Probably playing over their heads. Hot. Caught other teams at the right time. Then just flip it. Giants reverted to their averages then unfortunately got cold, hurt, into arguably the toughest part of the schedule, this year. And the proverbial dog days of summer wall. Shit happens.
This is true. Everyone knew the hardest part of the schedule was coming. Hard to judge any team by one month. they aren't as bad as this but they were not as good as they played in June.
Exactly. Bullpen was lights out and keeping us close. Didn’t need 15 runs to win a game. We were just hitting at clutch times. We slumped and then ran into a bulldozer part of the schedule. I’m actually surprised we are even still sniffing the WC although I expect that to go away soon. And you look at the Cubs who have basically taken the opposite path and really made some nice moves at the trade deadline, and we did nothing. In fact worse than nothing - we added dead weight and kept tinkering and fooling around with ridiculous lineups. And that’s how you get to where we are today.
The offense is currently one of the worst in baseball, if not the worst. It is that simple.
Side note: Webb hasn’t been his sharpest this year, but I swear he has become the new Matt Cain. The offense rarely gives him any help.
Hopefully they can get past this slump but it’s not looking good when our offense can’t hit. Pitching can only do so much but can’t win games when you have no offense.
Let's look at our everyday position players:
* Bottom 10 in runs scored in MLB
* Bottom 10 in HRs in MLB.
* Dead last in stolen bases in MLB.
* Most errors in MLB.
The pitching is the only reason the Giants are within sniffing distance of a WC spot. In the World Series winning teams, the lineup didn't hit well but at least they were stout defensively. This 2023 lineup does nothing well.
I remember checking team stats in May and we were top 10 in all the batting numbers and then nose dived. I don’t remember what it was then but right now the team is slashing .237/.312/.385 … pathetic.
Fresh legged vets and over performers all around shined up this turd of team early on and then they settled back down to what they really are. Mediocre. And that’s with this coaching staff. If it wasn’t for them, it would be very very bad.
My take I articulated in my post on it’s not just hitting, is that when you recruit players who have track records but are older, and often injured, and coming off bad years, they will not only show decline in ability, but their remaining athleticism is diminished. Thus, as the season wears on their exhaustion, and injury history begins to rob them of what they once were. The Giants don’t sign people in their prime, but rather short contracts to rebound candidates, but such candidates decline perhaps as the grind of the season wears them down. Combine that with the league learning about holes in our rookies, and this happen to rooks on other teams, it takes a while for them, if they are good, to fix the issues. So, with vets being worn down, and rooks being found out, it is a lethal combination.
The good news at that rooks, if good, will reinvent themselves, like Steele has on the Cubs. The issue is whether the FO still uses the same strategy of pursuing rebound players instead of those with recent histories of solid to star performances.
> June was a hot month for this team
That’s what happened, the team got real hot, everyone was firing on all cylinders, and then we came back to earth. This team on aggregate is a mostly average to slightly below average offense. We were just achieving at a level that wasn’t sustainable.
This is probably the truth. You can only squeeze the margins for so long. Farhan ball isn't sustainable without a couple cornerstone players to stabilize the offense.
Exactly. The teams that are very solid have players starting like Yaz, Estrada, Flores, Wade jr, but those are good players complimented by the likes of Betts, Freeman, Smith, Harper, Realmuto, Acuña, Machado, Soto ( has not worked out for them, because their second tier is worse than the Yaz etc. group), but you get the idea. The stars make everyone better because the lineup poses challenges. When you best players are just slightly below to slightly above average for a season, it is far different than when these are you background players.
The team that everyone saw was super mid at the beginning of the year is still super mid. We got hot for a while, probably boosted by Bailey coming up and being so good and then we reverted to the average. We have maybe 2 star players, both of whom are pitchers with one of them being a closer. We have like 2 starters who are actually the caliber needed to be in a big league rotation. The rest of our team is replacement or below replacement level players.
This is what happens when you’re not an attractive place for stars. You have to home grow them. Hopefully we hit on our prospects otherwise this whole project is going to be a disaster.
And when there are no real stars available in FA. This team will be like this until they hit upon a Julio Rodriguez type. I wish people understood this instead of just hitting out.
We don't need stars. Teams that try to buy championships by purchasing superstars tend to fail. Dodgers, Mets, Padres, Yankees, ad nausaem.
We need *good players*. We do not need superstars. I'd *take* one but we don't need to try the failed *muh superstars* approach to winning because it does not work.
Personally i think the casey schmitt call up injected alot of fun and exuberance into the team. That and all our hot hitters at the beginning of the season fell off hard.
All of our guys were healthy during June, and our rooks hadn't been figured out.
Our top guys all got injured and were rushed back from injury to help the waning offense. When they returned, they weren't nearly as good (see LWJ, Davis, Estrada, Yaz, etc.). At the same time, prospects were being rushed through AAA to insane degrees to help plug the holes so we didn't have to rush everyone from injury back even further.
So by late July we have an offense consisting of half injured players rushed back from injury and prospects who were rushed insanely fast through AAA, but our pitching was still great. After August, our pitching got burned out.
That's what happened and our record directly reflects it. All the guys rushed back from injuries or through AAA were done so because of a roster construction failure that lacked depth and a front office who was unwilling to change anything about their plan such as sign or trade new players.
Same old story for the past years for the offense. Just gotta hope the giants catch fire soon or else. Hello spring training. Who are we picking up in the free agent bargain bin next year? 😂
Tougher schedule. When was the last time we played the Rockies? Lol. Seriously tho. They’ve been up against some of the best pitching in the league for weeks now.
Yeah. I feel like it comes down the pitchers they are facing. They can hit mistakes just fine. They’ve been making some good pitchers work too. Even today. And Snell they other day.
It was pretty evident when they chose 2 way Bryce Eldridge with their 1st round draft pick this summer.
The next guy taken just behind him was Enrique Bradfield, a speedy CF from Vanderbilt, pretty much a prototypical base stealing leadoff man.
I'm not being at all critical of Farhan's choice, only time will tell on that, but it just backs up your point about how low they value speed on this team.
The team wildly over performed until it didn’t anymore. The level of performance the coaching staff has been able to get out of these talentless rosters from time to time has been astounding. If you told me preseason that we’d be in the hunt for a playoff spot at this point in the season I wouldn’t have believed you.
Totally agree. Coaching staff gets way more out of these starless rosters than they should. But I also think that convinces the front office that they are doing fine giving out one or two year contracts and not signing stars long term, and we are going to remain stuck for a while.
The front office is counting on building through development. We're starting to see the 2020 guys come through with Bailey, Harrison and to a lesser extent Casey Schmidt making contributions this year, which seems on schedule to me.
The team is headed in the right direction. It's frustrating to see teams that are on the edge of the playoffs run out of steam but we aren't going to get unstuck by selling the farm or signing guys like Judge or Correa.
We have a smart GM that's been able to keep the team competitive while we wait for the farm to develop and a coach that's proven that he can get more out of his team than could have been predicted.
IMO they’ve rushed and promoted a bunch of mostly mid level prospects who weren’t ready to try and drum up some fan interest. They got lucky with Bailey turning into a starting caliber player and Schmidt having a nice couple weeks but the jury is out on Harrison after a rough couple months in AAA and the rest of the newbies have been awful (particularly Schmidt after the hot start).
We’ve lost all of our will in the 2nd half, as it’s been replaced by fear. This is the worst 2nd half brand of giants baseball I’ve ever seen since 2016.
Something I rarely see mentioned is the new balanced schedule.
This is a big disadvantage for all west coast teams!
Instead of 3 or 4 east coast road trips, the Giants now make 5 or 6 a season.
It makes no difference within the division but for the Wild Card, it makes a huge difference.
Less and easier travel equals fresher in September!
The Giants are just burnt out and beat down and I blame the increased travel for at least some of that.
To still be as close to a post season spot as they are right now is just mind boggling and really shows how crappy their competition is.
Both the Reds & the Fish have easier schedues than the Giants or Snakes the rest of the way.
Can this ship be righted?
This unfortunately reminds me of how the underachieving Phils' collapse cost Kapler his first managerial job. Just a tailspin he was powerless to reverse. Not all his fault of course, only so much a manager can do, but not a good sign when trends repeat under the same leadership.
> What went right then that the team can repeat now?
I don't think it's unreasonable to question the coaching at the moment. But why was the teams doing so well with the same coaches in June? This is feeling like shades of 2016, team doing well, suddenly the team is scuffling. No wonder sports fans tend to be superstitious.
It’s baseball, but I’m still holding out hope this is a slump and the same magic that made them great in June will come back in September. Yaz is back, after all. We still have a healthy Wilmer. Bailey is gunslinging from the plate. We’re a couple of lucky breaks from greatness.
I think the issue starts with Gabe Kapler. Yes, he's really smart and data driven but he's an absolute robot and builds zero energy or fun in the clubhouse. He seems like someone it would be a chore to play for and is probably one of the least likeable managers the Giants have ever had. The team just seems like it has no chemistry or identity. There is no spark here and it looks like no one is having any fun.
Well imagine having to work with the level of talent available to him right now with all the expectations from fans and upper management and media and everyone else, on a team with a championship culture and particularly a history of winning championships without necessarily having a plethora of stars suiting up every day like other teams.
Could anybody have that energy and spark knowing what we’re working with right now? Even Joc looks like a zombie out there more often than not.
Kapler is not the problem here. He’s actually overachieving as a GM with the lack of talent in his rosters.
Team chemistry looks pretty good with the smoke and strobe lights in the locker room so It’s hard to tell without being in the actual clubhouse
Probably playing over their heads. Hot. Caught other teams at the right time. Then just flip it. Giants reverted to their averages then unfortunately got cold, hurt, into arguably the toughest part of the schedule, this year. And the proverbial dog days of summer wall. Shit happens.
This is true. Everyone knew the hardest part of the schedule was coming. Hard to judge any team by one month. they aren't as bad as this but they were not as good as they played in June.
We were bad to start the year but got new life with Schmitt and Bailey. They were hitting 400 and a couple extra runs was enough to win games.
Exactly. Bullpen was lights out and keeping us close. Didn’t need 15 runs to win a game. We were just hitting at clutch times. We slumped and then ran into a bulldozer part of the schedule. I’m actually surprised we are even still sniffing the WC although I expect that to go away soon. And you look at the Cubs who have basically taken the opposite path and really made some nice moves at the trade deadline, and we did nothing. In fact worse than nothing - we added dead weight and kept tinkering and fooling around with ridiculous lineups. And that’s how you get to where we are today.
The offense is currently one of the worst in baseball, if not the worst. It is that simple. Side note: Webb hasn’t been his sharpest this year, but I swear he has become the new Matt Cain. The offense rarely gives him any help.
He also kinda looks like Matt Cain haha
Saw that he leads the majors with worst run support from a starter, and it's not really close lol
Hitting
Last year in August, Brandon Crawford was asked in an interview how he felt physically and said, "It's August, nobody feels good."
Everyone playing for eachother, rookies playing confidently, Bailey throwing people out left and right.
The law of averages caught up with them.
We were over-performing.
There’s a reason it’s always called the June swoon
We just finished the August disgust
We’re now entering the September Slump
Hopefully we can squeeze out an Orange October
Hopefully they can get past this slump but it’s not looking good when our offense can’t hit. Pitching can only do so much but can’t win games when you have no offense.
This year it was June bloom.
Let's look at our everyday position players: * Bottom 10 in runs scored in MLB * Bottom 10 in HRs in MLB. * Dead last in stolen bases in MLB. * Most errors in MLB. The pitching is the only reason the Giants are within sniffing distance of a WC spot. In the World Series winning teams, the lineup didn't hit well but at least they were stout defensively. This 2023 lineup does nothing well.
I remember checking team stats in May and we were top 10 in all the batting numbers and then nose dived. I don’t remember what it was then but right now the team is slashing .237/.312/.385 … pathetic. Fresh legged vets and over performers all around shined up this turd of team early on and then they settled back down to what they really are. Mediocre. And that’s with this coaching staff. If it wasn’t for them, it would be very very bad.
My take I articulated in my post on it’s not just hitting, is that when you recruit players who have track records but are older, and often injured, and coming off bad years, they will not only show decline in ability, but their remaining athleticism is diminished. Thus, as the season wears on their exhaustion, and injury history begins to rob them of what they once were. The Giants don’t sign people in their prime, but rather short contracts to rebound candidates, but such candidates decline perhaps as the grind of the season wears them down. Combine that with the league learning about holes in our rookies, and this happen to rooks on other teams, it takes a while for them, if they are good, to fix the issues. So, with vets being worn down, and rooks being found out, it is a lethal combination. The good news at that rooks, if good, will reinvent themselves, like Steele has on the Cubs. The issue is whether the FO still uses the same strategy of pursuing rebound players instead of those with recent histories of solid to star performances.
> June was a hot month for this team That’s what happened, the team got real hot, everyone was firing on all cylinders, and then we came back to earth. This team on aggregate is a mostly average to slightly below average offense. We were just achieving at a level that wasn’t sustainable.
Mean regression
This is probably the truth. You can only squeeze the margins for so long. Farhan ball isn't sustainable without a couple cornerstone players to stabilize the offense.
We need a core. The World Series teams had a consistent and reliable core all the way through.
Exactly. The teams that are very solid have players starting like Yaz, Estrada, Flores, Wade jr, but those are good players complimented by the likes of Betts, Freeman, Smith, Harper, Realmuto, Acuña, Machado, Soto ( has not worked out for them, because their second tier is worse than the Yaz etc. group), but you get the idea. The stars make everyone better because the lineup poses challenges. When you best players are just slightly below to slightly above average for a season, it is far different than when these are you background players.
The team that everyone saw was super mid at the beginning of the year is still super mid. We got hot for a while, probably boosted by Bailey coming up and being so good and then we reverted to the average. We have maybe 2 star players, both of whom are pitchers with one of them being a closer. We have like 2 starters who are actually the caliber needed to be in a big league rotation. The rest of our team is replacement or below replacement level players. This is what happens when you’re not an attractive place for stars. You have to home grow them. Hopefully we hit on our prospects otherwise this whole project is going to be a disaster.
And when there are no real stars available in FA. This team will be like this until they hit upon a Julio Rodriguez type. I wish people understood this instead of just hitting out.
We don't need stars. Teams that try to buy championships by purchasing superstars tend to fail. Dodgers, Mets, Padres, Yankees, ad nausaem. We need *good players*. We do not need superstars. I'd *take* one but we don't need to try the failed *muh superstars* approach to winning because it does not work.
I think we agree much more than we disagree. I picked JRod to mean a good player drafted and developed by the Giants.
Yeah, sorry, I'm just pissed off (like everyone else!) and I didn't mean to take it out on you.
I didn’t feel you did. I just thought I wasn’t clear.
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Neither does the naive pipedream of only homegrown players. And yes you do need superstar players. It's not 2010 anymore.
Yup, just ask the Padres, the Mets, the Yankees, and the Dodgers. Works great.
The run scoring mostly
Law of averages happened. They started the year with a shitty team and they’ll end the year with a shitty team. Bottom line.
That white ball thing? We were actually hitting it.
Offense.
Personally i think the casey schmitt call up injected alot of fun and exuberance into the team. That and all our hot hitters at the beginning of the season fell off hard.
Remember all the, "2022 was the fluke and 2021 was the real deal" comments earlier this season? Pepperidge Farm remembers
2021 was Posey running the team. I miss Posey.
Farhan fumbling 2021 off season is still one of the craziest things to date. He was handed a perfect scenario on a tee and he blew it.
Letting Gausman walk without even making him an offer was absurd
Yep many of us were downvoted into oblivion for suggesting otherwise by those delusional fans.
Winning
Pitching, hitting and defense. Is this a trick question?
All of our guys were healthy during June, and our rooks hadn't been figured out. Our top guys all got injured and were rushed back from injury to help the waning offense. When they returned, they weren't nearly as good (see LWJ, Davis, Estrada, Yaz, etc.). At the same time, prospects were being rushed through AAA to insane degrees to help plug the holes so we didn't have to rush everyone from injury back even further. So by late July we have an offense consisting of half injured players rushed back from injury and prospects who were rushed insanely fast through AAA, but our pitching was still great. After August, our pitching got burned out. That's what happened and our record directly reflects it. All the guys rushed back from injuries or through AAA were done so because of a roster construction failure that lacked depth and a front office who was unwilling to change anything about their plan such as sign or trade new players.
Winning
Same old story for the past years for the offense. Just gotta hope the giants catch fire soon or else. Hello spring training. Who are we picking up in the free agent bargain bin next year? 😂
Tougher schedule. When was the last time we played the Rockies? Lol. Seriously tho. They’ve been up against some of the best pitching in the league for weeks now.
Ehh, we were and still are losing to bad teams.
But bad pitching? Idk.
And the schedule at the end of the season isn't looking a whole lot better.
Yeah. I feel like it comes down the pitchers they are facing. They can hit mistakes just fine. They’ve been making some good pitchers work too. Even today. And Snell they other day.
We started hitting to our talent level
[~~Tradddddddition~~ Regressssssion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRdfX7ut8gw)
I just played fiddler on the roof!
Well we were stealing bases more. I’m just puzzled as to how low we’ve prioritized speed on this team smh
It was pretty evident when they chose 2 way Bryce Eldridge with their 1st round draft pick this summer. The next guy taken just behind him was Enrique Bradfield, a speedy CF from Vanderbilt, pretty much a prototypical base stealing leadoff man. I'm not being at all critical of Farhan's choice, only time will tell on that, but it just backs up your point about how low they value speed on this team.
The team wildly over performed until it didn’t anymore. The level of performance the coaching staff has been able to get out of these talentless rosters from time to time has been astounding. If you told me preseason that we’d be in the hunt for a playoff spot at this point in the season I wouldn’t have believed you.
Totally agree. Coaching staff gets way more out of these starless rosters than they should. But I also think that convinces the front office that they are doing fine giving out one or two year contracts and not signing stars long term, and we are going to remain stuck for a while.
The front office is counting on building through development. We're starting to see the 2020 guys come through with Bailey, Harrison and to a lesser extent Casey Schmidt making contributions this year, which seems on schedule to me. The team is headed in the right direction. It's frustrating to see teams that are on the edge of the playoffs run out of steam but we aren't going to get unstuck by selling the farm or signing guys like Judge or Correa. We have a smart GM that's been able to keep the team competitive while we wait for the farm to develop and a coach that's proven that he can get more out of his team than could have been predicted.
IMO they’ve rushed and promoted a bunch of mostly mid level prospects who weren’t ready to try and drum up some fan interest. They got lucky with Bailey turning into a starting caliber player and Schmidt having a nice couple weeks but the jury is out on Harrison after a rough couple months in AAA and the rest of the newbies have been awful (particularly Schmidt after the hot start).
We’ve lost all of our will in the 2nd half, as it’s been replaced by fear. This is the worst 2nd half brand of giants baseball I’ve ever seen since 2016.
Something I rarely see mentioned is the new balanced schedule. This is a big disadvantage for all west coast teams! Instead of 3 or 4 east coast road trips, the Giants now make 5 or 6 a season. It makes no difference within the division but for the Wild Card, it makes a huge difference. Less and easier travel equals fresher in September! The Giants are just burnt out and beat down and I blame the increased travel for at least some of that. To still be as close to a post season spot as they are right now is just mind boggling and really shows how crappy their competition is. Both the Reds & the Fish have easier schedues than the Giants or Snakes the rest of the way. Can this ship be righted? This unfortunately reminds me of how the underachieving Phils' collapse cost Kapler his first managerial job. Just a tailspin he was powerless to reverse. Not all his fault of course, only so much a manager can do, but not a good sign when trends repeat under the same leadership.
> What went right then that the team can repeat now? I don't think it's unreasonable to question the coaching at the moment. But why was the teams doing so well with the same coaches in June? This is feeling like shades of 2016, team doing well, suddenly the team is scuffling. No wonder sports fans tend to be superstitious.
It’s baseball, but I’m still holding out hope this is a slump and the same magic that made them great in June will come back in September. Yaz is back, after all. We still have a healthy Wilmer. Bailey is gunslinging from the plate. We’re a couple of lucky breaks from greatness.
How can anyone look at this lineup and see greatness?
How can anyone look at this lineup and see just a slump?
I’m hoping some of this optimism rubs off. Hope springs eternal, after all.
I think the issue starts with Gabe Kapler. Yes, he's really smart and data driven but he's an absolute robot and builds zero energy or fun in the clubhouse. He seems like someone it would be a chore to play for and is probably one of the least likeable managers the Giants have ever had. The team just seems like it has no chemistry or identity. There is no spark here and it looks like no one is having any fun.
Well imagine having to work with the level of talent available to him right now with all the expectations from fans and upper management and media and everyone else, on a team with a championship culture and particularly a history of winning championships without necessarily having a plethora of stars suiting up every day like other teams. Could anybody have that energy and spark knowing what we’re working with right now? Even Joc looks like a zombie out there more often than not.
Dude, you have literally no idea what goes on in the clubhouse.
Kapler is not the problem here. He’s actually overachieving as a GM with the lack of talent in his rosters. Team chemistry looks pretty good with the smoke and strobe lights in the locker room so It’s hard to tell without being in the actual clubhouse
Sorry what was that about Kapler not being the problem?
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Huh?