The 2022 San Francisco Giants were the epitome of mediocre. They finished exactly at .500 for the first time in franchise history at 81-81. They went 44-37 at Oracle Park and 37-44 on the road. They were 7-7 in extra innings and 10-10 in interleague play. There's something poetic there, kind of sort of right? They never looked like a particularly good team except in the two months they played consistently well, in April and September. From May - August they were a chore to watch. They played a lot of bad defense. The bullpen couldn't hold leads or keep close games close. The offense hit way less home runs and couldn't really plate runners by stringing rallies together. The rotation turned out to be pretty okay, but it was top heavy. Logan Webb, Carlos Rodon, and Alex Cobb formed a strong trio atop the rotation, especially once Cobb settled in and stayed healthy. The backend of the rotation was a mess however. Alex Wood wasn't very good this year and then he got injured. Anthony DeSclafani was never fully healthy and he was truly awful in the handful of starts he made before the Giants shut him down for good. Jakob Junis pitched well briefly in the rotation until reverting to his career numbers. After that? The Giants didn't have an answer for the #4 and #5 spots in their rotation. After the quintet of Webb, Rodon, Cobb, Junis, and Wood the pitcher with the next most starts was... reliever John Brebbia (11 openers!). That's not ideal. The bullpen wound up starting more than 20 games for the Giants. That's a lot and it's not great. Not only does it add innings and exposure to your relievers, but it shows you don't have quality depth in the rotation. Not once did the Giants call up a minor league starter to start a game. Well, if you count Mauricio Llovera then they did once, but Sean Hjelle never started a game. Tristan Beck never started a game. A red hot Kyle Harrison never got a cup of coffee. For all the Giants emphasis on depth, for the second year in a row, they had to resort to way too many bullpen games because they didn't have enough starting pitching to fill in for injured or ineffective starters.
Which is actually crazy to point out because the starting pitching wasn't the problem for this 2022 team. The bullpen games, while maddening, weren't completely ineffective. The fact the offense regressed in all forms was the problem. The fact that no matter who's number manager Gabe Kapler called from the bullpen, that bullpenner was likely to give up runs, was a problem. The fact that any routine groundball or flyball to the outfield caused Giants fans to hold their breaths that a routine play could actually be made was a big problem. It all added up to a very meh season. The worst part is that a postseason berth was very gettable. Farhan Zaidi didn't have the pieces to get Juan Soto, which is distressing considering he's had 4 years to reshape the farm. Fine, no Soto. However, the fact that the team's two biggest bugaboos were the defense and the bullpen, it's a bit criminal Zaidi and Harris did nothing to upgrade the pen, one area you can actually fix midseason relatively easily. In fact, that lone decision may have cost them the season. Not that this very flawed Giants team likely would have survived the Wild Card round had they even made it, but it was the lack of effort. To its credit, the bullpen did start getting better down the stretch. Camilo Doval took another step to becoming a lights out lockdown closer and he was one of the few bright spots of the 2022 season. Scott Alexander, an ex-Dodger who got signed quietly to a minor league deal as he recovered from an injury, finally got healthy and was the best lefty relief option down the stretch and is under team control for 2023. Tyler Rogers righted the ship after a very shaky season. So the bullpen, while mostly being a disaster, ironed out some deficiencies towards the end of the season but it's still an area that Zaidi and new GM Pete Putila are going to have to address this offseason. Kapler for some reason seemed to really like Yunior Marte although he looked more bad than good. Cole Waites was the first Zaidi prospect to graduate to the MLB level, but he looked a bit green. Not sure Marte or Waites showed enough to be given a spot on the 2023 Opening Day roster. But Doval and Alexander and Rogers is a start. Even Sean Hjelle, who the team refused to allow to start a game, looked like he started feeling like he belonged towards the end of the year, potentially as a swing man or long reliever or emergency starter.
The biggest issue was the Giants weren't good enough to compete with the Dodgers and Padres. They got walloped by both their SoCal rivals, going 6-13 versus San Diego and a franchise worst 4-15 against the Dodgers, easily the biggest reason they missed the playoffs. The Giants were mediocre, they were mediocre against most of the other contenders, and they were better than most of the bad teams. They were exposed against LA and San Diego. They will need to find a way to better compete against LA and SD if they hope to hang in the NL West and Wildcard races in 2023. One thing that will definitely help will be the return of the balanced schedule and the first time ever baseball will have every team facing each team in the sport. Less games against LA and SD, but also less games against Arizona, who looked like a better team than the Giants by the end of the year despite finishing behind them in the standings. The Giants went 9-10 versus AZ in 2022. The new schedule bodes well for the Giants but they'll have a lot to do this offseason to turn this mediocre squad into a true contender by Opening Day '23. As it is, the Giants have a lot of question marks. Will Belt and Longoria be cut loose or will they return? Will new GM Pete Putila come in with new ideas to improve a farm system that got stagnant and regressed? Former GM Scott Harris was a phantom in the eyes of Giants fans but now he's running baseball operations in Detroit, but the hope is Putila will bring some Astros blueprints (not trash cans) to the Giants to help mimic Houston's success in consistently churning out elite young talent despite contending every year. Maybe Putila's presence can even help the Giants sign Carlos Correa, who will once again be a free agent after his one year sabbatical in Minnesota.
It'd be an exaggeration to say that Farhan Zaidi's and Gabe Kapler's seats are getting warm, but Zaidi will be entering his 5th season as president of baseball operations and outside of a dead-cat-bounce year in 2021 from all of his veterans and some genuine good fortune that got the Giants to 107 wins, Giants fans are growing disillusioned by the wide gap in talent between their local 9 and the teams down south. When Zaidi was hired, he came with pomp and circumstance and a track record of consistent success. That success hasn't yet been seen in San Francisco, but he's promised a big offseason. We'll see how it goes.
Another year of mediocrity might cause Giants fans to focus further on the star studded Warriors and the soap opera 49ers and leave Oracle Park more empty than it ever has been in its history. Here's hoping Zaidi and Putila and ownership have some fresh new ideas up their sleeves to make 2023 much more exciting than the boring, bad, non-entertaining squad that the 2022 team mostly was this season. Perhaps going back to the franchise's roots of pitching and defense is where they should focus.
At least us Giants fans got to see the Dodgers endure one of the most historical disappointing seasons of all time by losing in the NLDS to the Padres after winning a franchise record 111 games. Unfortunately, us Giants fans know what it feels like to win a franchise record number of games only to lose to a wildcard NL West opponent in the NLDS. Maybe it was karma for the Wilmer Flores check swing call. I like to think that it was.
Go get us a contender Putila and Zaidi!
Comments
Post a Comment