Rude for a Friday night.
Sometime during the second inning of another exceedingly-feckless San Francisco Giants defeat, Kiley McDaniel received a text, or a phone call, or a DM. McDaniel, an ESPN writer with plenty of connections from his past career in MLB front offices, announced that Giants top prospect Bryce Eldridge had been promoted to AAA, after the 19-year old sensation began the year in Low-A.
The timing was surely coincidental, but it sure didn’t feel like it. The Giants trailed the San Diego Padres 3-0 in a game they would lose 5-0, and in a game that felt decided four pitches in.
It was Friday night. The fans had been treated to being shut out the night prior. They were being treated to being shut out again. They needed something. They deserved something.
And more importantly, they were desperate for a good piece of news. And then along came Eldridge.
It surely wasn’t planned, but it felt like a metaphor for the season and the last few years. Farhan Zaidi, confronted with the impending end to yet another disappointing season, tossing the life preserver that’s just a giant blow-up inner tube with Eldridge’s face on it. The season might be drowning, but just hang on until next year, folks. Then you’ll see.
We might! But in the interim we were treated to some Grade-A crap ass baseball.
Some Grade-A crap ass baseball that began in a direction antithetical to the one the team employed when calling on Eldridge to save the narrative.
The narrative began before the game, when the Giants — dealing with the fact that Tyler Fitzgerald might have to miss a few games with a minor injury — optioned Luis Matos to AAA and purchased the contract of infielder Donovan Walton.
Frequent players of the internet game Immaculate Grid, as well as those who have had the misfortune of following the Giants the last few years, know Walton’s spiel, but here are the footnotes. He’s 30. This is his ninth season of professional baseball, following a four-year college career. He’s made brief appearances in the Majors in four different seasons, amassing a .534 OPS entering this year. He last played in the Majors in 2022, when he appeared in 24 games for … you guessed it … the Giants.
This is not to disparage Walton, who is 10 times the athlete that I am in my dreams. It’s just to set the stage of reality: he was a free agent Minor League signing this year; he’ll be a free agent Minor League signing for some team next year; and he in no way, shape, or form factors into the Giants’ 2025 plans.
And so, fresh off the Sacramento Shuttle, donning a big league jersey for a team with a 0.0% chance of making the playoffs (per Fangraphs), Walton was inserted into the starting lineup.
Marco Luciano, for the third consecutive game, was not. And were it not for Wednesday’s blowout and Fitzgerald’s injury on Thursday, Luciano might have also had three consecutive games without an at-bat.
You can understand the thought process, even if you disagree with it (and buddy, do I ever disagree with it). They’re still trying to win games, even if they’re all but eliminated, and putting the best defense behind a sinkerballer aids them in that quest. And they want to do right by Logan Webb and not inflate his ERA in the name of prospect-playing.
But you can (and should) question why they’re still focused on winning games. And anyone who listened to Webb this time last year, when he essentially said that he didn’t care if he won the Cy Young because he just wants to make the playoffs, can probably surmise what the face of the franchise would pick when presented with A) a tiny upgrade at defense to preserve his ERA in a meaningless game, or B) a chance to develop a player who just might help them the next time they’re playing meaningful games.
To make no mention of the fact that they mercilessly outrighted Thairo Estrada (who, it needs to be said, could have been called up instead of Walton), a move that only made sense if they were ready to punt on chasing every win and every ground ball.
Anyway, Luis Arráez took the second pitch that Webb threw and ripped it into the outfield for a single, and Fernando Tatis Jr. took the fourth pitch that Webb threw and put it so deep into center field that I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.
They’d add a third run in the inning on a very loud single by Manny Machado, followed by a very loud double by Xander Bogaerts. Their fourth run against Webb came in the fourth inning when a comeback to Webb appeared to be the final out, but the Giants pitcher instead threw the ball high enough that a LaMonte Wade Jr. stacked on top of the actual LaMonte Wade Jr. still probably wouldn’t have caught it.
The bullpen calmed things down, largely due to an exceptional outing from Tristan Beck, but without a hint of offense, the Giants never felt in the game. Their lone opportunity arrived when Heliot Ramos led off the sixth inning with a single, was still there when Patrick Bailey came up with two outs, and was thrown out at home (thanks to a gorgeous relay) when Bailey doubled.
But it was all a mess. The Giants didn’t have the offense, in part because they focused on the defense, but they didn’t have the defense either. Walton finished 0-3 with two strikeouts and could easily have had an error on his ledger were there a different scorekeeper. The bats mustered just four hits, with Bailey’s double being the only extra-baser, and looked useless against Dylan Cease. They bungled the messaging and playing time for one of their top prospects, which set the mood, and then tried to fix the mood with news about one of their other top prospects.
If there’s a plan, I don’t see it. And if there’s a concept of a plan, I don’t wanna hear about it.