The San Francisco Giants are wrapping up the season on a nice roll.
And that’s the olive on top of the two-hour-old sundae.
The Giants were 2024’s Most Disappointing Team. It’s one man’s opinion, and that makes it a unanimous selection.
Really, the only competition comes from the Rangers, but you know Bruce Bochy takes a siesta every season after winning a championship; the Rays, who finally played down to their talent level; and the Cubs and Red Sox, just because their names are permanently etched on the list.
En route to their third straight non-winning season after a 107-win campaign had them primed to be the 2020s Team of the Decade, the Giants were such a disaster in 2024, even the things that went right went wrong.
But let’s start with the things that truly did go wrong.
Management believed adding a bunch of B-level free agents and a reunion with an old-school manager who got run out of San Diego would be enough to increase the team win total from the 70’s to the 90’s. The fans disagreed. The fans were right.
The fans believed the team’s many highly trumped-up prospects were ready to take the team toward the top again. Management disagreed. Management was right.
It took the first half of the season for management to admit its mistake. It’s taken the second half in order for the fans to recognize their miscalculation.
The result: a team that was projected to be a playoff contender but never really was, one that seriously lacked in both power and speed. And now there’s a new debate…
Let’s fire the general manager. Let’s dump the manager. Let’s sign 37-year-old Paul Goldschmidt. Let’s give 19-year-old Bryce Eldridge a chance.
Ugh. Here we go again.
Nothing is more disappointing than not being able to identify the source of your disappointment, dooming you to experience it again. See: Giants, 2017-2020, and now 2022-24.
No team learns less from history. Remember, this was a franchise that won three titles last decade… and then failed to even make the playoffs the next season all three times.
The 2024 game plan pitched well at the owners’ meeting: Take Matt Chapman, Blake Snell, Robbie Ray, Jung Hoo Lee, Jorge Soler and Jordan Hicks, add them to a team that had been in second place as late as Sept. 3 last season, and it’s 2010 all over again.
If only Chapman, Snell, Ray and Soler could turn back the clock like that.
Let’s talk Chapman. Great guy. Brilliant defensively. The fans love him.
Kinda sounds like Brandon Crawford, doesn’t he? In fact, the year after the Giants finally cut ties with their championship shortstop at age 37, they got so caught up in Chappy Mania, they added six – SIX – years and $151 million to his deal just so the fans could watch him turn 37 before uncomfortably cutting him, just as they did with Crawford.
With all the hoopla and the ours-until-retirement contact, you’d have thought Chapman was an MVP candidate, but, alas, he’s hitting .246 with 78 RBIs. Not terrible, but Crawford did better than that (.298 and 90) as a shortstop in 2021, before it cost the Giants $32 million just for fans to be able to gush “but he’s good defensively” as he aged predictably the next two years.
Even cutting ties with the cooked-past-well-done Crawford made the Giants look bad. Their much-ballyhooed replacement, Marco Luciano, was so ill-prepared this season, he not only got moved to second base, where he was equally fumble-handed, but also used as a 22-year-old DH so the fans would have less opportunity to boo him.
And then there’s Tyler Fitzgerald, the new heir apparent to Crawford’s sunglasses. He’s having a surprisingly good season…
Wait, this just in: Casey Schmitt, who knows Sacramento so well he should offer to be the A’s realtor, contributed a 6-for-14 spree to a shockingly encouraging 7-2 late-September run through Baltimore, Kansas City and Arizona. He’s now co-favorite to win the shortstop job next season, pending the availability of a veteran journeyman like Nick Ahmed, who walked in off the street and beat out Luciano last spring.
And then there’s Snell. Nothing says “Welcome to the Farhan Zaidi era of Giants baseball” quite like the lefty’s saga.
Unless you recall the previous lefty’s saga—aka the Carlos Rodon debacle—which was basically the Snell prequel.
You remember Snell. The best pitcher in the National League—maybe all of baseball—last season. The perfect addition for a team that plays in a pitchers’ park and has had trouble (understatement of the century) attracting big-time talent.
Scott Boras wanted big bucks. Oracle Park prints big bucks. It was a match made in…
March. Just late enough so that Snell, the key to a Giants resurgence, would struggle early, then get hurt.
The good news: The Giants gave themselves an out in Snell’s contract after one year. Zaidi’s logic: We’re going to make Snell prove it even though he’d already proven it.
The bad news: Boras also negotiated an out in the deal, and look who has turned into the best pitcher in baseball again. Luckily, the Giants have him locked up…
Until Sunday.
So what you have is a team that won 79 games last season, fired its manager, then signed a half-dozen veterans with resumes to complement a bunch of “can’t-miss” prospects who were deemed ready solely based on a memorable moment or two last September, some at Triple-A.
And here we are, a weekend before the end of the season, still struggling to top last year’s win total.
That’s disappointing. And so is this:
Veterans Michael Conforto and Mike Yastrzemski are finishing strong, which means they’re likely to be retained to hit .240 again… and keep the Giants from mortgaging McCovey Cove to add Juan Soto or Paul Goldschmidt. Or maybe both.
And who needs Gerrit Cole, Corbin Burnes, Shane Bieber or Walker Buehler (all with California ties) when you’ve got Kyle Harrison, Hayden Birdsong, Landen Roupp and Mason Black?
Management: We can get Frankie Montas, who pitched well for Melvin six years ago, with an opt-out in case we’re wrong.
Fans: Have you seen what former 15th-round pick Tommy Romero has been doing at Sacramento? Let’s give him a shot.
Welcome to Giants baseball, where next year’s slogan will be: The Bay Area’s best… and the Bay Area’s worst.
