The panic button

Don't ask for it at Staples. It'll be bad if they have one or if they don't

Before the Giants embarrassed the Dodgers at Chavez Ravine last night (a great decision that passed with unanimous support), the big story of the day was this report from Susan Slusser:

What do you mean Bryce Eldridge isn’t going to start? Why is he in the majors if he’s just going to be benched?

Okay, okay. Let’s all take a breath and calm down. The team has a plan, right? What’s the plan?

The Giants had indicated they didn’t want to bring up their best prospects unless there was consistent playing time for them. In this case, it appears that regular pinch-hit appearances count for that, and the days that Schmitt starts at first, Eldridge can pinch-hit and then play first, as he did Sunday. Monday, he was in the on-deck circle ready to hit for Schmitt in the ninth when the inning ended.

“If we were to look at it from a development scope, I think like last game, you pop in two at-bats with a lot on the line, those might be worth four regular at-bats in a game, if you can make that argument,” Vitello said, adding that with mixing in some starts at DH and first base, “the development part is not going to be slowed at all.”

I mean, you have to give the Giants this: that is technically a plan.

The first thing we should mention here is that in his time so far in the majors this year, Eldridge has not been particularly good. The second thing we should mention is that his time so far in the majors this year consists of 16 plate appearances, a sample size so small that actually, we can get rid of the first sentence in this paragraph and just call this the first thing we should mention. The third thing we should mention is that this is actually the second thing we should mention now.

It’s a lot to keep track of, but you can do it.

To me, the team’s explanation for Eldridge’s call-up and subsequent lack of playing time doesn’t really ring true. Just a week ago, when he was called up, this was the party line:

Vitello stopped short of saying Eldridge would play every day, but said the club’s 2023 first-round pick in the Amateur Draft would get some rope to make mistakes without fear of losing playing time.

Eldridge has, of course, already lost playing time, in that there has been a bunch of time in which he wasn’t playing, which is a loss. 16 plate appearances in 7 games is not that many. If you have one of the top prospects in the game, then you should find a way to get him in the lineup. A pinch hitting appearance isn’t going to teach him how starters attack the second or third time through a lineup. A pinch hit appearance just means that Eldridge, who told the Chronicle he still hasn’t figure out the best way to remain ready for a late-inning PH gig all game, is coming in cold against one of the other team’s best relievers. It’s setting him up for failure, and you know what you don’t want from your top prospect? Failure!

To me, though, the real question is this: Why was Eldridge called up at all? The team already knew that Casey Schmitt was having the best offensive season of any Giant, so he wasn’t going to leave the lineup anytime soon. The team also knew about the existence of Rafael Devers, and between him and Schmitt, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for Eldridge in the lineup.

So why is he on the team at all? Great question! Here’s what Buster Posey has said.

President of baseball operations Buster Posey said the shakeup resulted from “a combination of watching Bryce and watching Jesus [Rodriguez], and then the other piece is just how we’ve performed offensively and trying to jumpstart our offense a little bit. We certainly have underperformed.”

Jesus Rodriguez is playing almost every day, by the way.

But look at what Posey said. “Trying to jumpstart our offense a little bit.” In other words, the team was doing badly and Posey said, hey , let’s try this other thing. When asked about the logistics of roster construction and playing time concessions, Posey just kinda said, hey, we’ll figure it out as we go, but let’s get these new bats up to the city.

The Giants did not have a real plan. The Giants panicked and threw shit at the wall, hoping it would stick. This is not that different from the Farhan years. When the team was moribund, Farhan would pull guys up from AAA and figure the logistics out later. Luis Matos or Wade Meckler is on a hot streak? Bring him up. Marco Luciano has been a top prospect forever and now he’s in Sacramento and sure, he’s not actually doing well, but maybe the major league coaching staff will fix him.

It is one thing to do that with Meckler. It is entirely another to treat Luciano, who was still a top prospect in baseball but desperately needed more development, like he was a finished product who could immediately hit at an All-Star level. And this cost the Giants in all three cases. If the team hadn’t used up early option years on Matos, Meckler, or Luciano, perhaps they would still be in the organization. Maybe this team would be working to mold them into something, instead of the Brewers, Angels, or Yankees. Instead, Farhan panicked without a long-term contingency plan if everything went wrong.

I think you’re seeing some of that now with Eldridge. He was supposed to come up and start hitting, and force himself into the lineup every day. Instead, it turns out that hitting against major league pitchers is hard. The best way to learn to do it is to do it every day. The second best way is to do it every day in a lower pressure environment against somewhat worse pitching, but still good enough that they could be in the majors if everything were to go right for them.

Hell, I think you saw some of that with the Patrick Bailey trade. Buster thought, hey, we gotta do something, and then he went out there and did something by trading away a great defensive catcher who was also horrible on offense. This isn’t a criticism of the move, but Buster seems to like to work quickly. Gotta figure it out right now! More information might come in later, but it also might not, so let’s change it up as quickly as possible.

I worry about how thought-out these moves are for the long term. I wonder if the entire plan here is just to get through the short-term and then figure out the long-term later. I wonder if there is no real deeper idea behind what Eldridge is doing in the majors. I hope I’m wrong and that Buster is playing 29-dimensional chess, and keeping ahead of the league.

That’s not how it looks from the outside, though. From here, it looks like panic.