Giants vs. Padres, 9/24: Hunter Pence is leading off

The biggest news of the day is that Hunter Pence is leading off tonight against a right-handed pitcher. Bryan Mitchell started against the Giants exactly one week ago in San Diego and gave up a pair of home runs (one to Brandon Crawford, one to Evan Longoria) and 4 runs total in the Giants’ 4-2 win. He’s been really bad this season...

BUT SO HAVE THE PADRES AND GIANTS.

If the Padres lose all their games this week, they’d reach 100 on the season. Meanwhile, the Giants need to win three of these final six games just to avoid their worst September in history. We’re sort of watching two dumpster fires slowly rolling towards the middle of a vacant lot where there’s a 50-foot tower of human excrement seemingly awaiting their arrivals. Once those dumpsters collide with the tower of poop, the tower will catch fire.

No one’s life will be drastically altered by a tower of poop catching fire, but they’ll acknowledge that a tower of poop did catch fire. They will not necessarily care how the tower of poop came to catch fire. They might care a little bit more about how the poop got there in the first place. Is the poop the audience? Are we that tower? And these two flaming dumpsters, the Giants and the Padres, are on a collision course with our waste? Is that the metaphor?

Not a metaphor, but actually kind of a metaphor: Bobby Evans is OUT as the Giants’ general manager, effective two hours ago. He’s at least partly responsible for this dumpster fire. One thing that might need to be challenged a little bit more is the complaint about injuries. Every team experiences injuries. The good teams account for injuries when constructing their rosters and building their organizations. It’s not witchcraft, it’s scouting and planning.

For far too long have the Giants leaned on hope as a strategy. What works in a Mission: Impossible movie doesn’t work long-term in a $10 billion industry.

Lineups:

I keep forgetting that Nick Hundley is the team’s starting catcher.

Franmil and Francisco in the same lineup. Here we go. You don’t have to like GMs gutting organizations to get a bunch of shiny prospects, but when you get a chance to watch these shiny prospects actually play, it’s worth shutting out all the other stuff just to watch them do their thing and see what all the excitement’s about.

Derek Holland (7-8, 3.80 FIP) might get one more start after this one, but if he doesn’t, he’ll be able to walk away from this one proud of the results. He salvaged his career at 31 years old and guaranteed himself at least one more season of being a major league pitcher. At 31 years old, I was definitely at a bit of a professional crossroads and was glad I managed to turn it around.

He’s struck out 40 in his last seven starts (39.0 IP) and has a 2.31 ERA. He hasn’t pitched more than six innings, however, so the Giants’ beat up bullpen might get a workout again tonight. Still, he came out of nowhere and managed to pitch the entire season without any setbacks.

Bryan Mitchell (1-4, 6.57 FIP) is bad, but as someone who was once 27 years old, I’ve gotta say: I wasn’t a professional anything at 27. So, no matter what happens for the rest of Bryan Mitchell’s career, he’ll always have his major league service time. It’s also rare when you get to see pitchers with more walks (40) than strikeouts (31). You’d like to believe the Giants will win this one easily, but ultimately, we’re probably just rooting for rolling dumpsters.

Let’s speculate on the next GM.