The Giants didn't play the worst game in franchise history on Sunday
And proud we are of all of them
It was the bottom of the sixth inning. Curt Casali had just struck out against Julio Urias, the 16th consecutive Giant to be retired to start the game. The Giants, a first place team heading into Friday’s game, were now a game back of the Padres, and down 11-0, they weren’t going to be catching up today. Worst of all, it was the Dodgers who were embarrassing them, the Dodgers who had stumbled so badly while the Giants surged, the Dodgers who were supposed to be the best team in baseball, weren’t the best team in baseball, and now definitely were the best team in baseball.
If things had continued in that way, it would have been the worst game the Giants had ever played.
The Giants have never had a perfect game thrown against them. They have been on the receiving end of 16 no-hitters, 6 of them by the Dodgers (including the first one thrown against them, in 1891, when the Dodgers were called the Brooklyn Grooms), but never a perfect game. The Dodgers have had 19 no-nos thrown against them, including 3 perfect games, tied (with the Rays, amazingly, a 23-year old franchise) for the most of any team.
The Giants did not want to join the club of teams-that-had-had-a-perfect-game-thrown-against-them. More to the point, I did not want them to join that club. If they had, in a game that was never close to be competitive, when the Dodgers still had so many of their starts lost to the IL, and that loss etched in stone in everyone’s mind that the Giants were a team to be dismissed and ridiculed, then that would have been the bottom. As bad as it gets.
Instead, they chose not to do that! Mike Tauchman hit an infield single, and then a couple of batters later, Austin Slater homered to left. Not only was it not a perfect game, but it wasn’t a no-hitter or a shutout either! It was just a bad, humiliating loss to a team that will definitely finish at least 10 games up on the Giants in the standings by the end of the year. Phew!
It may seem odd to celebrate merely a regular blowout instead of a game you’d remember in 10 years with an “Oh God, remember that shit” groan. But the game was absolutely dismal for the first 5 innings with no redeeming qualities, like the 2017 season. Instead, we got something bad, but manageably bad. Regular bad, like the 2018 season. There were cool things in 2018. Andrew McCutchen was around for a while. They were a .500 team on August 31. Madison Bumgarner hit a 12th inning walk-off pinch hit single. There was plenty of bad stuff too, of course, but there were parts that were worth watching.
On Sunday, there were parts of the Giants game that were worth watching. Sure, they came after the outcome was a fait accompli, but they still came, which was not necessarily always going to be the case. There will be no embarrassment over the team having thoroughly abased themselves in front of the Dodgers, only the milder embarrassment of having been swept at home.
If you think I’m reaching for good news here, then yes, you’re right. That’s exactly what I’m doing. But the important thing is that I found it. Things could have been much, much worse. They weren’t! Our worst fears didn’t come true. That’s something to be celebrated, even when our most plausible fears absolutely did.