In 23 seasons as a Major League manager, Giants’ skipper Bruce Bochy has endured 10 losing seasons.
There’s no question that thanks to three World Series titles, Bochy will one day enter baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. But there’s also no question that during his time in the dugout, he’s seen it all.
Or so we might think.
After the Giants dropped a 10-8 affair against the Miami Marlins on Sunday afternoon to fall 27 games back of the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers entering the All-Star break, Bochy admitted he’s never endured a first half of the season quite like the one the Giants have scuffled through in 2017.
“I can’t think of one to be honest,” Bochy said. “You try to fix the hole in the damn there, you put your finger in it and then another spring opens and that’s what we’re trying to get straight here.”
A year after the Giants entered the All-Star break with the best record in the Major Leagues at 57-33, San Francisco heads into a four-day vacation with the second-worst mark at 34-56 as the franchise continues to suffer through a shocking demise.
Through it all, Bochy has remained positive and upbeat, but at times, he’s acknowledged that all the losing has taken its toll on a group that’s become so accustomed to winning during Bochy’s 11 seasons with the franchise.
Sunday was one of those days, as the Giants rallied from a late 7-3 deficit to fall 10-8 in 11 innings to the Miami Marlins.
After two straight games of lackluster offense against a mediocre Miami pitching staff, the Giants busted out with an eight-run output including four runs in the game’s final three frames, but on Sunday, it wasn’t enough.
Earlier in the series, the Giants couldn’t hit. On the last day before the break, they couldn’t pitch. So it goes for a team that’s now on pace to lose 98 games.
“You get the pitching, you don’t hit enough,” Bochy said. “You score runs, you don’t get the pitching. That’s what’s happening.”
The Giants’ Sunday loss wasn’t full of doom and gloom –rookie Miguel Gomez hooked a curveball through the right side of the infield for his first Major League hit to tie the game in the bottom of the eighth– but San Francisco won’t go into the break smelling roses.
With Sunday’s defeat, the Giants have now been swept at home three different times this season by three different National League East squads, with the last two coming at the hands of the sub .500 Mets and Marlins.
Though Bochy could pick and choose a handful of positive takeaways from Sunday’s game, like Sam Dyson’s continued brilliance in relief, Brandon Crawford’s second inning home run, or the Giants’ never-say-die attitude, in the end, the Giants’ manager is a realist. His team lost again, and this year, losing has become a troubling, dominant theme.
“A lot of good things have happened, whether it’s in the bullpen like I said Dyson, the guys look like they’re picking it up in some areas,” Bochy said. “We’re scoring a few more runs if you look at the last road trip but we came home and got shut down and then we score all these runs and we still lose, that goes with a tough half or tough season.”