After 118 games of 2016 Giants baseball, the jury’s still out on whether this team is good enough to keep the even-year run alive.
On the heels of Sunday’s gut-wrenching loss to the Orioles, the Giants opened a three-game series with the Pirates with another deflating defeat to watch their once-comfortable division lead shrink to a measly half-game.
Matt Moore, the prize of San Francisco’s trade deadline activity, was shaky in his AT&T Park debut while former Giant Ryan Vogelsong took home the win. Down three runs in the seventh, Eduardo Núñez appeared to have come through with the hit to get the Giants within a run, only to watch his sinking liner find leather instead of grass thanks to an unbelievable play from Andrew McCutchen.
That’s the way things have been going for these Giants. The best team in baseball at the All-Star break at 57-33, the Giants have gone 9-19 since. They haven’t looked like a playoff team for a month. But their issues can’t be boiled down to just a struggling closer, a lifeless offense or a shallow rotation. More importantly, you can’t watch this team and claim the losses are piling up due to a lack of effort or leadership. This team — and its manager — know what it takes to get to the playoffs and capture October glory. That’s the scariest possibility to come out of this developing collapse: that this is an issue rooted in a lack of talent, not a lack of focus.
Bruce Bochy isn’t going to magically unlock an extra gear in his players with some old-fashioned manager’s meeting. A Hunter Pence sermon won’t do the trick, either. And with the non-waiver trade deadline passed, reinforcements aren’t on the way. The only way the Giants get a personnel boost is through a September call-up; with all due respect to Christian Arroyo and his impressive talent, it’s not wise to hope a 21-year-old with no big league experience can save your season. The Giants already have a roster capable of dominating the big leagues, as we all saw in June. But that stretch saw San Francisco get a lot of unexpected production from fringe players and the timely hits that all winning teams need. Since then, the Giants have fallen from the heavens and been humbled. Baseball is a streaky game — when a player hits .300, he usually has a month where he hits .200 and one where he hits. 400. Likewise, it’s not uncommon for the best team in baseball to even out double-digit win streaks with an extended skid.
The Giants are going through a market correction. Even the most optimistic of fans and media members couldn’t expect the rest of the season to be as easy as June was. The problem is this market correction has been so drastic that it’s inevitably taking its toll in the clubhouse. Bochy looks lost when asked for insight and the frustration from players is evident. One would expect the market correction to trend back towards a middle ground — even .500 ball for instance — but it’s not happening. The Dodgers have their own issues, but have somehow managed to gain ground despite having their ace Clayton Kershaw on the shelf. The Giants don’t need to play like they did in June to hold off the Dodgers; they just need to play like a baseball team with stretch run experience and a Hall of Fame manager at the helm. If they don’t, this will be a collapse to remember. The Giants have been on the other side plenty of times: erasing the Padres’ division lead in 2010 and coming back from down 2-0 and 3-1 to the Reds and Cardinals, respectively, in the 2012 playoffs.
The Giants have one option to turn their season around: figure it out. If that sounds crass, it’s meant to be. If Bochy can’t come up with answers for why his team is so out of sorts, don’t expect the scribes to solve the riddle. Based on recent results, it’s reasonable to be skeptical, but the talent is there. We’ve all seen it as recently as this season. At the start of the campaign, Jeff Samardzija showcased the stuff that earned him a $90 million contract from this front office. Buster Posey slashed .322/.413/.492 from June 1 to the All-Star break. Since then, he’s at .273/.375/.375. If Samardzija can shore up the rotation issues and Posey can be the spray chart artist that won a batting title, this team can turn this Jekyll-and-Hyde season around. That’s just two of the many underperforming Giants at this time, but all it takes is one hot hitter to build some momentum and keep the line moving on offense or one dominant outing from a starter to create a competitive dynamic in the rotation.
But until the tides start to turn, there’s no simple solution in sight. The roster is what it is and Bochy’s not going to have an epiphany that solves all his bullpen issues. The Giants have 44 games left to protect a half-game lead. We’ve seen 44-game stretches that support the idea that this team could win a World Series. We’ve also witnessed this recent stretch that suggests this team has no business being in the playoffs. Many of the Giants are battle-tested from the three titles in five years, but not like this. The odd-year failures of previous seasons had built-in excuses, whether it was a lesser roster or injury woes. This year, however, the Giants can’t claim they don’t have what it takes. Their MLB-best first half wasn’t a fluke; this team is plenty good enough to contend. And while the market correction was predictable, no one expected it to be this drastic. It’s time to figure it out.