I couldn't make it through last night's game once I knew the score. I watched the odd route Brett Pill took on the two-out double, and I watched the horrible 0-2 fastball that Madison Bumgarner grooved to Paul Goldschmidt. But when it comes to stuff like this ...
... I didn't see it. Don't want to see it. What sort of insight could that game possibly offer?
"We’ve got to make a couple plays there," Bochy said. "Still, this offense has got to get going. The bats have got to get better. We’re just not mounting any rallies. That’s tough when you’re not putting any pressure on an opposing club. The defense, sure, it hurt us."But one run here … that’s not going to work."
That's what Bochy said after the game. It's a magical quote -- an exasperated manager delivering ballistic obvious. What the hell else can he say? The Giants need the players they have to play better, or they need better players. And when it comes to the players they have playing better, they're leaning on players who have hundreds or thousands of at-bats suggesting they are very, very, very unlikely to be productive major-league hitters. And those players are often playing out of position, or playing in position and fielding poorly.
It's not like we can pretend that Brandon Belt playing against lefties is the one missing ingredient, either. Maybe that would help, maybe it wouldn't ... but it probably wouldn't make much of a difference. Take Pablo Sandoval off the roster, and a bad lineup becomes awful. And when the awful lineup can't catch the ball, it makes for one of the more frustrating teams I've ever watched. The previous gold standard for frustrating was 2009, when the Giants had an otherworldly pitching staff and a dreadful lineup.
Figured that was always going to be the gold standard. But, ah, add in the not-catching-the-ball wrinkle! Now it's art. Still good enough to flirt with .500. Often bad enough to make you want to follow arena football instead. Go through the roster and pick out the hitters you think will do better, the ones who will improve.
...
Ayup. This is a team meeting expectations, for the most part. This is probably how the rest of the season is going to go. Only 130 more games to go! At least a couple of them will be really good. Let's just kick back and get really excited about those ones.
Fleh.