I started writing a post with this title two weeks ago. The Giants were a season-worst six games under .500, and on the eve of the trade deadline, I was advocating for a full rebuild. I think calling for people’s jobs is the lowest class of fan behavior, but with the team headed for its seventh bottom-half finish in eight years, it was time for a change at the top. If the middle and the bottom had to change too, I was prepared to sell the pieces and start fresh.
The lede was a play on Joe Biden’s resignation letter—moderately clever, probably too dependent on the reader’s familiarity with Rehoboth Beach. It had a decent bit, I thought, comparing the Dodgers to Donald Trump. But the indifference I felt toward the team eventually won out, and I left it to languish in my drafts.
A lot has happened since then. Politics and baseball, as they do, moved on. The Giants made only marginal moves at the July 30 trade deadline, President of Baseball Operations Farhan Zaidi betting that reinforcements coming back from the injured list would have as much of an impact as any incoming piece and at a lower opportunity cost. But where this strategy has failed the Giants many times over in recent years (and where, let’s be clear, it may well fail again), the team responded to the challenge, climbing back to an even record.
Here’s where things stand: our favored franchise remains 4.5 games out of the playoffs, needing to jump four others in 40-odd remaining games to make the postseason. That’s the bar for success this season. It’s not likely to happen, as most of their competitors brought in additional talent at the trade deadline while the Giants stood pat.1 The weaknesses and weirdnesses that plagued this team two weeks ago remain very much in effect, and were we having this conversation in the not-so-distant era of two wild card teams instead of three, there would be little cause for hope at all. In two weeks, the Giants have ascended from embarrassment to mere mediocrity, and another two weeks could see it all undone. (I tell myself this as much as I tell you this.) That’s the rational perspective.
But there can be plenty of fun in irrationality, and there can be fun even in failure. It is, famously, a long season. And while I wasn’t paying attention, the Giants started playing fun baseball again.
Fun baseball is about Matt Chapman, previously and correctly identified by this here blog as a Guy You Like To Watch, having his best season at the plate in five years while casually doing things like this in the field.
Fun baseball is about Tyler Fitzgerald, the fringiest of fringy prospects by anyone’s evaluation, an afterthought even among a Giants organization that passed him over for Nick Ahmed at the beginning of the season, inexplicably hitting a number of home runs (11) in a number of games (17) that forces Giants fans to compare him to that one guy whose whole thing was hitting an obscene number of home runs. Look at that swing and tell me he’s not fun to watch..
Fun baseball is Blake Snell, the guy this team signed during the offseason for sixty million dollars, whose arrival was a sign that this team was finally, really going for it, whose contenious contract negotiations resulted in him arriving late to spring training and not making his first start until April 8th, who posted an 11+ ERA through his first three starts, who then hit the injured list twice, whose personal struggles mapped so closely with the team’s struggles, who then finally started to regain his Cy Young form in July, just in time to become trade bait for a real contender, who was nonetheless not traded—who may have actually asked the front office not to trade him because, I guess, he wanted to do something nice for me specifically—dominating the Reds last Friday night in an eleven-strikeout no-hitter.
No-hitters are a rare feat. Every game starts out with the chance to be a no-no, but only about two pitchers a year actually take it all the way. John Montefusco threw one for the Giants in 1976. No San Francisco pitcher would do it for another 33 years, until Jonathan Sánchez did in 2009. Then the dam broke: Matt Cain, 2012. Tim Lincecum, 2013. Tim Lincecum, 2014. Chris Heston—Chris Heston!—2015. The teams I grew up spoiled to watch won three World Series on the strength of homegrown pitching. It was goofy, improbable, and incredibly fun. Then it stopped.
Blake Snell is no homegrown talent, and this is no great Giants team. But a guy in your colors mowing down 27 straight batters while Dave Flemming gingerly dances around the subject—mentioning a no-hitter while it’s happening is a surefire jinx—it’s enough to stir up memories of better times. The will-they/won’t-they tension, accumulating over multiple hours, makes you forget you’re watching a no-stakes game in August. Reading Grant Brisbee’s post-no-hitter column is always the cherry on top.
I don’t know how I became the internet’s most pollyannaish baseball writer. I’m not exactly known for my lightness of spirit in real life. But I just can’t resist rooting for my sweet little guys. And I don’t have to write about them when they’re losing, which helps. So here we are, celebrating the one guy who the Giants perhaps most depended on to play well this year when he finally, belatedly playes (very, very) well. We’re holding out hope for a team that probably deserves none. Forgive the indiscretion. I just wonder—when it’s over, is it really over?
No offense to Mark Canha.
Another home run