For Giants, unexpected win was not a surprise

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SAN FRANCISCO — This was not expected, the way the Giants easily took the game that gave them the National League West division championship.   

Yet in a way, that’s hardly a surprise.

Almost from the start, practically everything the Giants have done — shrugging off the forecasts that predicted they would be fortunate to win more games than they lost, shrugging off the Dodgers — has been unexpected.

The long season, 162 games, had become wonderfully short, down to one of those 162. That’s the beauty of baseball. The beauty of this year’s Giants team is when they needed to show their character and talent.

Would San Francisco, after running in front since May and then dropping into a tie with those Dodgers, collapse Sunday against the Padres? Not a worry.

San Francisco left no room for doubt or questions unanswered in its 11-4 win Sunday, with Logan Webb pitching and hitting his first major league homer, with Buster Posey getting two hits to reach 1,500 for his career, with Tommy La Stella and Wilmer Flores contributing to a five-run fourth inning.

No nerve-wracking, one-game wild card for the Giants. For the first time in eight years, no division title for the Dodgers. For Giants chief executive Larry Baer and president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, a chance to put on those black championship T-shirts, get down on the field and celebrate.

This was a great day for the players, posing on the mound at Oracle Park after the final out of the team-record 107th win; a great day for the execs, including manager Gabe Kapler, who in two seasons helped transform a losing franchise; a great day for the more than 36,000 fans at Oracle, sharing the excitement.

The people in the stands are no less important than those on the diamond, and when the ballplayers show their appreciation by tossing a ball into the crowd or waving at the spectators, baseball is at its best.

The Giants have been at their best for a long while. They may get eliminated quickly in the playoffs, but criticism be damned. They’ve already succeeded.

It was the Padres, with Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado, who were supposed to challenge the Dodgers. But the Sunday loss to the Giants was a reflection of the miserable, underachieving San Diego season. The Pads finished below .500 — which is where some thought the Giants would finish.

And for those fans who chanted “Beat L.A.,” even though the game didn’t involve L.A., in the 2021 standings the Giants did beat L.A. By a game.

Baer was asked if all the preseason talk about the Dodgers — who, after all, did win the 2020 World Series — and Padres concerned him.

“As long as I can remember, it’s been Dodgers and Giants,” said Baer. He referred to the date, October 3, 70 years to the day when Bobby Thomson of the New York Giants hit the “shot heard ‘round the world” to beat the Dodgers for the pennant in 1951.

History, and now the Giants are seeking more, in their own method, without overpriced superstars but with expressions of confidence.

After the game, Kapler told the elated fans he felt the Giants’ “intangibles hadn’t been considered,“ and the first intangible is toughness. “The veterans in that clubhouse,” he said, “came out right away and said, ‘We respect the competition, but we’re not conceding anything, we want to win the division.’” 

They did exactly that. “For them to back that up,” said Kapler, “with the season we’ve had is pretty amazing.”

And very unexpected.

Giants-Dodgers: All we could have wanted

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The games have been all we could want. Not the Olympics, although they’ve had their moments. The Dodgers-Giants games. Plenty of history, very little mystery, and baseball that on some nights seems to last forever — and even that’s not long enough. 

This may not be as good as it gets, yet it’s better than anyone would have imagined. At least Giants fans.

You look at the lineups, for L.A, World Series champion and still the favorite to be champion again, all those big hitters — especially the two Giants destroyers, Max Muncy and Justin Turner

The Giants? Yes, Buster Posey is batting like it’s 2010, not 2021, but where did Tahir Estrada come from? And LaMonte Wade Jr.?

So this isn’t quite the Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff, when in 1951 the New York Giants came from far behind the Brooklyn Dodgers and won on Bobby Thomson’s home run. In its own way, it’s part of history that goes back 131 years. Perhaps we label it the Surprise of Oracle Park. (The Miracle of Oracle has a nice ring, but that would be misleading.)

The only thing we know after L.A.’s rout on Wednesday is that by the time this three-game series closes on Thursday afternoon, the Giants still will be ahead of the Dodgers and everyone else. 

Things seem to be scripted in San Francisco’s favor, putting it mildly. Last week when the teams met in L.A., the Dodgers’ reliable closer, Kenley Jansen, suddenly became unreliable. Dodgers fans booed. The only thing Giants fans boo are the Dodgers.

After that series, the Dodgers played the Rockies. Trailing in the first game, L.A. tied it up and then, with nobody out, loaded the bases. No way the Dodgers could lose that one. But lose they did.

Then the Dodgers headed north. And you start to sense that the gods, if not the odds, were all for the Giants.

Every team has injuries, too many these days. Too many games? Bad luck? Who knows for sure? Hey, the Giants had been without three-quarters of their starting infield, Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford and Evan Longoria.

Among the missing Dodgers was Cody Bellinger, just the 2019 National League MVP. He’s a first baseman, but Dodger manager Dave Roberts thought Bellinger would be safer in the outfield, away from a possible infield collision.

He was back at first on Tuesday night, and for whatever reason — a lack of familiarity at his old position, possibly — in the top of the eighth flung the ball into the left field box seats trying to get the runner at third base, who scored the winning run in the 2-1 game.

“Yeah, yeah, I think you have to be honest with yourselves,” manager Dave Roberts told the Los Angeles Times, when asked if the Giants are doing “the little things” better than the Dodgers.

“It’s two evenly matched clubs, and if you look at how we’ve played, whether it’s an at-bat here, or an execution on defense, a missed play, a walk, they’ve been better than us. So, on the margin, they’ve been better.”

That would please Giants manager Gabe Kapler and his staff, who from virtually the moment he took over two seasons ago have emphasized fundamentals.

Since they’ve been permitted to return to the ballpark after the easing of Covid-19 restrictions, what the fans have emphasized is a return to the fun they used to have.

As would be expected, the majority of the crowd of 32,878 on Tuesday night was Giants fans, although not by much. You saw Giants jerseys — not the bizarre City Connect uniforms, thank goodness — and Dodgers jerseys.

But at times, you also heard the chant “Beat L.A.”

At Oracle, co-existence doesn’t go as far as a wild Cody Bellinger throw.

Unbelievable: at All-Star break, Giants have best record in baseball

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SAN FRANCISCO — Nobody in baseball would have believed this. Maybe nobody in sports. The San Francisco Giants have the best record in the majors at the All-Star break.

Which is now. Which is crazy wonderful.

Better than the Dodgers. Better than the Padres. Better than the Astros and Mets and Yankees.

Better than anybody in the bigs.

And they’ve done it in part without their All-Star catcher, Buster Posey, and without Evan Longoria and Brandon Belt. They’ve been on the injured list, and while every team has injuries, those three are the infield point men, at catcher, third base and first base.

What the Giants do have is the other Brandon, shortstop Brandon Crawford, who at 34, two seasons after he seemed finished, is batting .284 and on the All-Star team, and a roster full of guys who not only think baseball is fun but make it so by the way they play.

The Giants closed the first half of this enticing 2021 season by beating the once proud Washington Nationals, 3-1, on a Sunday afternoon at Oracle Park, where mid-summer had an autumn feel, a temperature of 60 degrees at first pitch and a cool wind until the last out.

A bit of the Fall Classic? Not so fast. The way the Giants unexpectedly crashed into prominence — not that they’d ever get the attention on ESPN given the Yankees, Dodgers or Padres — is the same way they could come crashing down.

Still, they swept three from the Nats.  

With an exception or three, the bulk of the Giants’ roster was hardly in demand when it came to rebuilding a team. No Trevor Bauers (exhale). No Giancarlo Stantons.

Just a lot of people who showed they could either play the game, like pitcher Kevin Gausman, the starter and winner Sunday (he’s now 9-3 and an All-Star for the game at Denver, his home), or had the potential to play it, such as Darin Ruf.

The big man on Sunday was Gausman. Pitching always counts. Hard to lose when the opponent gets only a single run. Just as in football. Keep the other team from scoring, and you’ve got a great chance.

The big man on offense was Kurt Casali, picked up earlier in the year and, after getting through injuries of his own, the one who picked up the Giants with a three-run home run in the second.

Who knows how long this magic lasts, but team president Farhan Zaidi keeps putting in the right pieces, and his willing compatriot, manager Gabe Kapler, keeps making the right moves.

Last year, Zaidi reminded, the defense was lacking. Not only were there errors of commission, grounders misplayed, fly balls dropped, but errors of omission — not covering a base, failing to throw to the correct infielder.

Those are unacceptable, particularly for a team built around pitching.

Kapler, as every manager, has remained skeptical as needed and enthusiastic as required. He is honest without being pretentious.

“That we’ve been able to do it without our All-Star catcher,” Kapler said of the Giants working their way to a record of 57-32, “is an example of people stepping up to help each other. Players came up from the minor leagues.”

From his days as an executive with the Dodgers, the monster he must now work to surpass, Zaidi has prized both versatility and patience. He likes players who can handle more than one position and who know when to swing the bat.

Kapler reportedly told Casali that the Giants from April until now played one of the better half-seasons he’d ever been associated with as a player or manager.

“I didn’t think much about it,” said Casali, around the game long enough to know how rapidly things can turn, “but it was cool.”

In the season of ’21, so are the Giants.

Will Giants own their tomorrow?

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SAN FRANCISCO — The sign out there in centerfield at Oracle Park, above the new bullpen, is just one of many ballpark billboards but also one with a pertinent message for a team playing unexpectedly well.

“Own your tomorrows,” the sign reads. It’s a Charles Schwab slogan, about investing, but these days it could refer to the Giants, whose tomorrows suddenly seem excellent.

The Giants are off on Wednesday, off the field and on a jet, headed for Pittsburgh where they hope to carry the joy and the magic — and the fine pitching and timely hitting — they had at home. Five games in their ballpark, four wins including a 4-2 victory on Tuesday that gave them a sweep of the two-game mini-series against the Texas Rangers.

Patience at the plate, aggressiveness on the mound, 14 wins in the last 18 home games for San Francisco, for first-place San Francisco. And who knows what to think?

The Dodgers are better. The Padres are better. And yet, for the moment, they trail the Giants. As Sinatra sang, is that Granada we see or only Asbury Park?

No Mookie Betts. No Fernando Tatis Jr. Only a well-designed plan worked out by Giants manager Gabe Kapler and his coaches to emphasize the potential provided by head of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi.

They’ve got older players who still have it, Buster Posey, Brandon Belt, Evan Longoria, Brandon Crawford, Alex Wood; and younger players who are getting it, Wilmer Flores, Mike Yastrzemski and Tuesday’s starting pitcher, Logan Webb, who went six innings, allowing only two hits and two runs and striking out a career high 10.

“He has a long way to go before he reaches his ceiling,” Kapler promised about Webb. The Giants similarly have a long way to go before they, or we, should get excited about their postseason chances. Then again, after four straight losing seasons, this one at least offers a tantalizing hint of improvement.

And reminders of not-so-long-ago victories, those three World Series championships over a period of five years when the Giants stayed close on pitching and — as Hunter Pence, in town to comment on the recent games for local TV — came up with the big hit.

One thing the Giants are not doing is trying to perform beyond their capabilities. They aren’t the Yankees or Astros.

They’ll be happy with a walk. Rangers starter Jordan Lyles threw 34 pitches in his half of a first inning that lasted 35 minutes.

“Our approach is simple,” Kapler said of the offense. “Go after a pitch we can hit. Take pitches until we find one we like.”

On the other side, don’t throw too many pitches the other guys can hit, which is where Webb comes in. He had one of his better games, after the Giants catchers — Curt Casali, who was in the lineup, and Buster Posey, who wasn’t — told Webb to speed up his tempo. Which he did.

Asked what he thought of Webb’s performance, and whether it was his best game in his three seasons with the Giants, Kapler was properly measured in his answer. He liked the strikeouts. He liked the result, but best? Let’s wait before passing judgment. “Webby has a high ceiling,” Kapler said. “Let’s wait a couple of years.”

Three Texas challenges on calls in the first four innings. The Rangers won each, but Kapler didn’t care, pointing out that the idea of the replays is to end up with the correct decision.

Yes, we should wait until October. But here in the merry month of May, the controversial decision to hire Kapler a couple years ago — remember the outrage — and the decisions by he and his staff have been more than acceptable.

Empty seats in a Cactus League without joy

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SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The day was as gray as a road uniform. At least a uniform before baseball jerseys became a swarm of red, blue or, in the case of the San Francisco Giants, black.

It’s been cold in Arizona, and two days ago it was wet, rain. The weather forecast is for better days before the weekend, however, temperatures in the high 70s. 

Maybe life will feel more like what we knew as normal.

It still doesn’t feel that way down here, even with balls flying off bats or thudding into gloves. Roger Angell wrote about the sounds of baseball, the conversations in the stands, the cheers. In the first two weeks of Cactus League, it’s mostly been the sounds of silence.

The game, as everything else, remains haunted by the virus. Restrictions persist; attendance for the Giants’ 5-4 win over Cleveland Friday at 10,000-seat Scottsdale Stadium was only 1.507.

People want to go, want to talk, want to cheer, but they can’t. Tickets were going for $100, but few were available. “It was dead in the stands,” said one woman able to attend. “It wasn’t any fun.”

For the players and management, fun is incidental. The purpose of the exhibition season, the Cactus League here in the desert — places like Scottsdale and Mesa, Goodyear and Surprise — and the Grapefruit League in Florida is to prepare for the regular season.

For the fans, exhibition games are a time to escape winter and connect again to the joys of baseball, to buy a beer or a Coke or a hot dog.  But there were no roving vendors at Scottsdale, no programs, no souvenirs.

There’s not much joy in a ballpark when most of the seats are empty.

Until this year, only catchers wore masks; now everybody must wear one, of course, and be socially distant. How can you argue Mays vs. Mantle with the guy next to you when there’s nobody next to you?

There’s no argument about the performance of Logan Webb, who started for the Giants on Friday against Cleveland in that chilly, lonely ballpark. He struck out six, including four in the first inning; a passed ball by Buster Posey after one of the strikeouts in effect giving Cleveland the ”extra” out.

Is pitching ahead of hitting in spring, or vice versa? Whatever, Webb was incredibly sharp for a Giants team in need of pitching. When asked if that was as good as he’s seen Webb, Giants manger Gabe Kapler said, “He was doing exactly what he needs to be doing, using his secondary weapons.

“It’s as good as I’ve ever seen his changeup look. I don’t want to overdo it here, but he’s been really impressive in this camp.”

Posey was one of the few recognizable names in the Giants’ starting lineup. Another was Austin Slater, who hit a three-run homer as the Giants built up a 4-0 lead. Then it was a home run by Curt Casali that was the winner after the Indians tied it up.

If the Giants’ batting order seems confused, that’s because it is. Brandon Belt still hasn’t played. He underwent heel surgery; then was stricken with the coronavirus; then while recovering from that, Belt was hit with mononucleosis.

“I tested positive (in January),” Belt said. “I didn’t have any symptoms at first until I reached the end of my quarantine when I was working out, I started feeling really winded, really lightheaded, really dizzy and lost all energy after about 10 minutes of working out.”

As soon as Belt started to feel better, he was diagnosed with mono.

“I had to deal with (COVID-19 symptoms) for about three to four weeks,” Belt said. “And right at the end of that three to four weeks is when I got mono. All of that kind of came together and I got hit pretty hard.”

There had been suggestions this might be the final season for the 32-year-old. Now you wonder if he’ll make it that far, although not in Belt’s mind.

“Now I feel pretty dang good, and every couple of days I’m taking huge jumps forward,” he said. “I feel like I’m pretty close to getting back to normal. It was a long ordeal, obviously wasn’t that fun, but right now I feel like I’m getting back on track.”

You would hope we could say the same for baseball.

Giants’ new pilot Kapler: ‘I’m not the popular hire’

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By Art Spander
For Maven Sports

SAN FRANCISCO — It was not the normal introduction. Nobody cared what Gabe Kapler would do as the new Giants manager. Only about what he failed to do when he was director of player development for the Dodgers, and some of his players were accused of sexual assault.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2019, The Maven