A Littell less conversation
Wasn't sure I was going to write about this, but then I thought of the pun, so what choice did I have?
On Tuesday night, the Giants were in a tight spot. They’d taken a 3-0 lead into the 8th inning, but Gabe Kapler put Zack Littell in the game, and Littell started the inning off by giving up a double, then a walk, then two singles. He got a double play after that, but it was still a 3-2 game with the tying run on third base. Kapler came out to put in Scott Alexander to replace Littell, and Littell was not happy:
A minute or so later, as you can see in the video, Kapler and Littell went into the tunnel and had what I’m sure was a very pleasant, non-contentious chat. About 18 hours after that, Littell was optioned to Sacramento.
Naturally, people were skeptical that it was, as Kapler said, “very much a baseball decision.” He hedged a bit by adding that bring a good teammate is part of performance, but the message he tried to send was clear: Zack Littell was not optioned for yelling at Gabe Kapler. Zack Littell was optioned because optioning him would allow the Giants to call up a player who would help them win more games.
The message many fans received was different, and they were not happy about it:
Counterpoint: Zack Littell has been quite bad this year.
Counterpoint: Zack Littell has been quite bad this year.
Counterpoint: Zack Littell has been quite bad this year.
Man, I’m so good at this. I should have been on my high school debate team.
Yes, Littell likely pissed Kapler off during the game on Tuesday. But also, Zack Littell has been quite bad this year. In 44.1 innings, he’s given up 25 earned runs, good for a 5.08 ERA. According to Fangraphs, he’s been worth -0.3 wins. Littell basically should be relegated to mop-up work this year, which means that, for a team whose bullpen struggles even when everyone is healthy, it makes sense to demote him in the hopes that the next guy will be better.
Or, as prominent Bay Area Sports Personality Larry Krueger put it:
Boy, you can always count on a Sports Radio Guy to give a hot take based on a bunch of dumb bullshit. It’s almost a relief to see the world work in such a predictable way.
Littell deserved to get sent down. Coonrod, who was traded after a spectacularly putrid 2020 season in which he had an ERA of almost 10, should have been traded. Larry Krueger, fired by KNBR in 2005 for saying the Giants were full of “brain-dead Caribbean players hacking at slop nightly” and eventually re-hired only to get fired again early this year, presumably has a defense mechanism where he doesn’t understand that a person can deserve to lose his job because he sucks.
People are mad at Gabe Kapler because the Giants are much worse than they were last year. They are throwing demerits at him like confetti, insisting that he’s the problem. And look, I don’t know what’s going on inside the clubhouse (other than Wilmer Flores liking it enough to stick around for another couple of years), but: there is a part of this that is normal. When a team wildly overperforms one year, they are almost guaranteed to be a disappointment the next year. That’s the Giants. When a team is a disappointment, people blame the manager. That’s the job.
So it’s easy to look at the Giants sending Littell down to Sacramento and think, “This is because he yelled at Gabe Kapler.” And no, that certainly didn’t help his cause. But he deserved it, and the River Cats roster has plenty of relievers who can come up to the majors and at least not be worse than Littell. It’s not a tough call to let one of them have a shot at it instead of the dude with a 5 ERA and a 4.65 FIP.
Look, I don’t want to be too hard on Littell here (he said after 600 words of being too hard on Littell), who certainly understood the mistake he made and answered every media question after the game without being visibly upset or offended by anything he was asked. He wanted a shot to get out of the inning himself, and reacted badly when he didn’t get it, at least partially out of frustration that he had pitched so poorly that inning. Shit happens, even when that particular shit should not have happened. I get it.
At the same time, he probably should have been sent down already. Whatever he’s been doing this season hasn’t worked, and the Giants need someone whose things might work. There doesn’t have to be a conspiracy or a secret plot to understand what’s going on.
The Giants have been bad. They tried to get a little better, at the expense of the guy who yelled on the field. It’s not that hard to understand. There’s definitely no reason to start a whole conspiracy about it.
I had no idea that getting rid of Littell was so controversial! He stinks!
"presumably [Krueger] has a defense mechanism where he doesn’t understand that a person can deserve to lose his job because he sucks."
GOLD, JERRY - ABSOLUTE GOLD
The worse a Giants take gets on Twitter the greater the likelihood that tweet is tagged with @sportslarryk. He is a magnet for terrible opinions.