Mason Black, Camilo Doval make cases for relevance in 2025

Mason Black pitched his way to his first career win and Doval regained balance on the 9th’s tightrope for his first save since early August.

The San Francisco Giants won’t be making any miraculous foray into the postseason after being eliminated from contention on Thursday, but with a little over a week more of games, there is still stuff to play for. Though as a group they can play spoiler to clubs like the Royals and Diamondbacks, or scrape and claw their way to avoid a losing season for the second year in a row, the real value of these final games will be measured on the individual scale.

The end of September is an audition for 2025. A fall spring training. Tyler Fitzgerald made his MLB debut a year ago today and launched two notable homers against LA that certainly put his name on the club’s radar for the following season. There won’t be any debuts like that, but it’s a prime environment of low-stakes for tired legs to put a new spring in their step, pop some flare into their game, and turn heads.

Mike Yastrzemski has been making a push to stay relevant as the old fart amongst a wave of outfield youth with impressive power and tone-setting at-bats in the lead-off spot. He led off yesterday’s game against the Royals with a single off Michael Wacha and eventually came around to score on Heliot Ramos’s infield hit.

Ramos himself even in an overwhelmingly positive campaign, has had his ups and downs and wants to prove he isn’t taking anything for granted. He ended yesterday a homer shy of the cycle with a hustle triple under his belt and a two-out double in the 6th, scoring the eventual winning run on Patrick Bailey’s single.

Brett Wisely and Casey Schmitt are also making the case for relevance in Matt Chapman’s infield. Wisely’s bat has dimmed but flashed impressive leather in the five-hole.

Schmitt clearly felt at-home at third while Chapman’s been on the paternity list, casually flicking a couple of lasers across the diamond yesterday. He also collected two more hits and has now gone 5-for-11 with 3 RBIs and just 1 strikeout in his last three games.

Mason Black generated a fair amount of positive double-takes in yesterday’s 2-1 win over Kansas City. The rookie right-hander had made 7 appearances and 6 starts so far in 2024 with underwhelming results. His initial debut in May after a string of four games in which he allowed 14 runs on 21 hits and 7 walks over 14.1 innings pitched. Since his return on August 31st, he’s pitched better, getting a little deeper into games, more swing-and-miss, but nothing that felt like a complete performance, one in which his 6’3’’ frame has stood tall atop the mound at the diamond’s center.

Friday’s start was different. He needed 84 pitches to get through 5.2 innings, the longest outing of his career—and the first scoreless one putting him in line for his first win. Bit by the homer in each of his previous appearances, Black managed to keep the Royals in the park. The cavernous Kauffman Stadium probably deserves an assist on this, though some balls off the bat of Bobby Witt Jr. or Michael Massey were given a ride, none of them would be no-doubters in other parks.

Bob Melvin talked about comfort and confidence being big things for Black, and this start will certainly build him up. He seemed more at ease to lean into his strengths, using his dual fastball-types (four-seam & sinker) more than 60% of the time against the Royals, as well as locating them well at the top of the zone. Both fastballs have a fair amount of horizontal movement which probably comes from Black’s sling-y release. It’s not in-your-face funky, but the look is different enough, and gives his heaters interesting action especially when his sinker pushes in on the hands of the right-hander, or his four-seamer slips away from a lefty.

The two heaters are probably too similar to be sustainable in the long term. Working on his slider or maybe a cutter with an opposite break will be essential to his mix if Black wants to be effective facing a line-up for the third time. Much to be done, yes, but Black’s strengths were on display against Kansas City and they were hard to ignore.

The other big rebound of the evening was Camilo Doval. The trials and tribulations of Tranquilo are well-documented, and as Alex Pavlovic noted in the post-game wrap, the best baseball move for Doval is probably to not go anywhere near a baseball for the next couple of months. Time away, mental space—it needs to happen in order for him to unburden himself of this barren, rock of a season. The fact that Friday’s outing was anything but smooth might be a blessing in disguise. This is the pitcher we became infatuated with. The unflappable, the calm and cool Tranquilo Camilo—he’s better when his back is against the wall, walking that fine line between nuclear meltdown and clean energy resource. Doval found himself in the chaos of that decisive frame.

With a 2-0 lead, Doval walked the first two batters he faced on 8 pitches. The intentionality behind each ball made it appear as if it was on purpose. The blank expression plastered over his face cracking just enough to show only the slightest bit of frustration. He couldn’t locate his fastball. The slider became his only option, and he struck out Adam Frazier with it on four straight offerings. Again with only one bullet in the chamber and no way out, Doval did his job. The winning run at the plate, knowing a slider was coming, still rolled it to short. With Maikel Garcia’s speed blitzing down to first, a double play would’ve been difficult but Fitzgerald (who had entered for Brett Wisely at short) again came up with a consequential misplay, bobbling the exchange from mitt to hand just enough for no out to be recorded on the play. Fans, players, Doval—we had seen this before in a season full of games decided by one-run and two-run games: this mental block when it came to playing clean baseball in high-leverage situations.

With the tying run in scoring position, the winning run on base with speed, anything down the line or the massive outfield gaps at Kaufman had the potential to win the game for the Royals. Doval threw six pitches to Garrett Hampson, four of them were sliders. He jumped on the last one and yanked it just wide of the third base line by inches. It was ruled foul, but the proximity to the line was so close it even sowed doubt in the minds of the feet it landed in front of. The play was not reviewable…right? Even the umps weren’t sure which led to minutes passing in which the chief ump got on the headset to confirm with New York while both managers came out to converse.

The delay, as Hunter Pence noted from the booth, might ice a pitcher who was in a rhythm, but for Doval it might serve as his saving grace. While waiting, he tossed some pitches to Bailey and smoothed out his fastball. The next pitch was a 98 MPH cutter that Hampson was late on, flipping it to right field. A sacrifice fly that moved the tying run to third, but Doval felt whole again. First pitch to Tommy Pham was a 99 MPH cutter for a called strike. Having to protect against the fastball, he waved two sliders dropping out of the zone for the game-ending strikeout.

It was Doval’s first save since August 7th and a cathartic one. Too late to help the team, but with eyes on 2025, not too late to help himself.