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7th loss in a row, it is as though they are making a late season move to improve their draft position. Bochy has been treating things like the All Star Game where the goal seems to be getting in as many players as possible. May as well try and get a look at the more recent arrivals since the team doesn't have anything to play for otherwise.
It doesn't make sense to keep giving Hunter Pence playing time at the expense of a youngster, but I guess it is being done for sentimental reasons. Pence's contract expires this year and given his 2018 performance (.214/.255/.299) it seems probable that his career is over as well. He must know it, he must spend his nights thinking about just retiring, or trying to hang on by signing a minor league deal with someone next spring.
Mark Melancon, the Giants 57 million dollar "proven closer" pitched a meaningless 9th, his 30th inning this year, equaling his 2017 total. He has three saves and four blown saves. Is that very common? having more blown saves than saves?
This is the most interesting the team has been all year. At least now they have something of note going on, an eleven game losing streak. In ten of those eleven games they have scored a total of 17 runs, or 1.7 a game. In the one game where the offense did come briefly alive, they scored eight runs, however the Rockies scored nine in that game.
Why are they losing? Not hard to see. Here are the on base averages of today's lineup against Atlanta:
.302
.283
.286
.344
.324
.297
.277
.291
That is an average OBA of .301. The NL average is .319.
Giants beat the Padres 5-4 last night in a who cares game which was highlighted by Hunter Pence hitting his second home run of the season and driving in the first three SF runs. In the following inning he managed to give two of them back to the Padres when he embarrassingly misjudged a pop foul and watched it drop to the ground next to him untouched. The batter wound up walking and the next guy hit one over the fence.
It could have been worse today, the Dodgers yanked their starters and put in all screwbeanies after the 5th (they used 18 position players) and the Giants still couldn't score. The 15-0 stomping by LA when the Giants had a chance to force them into the wild card game, serves well to illustrate the futility of the entire season. Their attempt to try and be competitive rather than go into a needed rebuild, backfired as I expected. Now they are stuck with an aging, overpaid and under productive Evan Longoria for another three years.
There is not going to be a quick fix, not with the personnel they have on their roster, nor with the still not very progressive front office.
Last week, the Giants hired Dodgers GM Farhan Zaidi, who was Billy Beane's lieutenant in Oakland and then part of the multiheaded chain of command in Los Angeles under Andrew Friedman. Team president and CEO Larry Baer said Zaidi will have full authority to run baseball operations.
It would appear that the Giants organization has finally recognized that they need to go fully metric if they wish to be a competitive team. Last season was the first time that they began employing the extreme shifts that have become popular in the last several years. It wasn't enough because the problem wasn't just the non-metric running of the games, it has been the non metric approach to building the club. Had there been someone with greater influence in the Giants' metric department, they never would have been so foolish as to have signed the free agent deals with Melachon and Longoria.
Zaidi is as metric oriented as they come, so look for big changes in the way the Giants go about their business. The team has never been one to admit that they need to rebuild, I think that will now change and the club will be torn apart and restructured over the next few seasons.
Bochy has been a terrific manager, but he is one of the few old school types left and has one more year to run on his contract. I do not see that contract being renewed after 2019.
I would far rather see a 100 loss 2019 as long as the club is doing a planned, intelligent rebuilding, than another 75 win season where they are never in the race nor completely out of it.
We're getting close to Spring Training 2019 and it isn't hard to pick up the stench of another bummer season for the Giants. The core talent in the infield and behind the plate is on the wrong side of 30 and all are in decline. The outfield is four guys all 25 or 26 years old who have already established that they don't have bright futures. Bumgarner is in his walk year, and he is in decline. The rest of the starters are unreliable or unpromising, the bullpen seems okay, but that is pretty much the entire upside for the team. The farm system is ranked 30th out of 30 teams.
The front office dynamics should also make for an awkward year. Farhan Zaidi has been brought in to finally start a modernization program. He enters an organization composed largely of old school types, including the manager Bruce Bochy who is in the final year of his contract. Zaidi is going to want to replace him next year with his own choice, someone metric oriented, so I think Bochy will be a lame duck manager. Managers are becoming less and less important as more and more decisions about lineups, platooning, defensive shifts etc, are data driven decisions made upstairs and relayed to the manager. Bochy is the highest paid manager in MLB at six million a year. Zaidi isn't going to want to throw away money on a manager when the guy really isn't that important.
Zaidi may wait out the first year until Bochy is gone, and then do a big sweep. If so it will make for a 2019 where everyone is paranoid or gloomy about losing their jobs.
This is good in that it spares Bochy the embarrassment of looking like he was fired when the team doesn't renew his contract after 2018.
Bochy is among the last of the old breed of managers, guys who relied on instinct or gut reactions to make decisions. Guts are in the process of being replaced by data driven decisions and that makes Bochy a baseball dinosaur. I strongly suspect that Farhan Zaidi would have been happier if Bochy had announced he was stepping down this season, and of course he can't fire the guy who won three World Series titles without looking like a heartless villain. Zaidi will be bringing in all new people eventually.
This is going to be a lost, directionless year, then I expect sweeping changes.
Thank you, Bruce Bochy! Because of 2010’s World Series Championship, my life is complete.
2012 and 2014 added icing. Those were great years.p!
Meanwhile down in San Jose, I’m looking forward to seeing Joey Bart, Heliot Ramos, Sean Hjelle, and Jake Wong play. They are keys to the Giants’ future.
I would far rather see a 100 loss 2019 as long as the club is doing a planned, intelligent rebuilding, than another 75 win season where they are never in the race nor completely out of it.
I would expect many 90-105 loss seasons for the Giants.
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