Are the Giants bad now?
They lost multiple games in a row and their NL West lead has dwindled. IS IT PANIC TIME BEFORE YOU ANSWER I HAVE ALREADY STARTED PANICKING.
The Giants are doomed.
Don’t bother disagreeing or bringing up facts or whatever. I know it, you know it, every Giants fan knows it, and soon the whole baseball world will know it. A few days ago, they were up on the Dodgers by multiple games, and today they aren’t, and therefore they’re doomed.
How did the Giants get to this state of doomdom? Well, they stopped hitting. Here’s the complete list of Giants with 10 plate appearances over the last week (coming into the game yesterday) and at least a .300 OBP: LaMonte Wade Jr (.321), Kris Bryant (.353), Darin Ruf (.438).
That’s it. The complete list of Giants who are getting on base at even a mediocre clip. So even though the team has hit plenty of homers over the last week, they’ve come without anyone on base. On the season, the Giants as a team have a .323 OBP, good for 10th in the majors, but for a week playing against some of the best teams in baseball (and also the Mets), they’ve had exactly two players with significant playing time clear that bar (Austin Slater did have a .444 OBP in 9 plate appearances, but that was an 0-for-5 with 2 walks and 2 Hit By Pitches, so he only gets partial credit).
So, despite what some corners of Twitter would have you believe, the question isn’t “Will the Giants ever win another game again?” The question is “Can they hit against good pitching?” The Giants have now played 6 straight games against division leaders, and have had trouble hitting in most of them. The pitching has been inconsistent, but has only taken them completely out of two games. The problem, then, is the hitting.
It sure seems like you can tell a narrative about what’s gone wrong. They faced still competition and buckled. The Braves are really good, and the Brewers are really good, and both of them have made the Giants look really bad.
You can point to health. Evan Longoria remains injured, and when he was healthy, he was having a great year. Tommy La Stella has been out for a few days. Donovan Solano has COVID and is holed up in a hotel room in New York. These are significant absences. But the biggest absence of all is a guy who’s in the lineup: Buster Posey.
In the eighth inning last night, Buster Posey took a first pitch fastball for a strike. “One to measure, one to rake,” Mike Krukow said, because that’s what he says in that situation. Then Posey took a second pitch fastball down the middle for a strike. A pitch or two later, he struck out on a high fastball. Posey has not been raking balls. Over the last two weeks, he’s hitting .125/.200/.219, and his only extra base hit was that homer in Atlanta that had an expected batting average of .040 off the bat and just snuck past the foul pole.
The Giants’ slump has been a Buster Posey slump. By no means is he the only one, but his is the biggest bat in the lineup that has been utterly silent during this rough stretch. He was hurt for a few days, and I don’t want to minimize that, but the Giants need Buster Posey’s bat and it has been absent. He’s been striking out a ton, he’s not hitting the ball hard, and even his RBI single last night was a 62 MPH squibber that happened to be away from the defense.
Posey’s not the only one, of course. Curt Casali has been significantly worse than Posey when he’s been in. Brandon Crawford has been ice cold. Mike Yastrzemski hasn’t looked right, and Alex Dickerson did nothing before his pinch hit double last night. But the story of the 2021 Giants resurgence was, in a lot of ways, the story of Buster Posey’s resurgence. The story of their slump is also the story of Buster Posey’s slump. The team needs Posey to be the player who can carry a team. Otherwise, considering how talented the Dodgers are, the Giants are going to have a date with the Wild Card Game.