There’s only one reason why the Giants are still competing despite another failed season: spite. And, really, that’s good enough.
No, the San Francisco Giants won’t sweep the Arizona Diamondbacks. They probably won’t even win one game. But! After sweeping the Royals in Kansas City and taking 2 out of 3 in Baltimore (and were in position for a sweep!), we — and the Diamondbacks — can’t shake this one simple feeling:
Maybe they could?
The Royals were on a 4-game losing streak when the Giants rolled into town. That was on top of a run where they’d lost 13 of 20. The Diamondbacks have won 4 of 5, though. They’re 38-21 in the second half. Still, they’re just 11-9 in their last 20 games and are 5-7 in their last 12 home games. Is it plausible? Is it conceivable that the Giants could still play spoiler?
The case for YES
- It feels good to think they will.
- The Giants have been hitting well on this road trip and they typically hit well in Arizona.
- The Dbacks haven’t faced Mason Black before and that gives the Giants an edge.
- Matt Chapman will be closer to his newborn (his house is in Arizona) thereby increasing his newborn Dad energies
- Patrick Bailey will be closer to resting his body which might give him one last surge of adrenaline to hit for average.
- It would be fun.
The case for NO
- Hayden Birdsong was no challenge to Arizona’s lineup earlier in the month.
- Logan Webb over the past 30 days (6 starts): 5.56 ERA (3.70 FIP) in 34 IP. Home ERA: 2.83, Road ERA: 4.36
- The Giants haven’t won a season series against a division rival (that wasn’t the Colorado Rockies) since 2021; they had the chance to do it against the Padres and instead got swept. They’d have to sweep to win the season series against the Diamondbacks.
- The Giants still have an allergy to .500 and now that they’re just 2 wins away from being that, we should expect a hasty retreat.
Last September, the Dbacks embarrassed the Giants so badly that they fired their manager and most of their coaching staff because ownership felt it’d be better to downgrade in that area rather than be embarrassed like that again. Nobody thinks Bob Melvin & co. are an upgrade to in-game decisions, but are they driven to compete until the last out of the season? The past 6 games would seem to suggest they might, even if the prior week’s games did not.
In a recent post for The Athletic, Andrew Baggarly made the point that the 2009 team performed well enough with enough projectable young talent that it effectively salvaged Bruce Bochy & Brian Sabean’s jobs. The Giants probably don’t have much to look forward to next season (because, remember, they’re now chasing two more teams in their division for at least the next couple of years), but at least they can end this season feeling a little bit better about everything. That’s not quite the same as the 2009 setup to the championship era, but in an era of nothingness, good vibes is better than that.
Even delaying a celebration by the Diamondbacks would feel really good, because, if you stay alive for no other reason, please do it for spite.
Series details
Who: San Francisco Giants vs. Arizona Diamondbacks
Where: Chase Field, Phoenix, Arizona
When: Monday (6:40pm PT), Tuesday (6:40pm PT), Wednesday (6:40pm PT)
National broadcasts: MLB Network simulcast (Monday & Wednesday)
Projected starters
Monday: Hayden Birdsong vs. Eduardo Rodriguez
Tuesday: Logan Webb vs. Brandon Pfaadt
Wednesday: Mason Black vs. Zac Gallen
Where they stand
Dbacks, 87-69 (3rd in NLW, NLWC #2), 861 RS / 757 RA | Last 10 games: 5-5
Giants, 77-79 (4th in NLW, -10.0 WC), 664 RS / 671 RA | Last 10 games: 5-5
Diamondbacks to watch
Ketel Marte: The Giants missed him the last time these two teams met and since returning from injury on September 6th, we can backfill how that might’ve gone: badly for the Giants. He’s been white hot all season long with an overall triple slash of .295/.374/.566 and 35 home runs (93 RBI). In his last 59 PA since coming off the IL, he’s 13-for-48 with 5 HR 12 RBI and 10 walks to 14 strikeouts. He’s also got a stolen base in there. He makes the Diamondbacks’ lineup scarier on top of lengthening it. He leads off, hits 2nd, 3rd, even 6th.
The 30 year old second baseman/DH has played against the Giants 94 times in his career (392 PA) and is a career .305/.362/.520 hitter against them.
Eduardo Rodriguez: Despite an injury-riddled season limiting him to just 8 starts (he has a 5.09 ERA so far), the Giants, as a team against left-handed starting pitchers are just 18-25. That’s in spite of their lineup having a much better split against left-handed pitching:
vs. RHP: .232/.299/.395
vs. LHP: .252/.320/.411
He’s coming off an 11-strikeout game against the Rockies in Coors and in his last home start, he struck out 7 Brewers in 5 IP. Could be getting on a roll or the Giants’ right-handed batter contingent of Matt Chapman, Heliot Ramos, Mark Canha, and Tyler Fitzgerald have an opportunity to frustrate.
Corbin Carroll: He has an .876 OPS over his last 92 games so it’s safe to say that he salvaged his bad season (he had a sub-.600 OPS on June 5th). He’s gotten a lot of hits (18) and scored a lot of runs (18) here in September, but the power hasn’t quite followed him (8 XBH in 91 PA). He hasn’t terrorized the Giants in his career (.213/.292/.296), it only feels that way because, of course, in that fateful September series last year, he went 6-for-9 with a double, a homer, and 3 stolen bases. The Giants were in position to draft Carroll but went with Hunter Bishop instead. It’s a turning point we can look back on now and see another part of the path where the Giants and Dbacks diverged in their respective rebuilds.
Christian Walker & Eugenio Suarez: Another part of the path where the two franchises diverged is right here. Walker is a waiver claim that worked out perfectly — a first baseman who replaced a franchise icon (Paul Goldschmidt) very effectively (a .797 career OPS with AZ). Meanwhile, Suarez is a Jerry Dipoto salary dump that really helped the other team. In September, he’s slashing .380/.412/.722 with 8 home runs and 3 doubles as part of a 30 hit terror attack on major league pitching. He has just 5 walks against 23 strikeouts, though, so maybe the Giants can find some holes? Earlier in the month at Oracle Park, he homered and doubled as his 2 hits in the series. Meanwhile, Walker has torched the Giants in each of the last three seasons. He’s a combined 38-for-141 with 3 home runs, 11 doubles, a triple, and 34 walks to just 30 strikeouts.
Giants to watch
Heliot Ramos: Okay, so maybe he isn’t a .900+ OPS guy, but he’s certainly not the .584 OPS guys he’s been for most of September, nor the .701 guy he’s been on the road trip up to this point — unless we find out next season that, “No, wait, he is.” In 6 games against the Diamondbacks this season, he’s 7-for-20 with a pair of homers and a pair of doubles as well as 6 walks against only 4 strikeouts.
Mike Yastrzemski: If the Giants nontender him, he’ll be set to make considerably less than his ~$10 million project in arbitration and so all he can do is play really hard, do really well, and hope to get extremely lucky (that the Giants don’t continue to operate in a manner that works to undermine the arbitration system). He’s doing exactly that here at the end of the season with 7 homers here in September. His September batting average of .194 and OBP of .296 are suboptimal (.208 & .269 on the road trip), but he has a chance to tilt those two more in his favor over the next three games. He has a career line of .222/.303/.528 in Chase Field with 9 home runs, 4 doubles, and a triple.
Grant McCray: I suspect Brandon Pfaadt’s sweeper will cause him some pain, but I’m still interested to see what he can do against Pfaadt and Zac Gallen because Chase Field seems like a park where some of his mccrazy moonshots would become memorable highlights years from now, should he blossom into an All-Star. Still, a 7:1 strikeouts to walk ratio in 58 September plate appearances suggests he’s about to be taken to school.
The starting pitching matchups: When last we saw Birdsong against the Diamondbacks, he was in a daze, sort of cursing himself after giving up 5 walks. He’s looked better since, of course, but spite and revenge are powerful emotions that an athlete can utilize to boost performance. Then there’s Logan Webb, who has been pretty good overall here in the 2nd half (3.75 ERA /3.22 FIP in 74.1 IP), but a lackluster September to close out his 2024 (6.43 ERA / 3.31 FIP in 21 IP). The aforementioned home/road split is something to keep in mind, too — will Webb manage to pitch enough innings to break the 200 IP barrier, his personal goal for the season? Finally, this Mason Black is different from the Mason Black we saw earlier in the season, and as much as a sinker-sweeper chucker might not stand out as a great starting pitcher, he might be effective enough for the Giants to pull off a shocker.
Prediction time