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In less than three weeks time, the San Francisco Giants will play a real-life baseball game in front of real-life television cameras without real-life fans. It will begin the haphazard, far-from ideal pile of games which will, by definition at least, constitute a season. Whether those 60 games — set to begin on July 23rd with the Giants facing the Dodgers in Los Angeles on opening night — will be played in full is an entirely different proposition too nebulous for anyone to accurately predict.
But as things stands, the Giants have their schedule for their mini-season, and it’s not exactly favorable. They’ll play the Dodgers 10 times, seven of which will be in Los Angeles.
Bring it on. #SFGiants pic.twitter.com/lxitgCfhwP
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) July 6, 2020
There’s no real lens with which to view this schedule favorably. At least the Mariners are bad, right?
Facing the Dodgers seven times on the road in the first month, followed by a three-game stretch in Houston could kill any — however infinitesimal it may be — hope the Giants have of making the playoffs before the season is half through. Of course, the weirdness of the abbreviated season could be viewed as cause for optimism, but the fact remains that the team’s schedule is doing it no favors.
Manager Gabe Kapler, ever the purveyor or grand statements of vague positivity and optimism, was pretty straightforward on Tuesday.
“It’s a tough schedule, and I definitely don’t want to discount that all of the games are challenges,” Kapler said, pointing to the stretch of four-straight games against the Angels, and the seven road games in Los Angeles. “It’s a very challenging schedule, and that’s the first thing that I noticed.”
The Giants also happen to travel the 10th-most of any team. It’s far from the absurd situation which the Rangers and Astros find themselves in, but for a team comprised mainly of aging veterans, upstarts and the “here’s your chance”-type players who might not have a legitimate roster opportunity with many teams outside of the Giants, even a slight disadvantage is less than appetizing.
“It kind of feels like Christmas morning where you open a present and you’re not sure if you like it yet,” Kapler said.
And here's a quick breakdown of teams mileage breakdown… pic.twitter.com/jO3jQh1Co8
— Daren Willman (@darenw) July 6, 2020
Of course it wasn’t, by any stretch, a show of feeling sorry for himself and the odd situation he finds himself in, presiding over a (mostly) young team in his inaugural season as manager. That would be far out of the realm of likelihood for a manager focused heavily on mindfulness, pointing to the coaches reading “The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups” by Daniel Coyle over their forced break in a quasi book club.
Kapler opened Tuesday’s call with praise, of course, levied towards lefties Connor Menez — “his velocity was up from Spring Training, ball was coming out with life” — and Sam Selman, as well as righty Tyler Cyr who, “also had good velo and good carry.”
On the other side, he singled out Joe McCarthy, the 26-year-old outfielder for “strong” at-bats and Joey Bart who was “a pro behind the plate” in an “intense” morning session of practice.
There was also praise for Johnny Cueto, who Kapler saw as looking healthy, saying he noticed his, “arm and his legs are in great shape” which was evident from the 300-foot-plus long toss he engaged in.
Kapler made a point — when asked about whether he’d remain with his spring training 1.0 edict that Cueto would be the starter after spring training 2.0 — to clarify that there haven’t been many, if any discussions of tactics with players. In that vein of mindfulness, the focus has been on engaging players on a personal level.
“We’ve been pretty focused on having more personal conversations with the players, just under the circumstances the fact that we were separated for so long,” Kapler said. “With Johnny [Cueto] he’s dealt with a pretty tough hand recently with some family things that he’s had to deal with and those are the conversations I’ve had with Johnny so far. The tactical, more baseball conversations, we’ll have down the road.”
In other news, Kapler said he and the Giants would decline to give further information on the two individuals who tested positive for COVID-19, as the team announced on Tuesday.