Photo by Chris Mezzavilla/KNBR
SAN FRANCISCO–The standings don’t look much different, but the Giants sure do.
At Major League Baseball’s All-Star break, the San Francisco Giants were 22 games under .500, and five games back of the San Diego Padres for fourth place in the National League West.
Five weeks later, the Giants are still five games back of the Padres, but they’re actually showing signs of life.
On Friday evening, San Francisco busted out for 10 runs en route to its second straight win over the Phillies, and its fourth straight win at AT&T Park. The Giants have won nine of their last 12 at home, and 10 of 17 in the month of August. After winning just nine games in June and nine games in July, the club is on pace for its best month of the season, and the resurgence is happening at the right time.
In June and July, the Giants deserved the criticism they received. They’d fallen out of playoff contention, and to make matters worse, they looked like a club with no conviction or direction. For a two-month stretch, the Giants’ brand of baseball was a boring brand of baseball. Often times, it was hard to watch.
But since the calendar turned to August, the Giants have heeded the words of their manager, Bruce Bochy, and played better baseball.
It would be very easy for a club full of well-paid players to fold their hand and ride out on a sour note. Many under-performing players double as the club’s highest-paid players, and they know that regardless of how the season finishes, they’ll be back next season.
In 2018, the Giants will likely pick up Matt Moore’s team option and pay him $9 million, despite the fact Moore’s ranked among baseball’s worst starting pitchers for almost the entirety of the 2017 campaign. Next year, Brandon Crawford and Hunter Pence will both make more than $15 million, even though both players are hitting 20 points lower than their career average.
Yet on Friday night, it was that trio of players, Moore, Pence and Crawford, that led the Giants to a blowout over the Phillies, the worst team in the Major Leagues. A struggling Moore threw 7.1 innings of two-run ball, while Crawford and Pence each launched home runs to left center field to build up an early Giants’ lead.
Yes, it’s their job to perform, and at this point, they’re fulfilling an expectation. But if the Giants want to move in the right direction next season, it will take a team-wide effort to reestablish a winning culture.
“I think it’s important for all of us,” Bochy said, when asked about Moore finishing the season on a high note. “We’ve talked about this. That’s our goal, to finish strong. Whether it’s individual player like Matt or us as a club, we just want to play better ball. We owe it to each other, we owe it to the fans, ownership, everybody. We’ve talked about this enough, so that’s part of the deal here. It’s easy playing this game when you’re winning and things are going well, but with where we’re at, it shows a lot of character by playing the game right and playing the game hard.”
Though players and fans alike will attempt to wipe this season from their memory when the calendar hits October 2, how this team performs over the next weeks will have an immense impact on the atmosphere in the Giants’ clubhouse next spring. San Francisco’s players know that August and September have become an evaluation period, and for them, the heat is on.
It’s why Moore’s determined to figure out his woes, why Pence is still running out every groundball, and why a player like Mark Melancon is pitching through pain.
“It’s a good question,” Melancon said on Friday afternoon. “I want to make sure that guys understand that you know, first of all I want to be out there and show them it’s important to battle back and to fight through and I think we have a lot to prove this year still. Even though we’re not going to the playoffs, you know, these next six, seven weeks blend into next year and it takes us, we set the tone now for next year. I think it’s really important to continue that and to work toward next year and set the foundation.”
Even with a massive payroll and a large number of veterans expected to earn upward of $10 million in 2018, the Giants will create widespread competition in Spring Training to ensure the club is better equipped to contend in a vaunted division. For the players on this year’s team, that competition began when the calendar turned to August.
There’s a temptation to dwell on the past, and to look at the Giants’ record as a whole and bemoan a lost season. That’s understandable. But the players in the clubhouse are building toward next season, and it’s shown in their performance.
Jarrett Parker is back, and he slugged his third double in two games on Friday night. Ryder Jones is enjoying a taste of the big leagues, and getting a head start on finding a way that he can contribute in 2018. Pablo Sandoval is back in town, and he’s been charged with adding energy and emotion to a dugout that quite frankly, lacked a lot of it in June and July.
No one expects San Francisco to rebuild the culture it prided itself on in the early 2010s overnight. And furthermore, two winning months isn’t enough to reestablish that atmosphere. But if the Giants prove they can compete and win in August and September of this season, it’ll go a long way toward giving fans, the front office and most importantly, the players in the clubhouse the belief that they can make a push in 2018.