Time for the finger pointing game!

Everyone loves assigning blame for things!

Last night’s game was, in the words of Jimi Hendrix, a frustrating mess. The Giants were up, then down, then had a somewhat inspiring comeback, then went down again, then had an incredibly inspiring comeback, and then got their asses handed to them in the tenth inning. It had all the ups and downs of a game you remember for years if your team wins, and miserably grumble about if they lose.

Well here we are, miserable and grumbling.

It can be tempting to find a scapegoat for a loss like last night’s. You’re angry, the team clearly did a bunch of stuff wrong, and you want to say, “THAT stuff being done wrong is why the team lost!” That’s silly, of course; there is never just one player to blame for a loss on a baseball field. A lot of chefs put a lot of ingredients into that soup, and picking out just one who’s solely responsible for the taste doesn’t make a ton of sense. So no scapegoats, all right?

Anyway, let’s find a scapegoat.

Maybe the most obvious one is Tyler Rogers. Rogers entered a 2-2 game in the top of the eighth, immediately gave up a couple of garbage hits to put runners at second and third with no one out, got the next two outs without the runner at third crossing the plate, and then naturally gave up another garbage hit, which scored both runs. Tyler Rogers is one of the best relievers in baseball this year, and that inning doesn’t change that fact.

But damn, sometimes you just need someone who’s gonna come in and blow guys away, right? Rogers, for all his considerable virtues, isn’t that guy. He will occasionally have incredibly fucking annoying outings like last night’s, and that’s kinda just how he works. But he didn’t really do anything super wrong, so he can’t be considered the scapegoat. He got the results he was trying to get, and things just didn’t work out. That’s baseball!

Our next suspect is Matt Williams. We’re going to fast forward to the bottom of the ninth now. The Giants entered the inning still down 4-2, but they quickly got a rally going. With the bases loaded and no outs, Willy Adames hit what looked like a grand slam, but it fell into the left fielder’s glove about a foot from the wall. Still, all three runners advanced, and it was 4-3 with runners on second and third. The next hitter was Patrick Bailey, and due to how he’s been hitting this year, the outfield played very shallow. He lined a single to left field, the tying run scored, and third base coach Matt Williams waved in the back runner, Jung Hoo Lee.

With a good throw in from the outfield, Lee would have been out by 10 feet. With a bad throw, he was out by about 1 foot. The only chance Lee had to score would have been with a catastrophically bad throw in from the outfield, and that’s not how things went, or how Williams should have expected them to go. Instead, we saw the expected result: a tag applied to Lee just short of the plate, then a 2-out lineout from Christian Koss, and then a 10th inning.

Does this rise to the level of scapegoat? Probably not. It was a bad send, but an understandable one, considering the Giants’ offensive issues over the last couple of months. Koss’s lineout afterwards, which would have won the game if it wasn’t directly at the third baseman, would not have had a different result if Williams had held Lee at third. Perhaps Wilmer Flores would have gotten a hit if his at bat had happened there instead of in the bottom of the 10th, but we’ll never know.

Then there’s Camilo Doval, who gave up 4 runs in the top of the 10th to basically ice the game for Miami before the Giants even got to bat in extra innings. Doval’s performance reminded us all why he lost the closer job last year: he still showed flashes of dominance, but there were hangers and missed locations all inning, and he got pummeled because of it.

Considering that he did give up those four runs (three legitimate, one Manfred Man), Doval has a great argument for being the scapegoat here. But we also have to ask the question: why did the game get to this point? Why hadn’t the Giants already won?

Which is why the scapegoat here might be the entire offense. Sure, they eventually scored a couple runs in the ninth, but that only happened because Marlins closer Calvin Faucher hit the first two batters with pitches and then walked the third batter of the inning. The Giants capitalized off that, and hooray for them I guess, but they didn’t set up the inning themselves; they just happened to score some runs off of it.

Before that, though, the offense had spent just about the entire game flailing at just about everything the Marlins had throw. They just couldn’t get it going against Edward Cabrera, Ronny Henriquez, or Josh Simpson, scoring only two runs against those three guys, all of which came against Cabrera. Scoring a few more runs might mean that Tyler Rogers chooses his pitches differently, and would certainly mean that Matt Williams never even has the opportunity to get Jung Hoo Lee thrown out at the plate.

The problem is the offense, and it has been for months now. They can’t score two runs every game, and then hope to mount a ninth inning comeback, but that seems to be all they’re doing. Even Rafael Devers, for all his gifts, hasn’t helped them overcome this problem. They’re not scoring enough in the early innings. They haven’t been regularly scoring enough in the early innings since April. That’s the problem they need to solve. That’s why they’re the scapegoat.

Or maybe…it’s not. Maybe the real scapegoat here is SOCIETY, man. Did you ever think of THAT? Did I just BLOW YOUR MIND? Are you…

No? Doesn’t make sense? We’re sticking with the offense? You know what, yeah. Good call. Much more reasonable. The offense needs to do better.