want harmony in your workplace. That doesn't mean "everyone is buddies." You can work productively with people who you would never socialize with. Winning ballgames makes people happier and clubhouses more harmonious. Losing irritates the existing conflicts and they come out in the open. Conflict is fine, as long as it can be worked on, and people can go forward.
I always take the players side when they are up against the owners. But when they are up against management, I often find the players to be be lacking. I taught HS for 30 years and I'm willing to bet an MLB clubhouse is a lot like a HS class! Just because the students are complaining doesn't mean the teacher is bad. Sometimes the kids need to be reminded of some realities (like self-discipline, standards of performance, etc.). Players need some of that, too.
It's not very often we can work QM into a baseball discussion here at RMC. In fact, it's probably never happened! Thank you for that. :-)
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