My friend David (not pictured) and I grew up just across the Town of Vienna corporate limits from each other. Around the time the Washington Nationals started up again, he moved out to San Francisco, adopting the Giants as his team. He’s joined in for several Q&As over the years.
WFY: The Giants are in 4th place, under .500 and offseason acquisition Blake Snell was off to a poor start and then…
Are Giants followers thinking that perhaps this is the start of a run to the postseason?
DS: No. I have a dim view on where this season is going. A downfall of baseball’s playoff system is that teams now play for the wildcard and an immediate playoff exit. The reality is the Giants should be committed to competing with the Dodgers and they simply aren’t. [The Padres are.] The Giants are playing for second place and they’re in 4th.
That said, I think there will be some fun baseball over the next few weeks. I prefer that to a firesale. If Snell and Robbie Ray have a great two months, then that will likely make Logan Webb better. But the main problem is the Giants don’t have consistent offense to compete effectively.
WFY: Has an epic string of managers ended for the Giants? Roger Craig, Dusty Baker, Felipe Alou and Bruce Bouchy delivered a combined 5 pennants and 3 World Series titles over three decades. Alou is the outlier in never winning a pennant, but did have a 100 win season. I was never sold on Gabe Kapler and apparently, the Giants weren’t either. Is Bob Melvin looking like an upgrade, record notwithstanding? You mentioned previously that your didn’t like Kapler’s SABRmetrics approach.
DS: I view Bob Melvin as an upgrade and I don’t think he has had enough at bats to really measure performance at this point. The Giants had a stretch in the beginning of the season (about the time Jung Hoo Lee was ruled out for the season) where they were effectively the San Francisco (nee Sacramento) River Cats. More than half the starting nine were minor leaguers. The fact that they played .500 or thereabouts baseball during that stretch was remarkable. When they lost, they looked awful.
Kapler had slavish devotion to statistics and I still feel there is a meaningful place for “feel for the game” in critical decision-making. As an example, Kapler would manage his line-up based on righty-lefty match ups even if it meant benching your .285 hitter with power in favor of your .215 singles hitter in a high-leverage situation. It got to be ridiculous. He followed all the typical Moneyball ideas that have robbed baseball of any sense of excitement. In contrast, Melvin tries to steal bases from time to time. You might see a Giant bunt this week.
It would not be fair to Kapler to not respect the fact that a summarily average line-up won 107 games. That said, I have a friend that views that season as a curse: it is exhibit A for the argument that not spending money on above-replacement level players is unnecessary to win. It gives cheapskate owners an easy out from really committing to win.
WFY: Do you think the loss of Willie Mays and Orlando Cepeda contributed at all to the lackluster performance on the field this year?
DS: I don’t think so. I think it gave the players something to play for during a rough stretch. They had a walk-off win on Willie Mays Night (i.e., the first home game after Mays’ death). It would have been just awful for the fanbase to lose that game.
WFY: Back to Snell, he wears #6. I find single-digit pitchers unnatural. I’m having a harder time adapting to that then the DH which I’m still against in the NL. What say you?
DS: I find the number 6 to be the least aesthetically pleasing single-digit number. I think of it as the domain of Bill Russell and no one else. I assume LeBron James wears it as a tribute to an all-time great as a counterpoint to wearing 23. One of Jay Cutler’s many disappointing legacies is the number 6 became en vogue for non-kickers.
As for Snell, I like him having a single digit. In the very old days, teams only gave single digits to every day starters and all-stars. Rookies had to earn low numbers. There is an aside in David Halberstam’s “October 1964” where Mickey Mantle sticks up for a rookie by saying he deserved a lower jersey number. Snell knows that he’s “the guy” on this team given his contract and history. As Mantle would say, give him a low one.
Finally, I miss pitchers batting. I appreciate the league’s desperate need for offense in the era of unhittable pitching. But pitching changes and pinch hitting management was an area where good managers distinguished themselves from their peers and helped their teams win games. Bruce Bochy is a good example of this. Without the DH, I find that managers do a lot less, which feeds into baseball being all about the star GM, which is absolutely terrible for the game. To paraphrase a comment you made to me several years ago, sports need more John Madden and less Ron Jaworski. The man in the arena is what we want to watch and not some esoteric discussion of how some GM brilliantly managed the luxury tax. I like it when the manager makes a bold strategic decision to try to win the game and there is less and less of that in today’s game.
WFY: It’s the last season of the Giants City Connect uniforms. Were they okay, should they be fed to the seals or are you indifferent? The Nats City Connect unis have gone over very well, though they aren’t my thing.
DS: Here’s another answer that you will expect: Kids seem to like the City Connect unis. I on the other hand don’t really get it. To address your question expressly, I’m indifferent. I much prefer the Cardinals wearing blue pants from 1982 than the league experimenting with new unis to merchandise. The Padres’ yellow and pink unis are just atrocious.
WFY: Since you are a native East Coaster, who grew up during the NFC East’s glory years, was there some adjustment to having “Giants” mean San Francisco baseball team instead of New York football team?
DS: No, not really. You quickly learn to search online for “sf giants” to avoid getting 10 links to the football Giants, but that’s also a function of the dominance of the NFL in American life. When it comes to football fandom, I haven’t come across many New York Giants fans in my 20 years in California, so there wasn’t much to confuse. Very few popped up during the 2007 and 2011 years. There are definitely more Bills fans out here than Giants fans—at least when it comes to bumper stickers, hats and other visible signs of fandom.
WFY: Good news for you – Giant killer Lane Thomas was flipped to Cleveland at the deadline. Last year he told me that he’d take care of the Giants and then had the series of his life. Do you think the Giants take the series in DC? Are you looking forward to three consecutive days of baseball to listen to at work?
DS: I think the Giants take the series. I love day baseball and my kids can watch the entire game before going to bed.
