Giants week in review: Two sweeps, but one of them was the bad kind (2024)

Last week, the Giants held a memorial service for their postseason hopes. After losing three straight grinders against the Cubs and falling six games out of the wild-card race, it was time for some closure. Oh, it was more upbeat than it sounds. Alex Dickerson got up to the podium to speak — dark suit, sunglasses and a tear rolling down his cheek — and everyone started chanting, “Dick! Dick! Dick!”, which was incredibly touching. But I think the biggest reaction was for Madison Bumgarner, whose contributions to the franchise have been impossible to quantify. It was an extremely moving service. Rest in peace, Giants postseason hopes.

Afterward, everyone got on the plane and left Chicago.

Two days later, in a potter’s field, a fist shot out of the dirt.

Lock your doors. The Giants’ postseason hopes have been reanimated, and they have a taste for brains. Specifically, they’ll chew on your brains if you start to believe in them, but danged if they aren’t constantly pulling you back in. The Giants are back to .500 and just four games out. You know a hot week can shave those four games down, right? That it’s not out of the question?

When you ask yourself these rhetorical questions, it’s too late. The zombie postseason hopes have gotten you, too. Quarantine yourself to avoid infecting others. But have fun! This is all supposed to be fun. And this is what I was talking about after the trade deadline:

It’s about the feeling that comes with an August game that still matters.The people who pay cash money to attend those games will be a little more into it, a little throatier. And maybe the Giants will win that game, or maybe they won’t, but the idea that the game is meaningful is enough, and those fans might be less resentful when they reach for their wallets. They’ve had some good times, haven’t they? Might as well go to the park and see if they’re still there.

The good times are still there. For now. They groan a lot and shuffle after you, moaning something about brains, but the good times are still there.

Maybe push a dresser in front of the front door, just in case.

Grade the Giants week

This section has an arch-nemesis, and its name is recency bias. How can you be glum when the Giants took two games against the A’s, a team that had just booted the Yankees and Astros out of Oakland with their underwear pulled over their head? A split would have been a positive outcome, but two straight wins — come-from-behind wins, no less — will get you fired up, alright.

But there were five games this week, not two, and the Giants lost three of them. In one of them, they hit like they were holding a long coral snake and screaming, “AHH! S – S – S – SNAAAAKE!” before every pitch. In another one, their bullpen was brutally inefficient and they lost a game in which they scored 11 runs, which usually only happens a couple times every decade. Eleven runs is supposed to be enough for a win for any team at any ballpark in any era. Even Coors Field during the Steroid Era.

A 1-0 loss coming after a Coors Field special is like having a tongue filled with paper cuts and taking a huge swig of rubbing alcohol. Doesn’t feel good. Leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Probably isn’t healthy. Most of all, though, it’s just dumb.

I take notes throughout the week for this column, but I had just one going into today.

Good note, me. But I think I’m sticking with “tongue filled with paper cuts.” We’ll save nose hairs getting pulled out for another series.

On the other hand, the A’s series was incredibly satisfying. The Giants were down 5-2 with one out in the eighth inning on Saturday night, which gave them a 10 percent chance of winning, and even that seems high. With two A’s on base in the seventh inning and nobody out on Sunday, the Giants had an 18 percent chance of winning.

So that’s a 1-in-10 kind of win, followed by a 1-in-5 kind of win. It’s hard to completely dismiss a team when they keep doing that stuff.

Just don’t forget about the paper cuts on the tongue earlier in the week.

I’ll go with aC-, then, while considering a D-plus because of the Pablo Sandoval news. It was an obnoxious week that just happened to end with the first two positive developments in several days.

And yet … you don’t not believe.

Let’s study this Giants thing

Kevin Pillar has 19 home runs. It’s a career high, and it means that he’s a home run away from being the first Giants batter with 20 homers or more since Brandon Crawford in 2015. This has been an obsession of mine, and it looks like our long regional nightmare is over.

Now I want to know how likely or unlikely it would be for a Giants player to hit 30 homers this year.

Pretty, pretty unlikely! Let’s be up front about that. But how unlikely is it? Is it more or less likely than every single 20-homer contender falling down an open manhole and the Giants not getting a 20-homer player at all?

There are 32 games left in the season, and here’s where the contenders stand entering Monday night’s game:

• Kevin Pillar, 19
• Mike Yastrzemski, 17
• Evan Longoria, 17

Let’s assume good health because it’s an absolute requirement. Pillar would need a home run every 2.9 games, and Yastrzemski and Longoria would need one every 2.46 games. Which means the latter two would need to hit home runs at the same pace that a 66-homer hitter would.

Which probably isn’t going to happen. Yastrzemski’s been hitting a homer about once every four starts, and every time he does it, there’s a “He did it again!” kind of feel to it.

Pillar has the inside track, then. He’s been hitting fifth or sixth, for the most part, which means he’ll average about 4.2 plate appearances in his starts.

32 games * 4.2 PA per start = 134 plate appearances.

11 homers / 134 PA = a homer every 12 plate appearances

Pillar’s current rate: a homer every 26 PA. Again, not likely. Stop wasting the people’s time, Grant.

EXCEPT, the reason that we’re talking about this is that Pillar has hit a home run every 13.7 plate appearances in August. And if he simply hit home runs for the rest of the season that he’s hit them in August, Pillar would hit about another 10 before the end of the season, which would give him 29.

And if we’re going just based on August home-run rate, we should point out that Yastrzemski has hit a home run every 10.9 plate appearances in August. If he maintained that rate for the rest of the season, he would hit another 12 homers. Which would give him 29, too.

In some ways, I’m thinking this is the likeliest scenario. A hard stop on 29 homers for two different players, just to bug the nerds who pay too much attention to this.

This statistical juggling isn’t especially useful or predictive. It’s like saying someone is “on pace” to break Barry Bonds’ record in April.

But if you’re wondering what it would take for the Giants to have a 30-homer hitter, the answer is that it would take either Pillar or Yastrzemski maintaining their August home-run rate for the final 32 games of the season, and then adding one more dinger on top. Not completely against the physical laws of the universe. Just regular ol’ unlikely.

It’s likelier than the Giants finishing without a 20-homer hitter again, though. Because that would mean all three of these players would fall down that manhole at the same time. What are the odds of that?

I’m putting on a necktie just so that I can adjust it nervously after typing that. Give me one second …

State of the offense

Other than that stupid 1-0 game against the Cubs, the state of the offense is still pretty strong. It would appear that this strength is correlated yet again with the Giants leaving Oracle Park. I often wonder if the two are connected.

No. No, it couldn’t be that.

Last week the Giants hit .250/.295/.466 as a team. Usually I run a Play Index search to find out which former or current Giants have hit like that, but this time I think I have it with my eyeballs. Those are Kevin Pillar’s numbers.

Right down to the exact same slugging percentage. I knew I had seen that OPS before. Last week, the Giants were like a bunch of Kevin Pillars, swinging from their toes, missing a lot but generally doing solid things.

But the actual Pillar has had more than twice as many plate appearances, so we need someone else.

Feels like I was a bit too harsh on Russ back in the day. For all of his hacking, he still struck out less than the average Giants lineup today. And a lineup filled with nine players just like him is enough to win, it turns out.

As long as there are designated fielders, at least. And as long as the pitching doesn’t pick the worst days to screw things up. The Giants hit like a bunch of Russes Davis or Kevins Pillar, and it’s how they field — or prevent runs — that defines the rest.

A lineup filled with those players was enough to sweep the A’s. It was not enough to win a single game against the Cubs. That feels about right, actually. A .295 OBP is a very win-two-out-of-five kind of OBP. It takes a lot of run prevention to win more than you lose with that.

Picture of the week

It wasn’t a great photo week, and I blame the hideous Players’ Weekend uniforms. I know that Major League Baseball is a stuffy organization, so we should applaud their efforts whenever they do something different, but just because we can appreciate all of the different layers to Al Gore dancing the Orange Justice, that doesn’t mean we actually want to watch Al Gore dancing the Orange Justice.

That’s what the Players’ Weekend was. They took the orange out of the Giants’ uniform, which was a travesty of justice, and it was like an old dude dancing a dance that the kids have already moved past. Who was clamoring for the all-white jerseys? Name the player! GIVE ME A NAME.

So with those eyesores in every picture, it was hard.

Here, though, is Mike Yastrzemski on his head, next to a sign that could read, “WALL.” I know what it actually reads, but I’m choosing to believe that it isn’t an ad for tools and is instead an advertisem*nt. “WALL COMING. BE CAREFUL,” the full sign probably reads.

And if it doesn’t read that, maybe it should. Those things are dangerous.

(Photo: D. Ross Cameron / USA TODAY Sports)