May 6-May 12 look back

Are you ready to look back on a week of Giants baseball? It happened! Giants baseball happened this week, and if you think that’s the most positive thing I can say about it, ha ha, don’t be ridiculous. That’s ridiculous. Of course there are more positive things I can say about that week, but I’m choosing not to because I don’t believe it’s in our national interest. Next question.

Record: 2-4

It was...not a good week. The Giants lost the final game in Cincinnati, split two in Colorado, then dropped two out of three to the Reds in San Francisco.

At least there weren’t any off-field issues!

Most memorable thing that happened: Derek Holland expressed his Opinions about the direction of the team

Aw, dang.

It’s not every day that a player openly criticizes his team’s front office and says they made him fake an injury. And while the team disputes that the injury was entirely faked, and both Bruce Bochy and Farhan Zaidi did their best to say the right things in the wake of Holland’s comments, the damage is done in the court of public noticing things, and the organization looks bad.

You can, of course, read all about this story right here on McCovey Chronicles dot com, your source for articles about things that are happening with the Giants. That’s a catchy slogan. I should pitch it to Bryan.

Best win: May 12, 6-5 over the Reds

They came back three different times, and that’s something special. As much as we all like to get on Twitter right after the Giants give up their obligatory first inning runs and say “Ballgame,” they’re showing some fight right now, and it’s good to see. Is it damning with faint praise to say that I’m happy that the Giants won’t necessarily not be worth my time just because they go down early? Oh yes, it is. But faint praise is still praise, so it’ll do.

Also, the game was actually super exciting and tense and stuff and the team still won. Good times.

Worst loss: May 10, 7-0 to the Reds

If you watched this whole thing, then you deserve a Croix de Why The Hell Did I Watch This Whole Thing. The Giants went down 4-0 early after a Tyler Austin error and a replay review on what looked like a double play extended the inning just long enough for fans to get disappointed again. Steven Duggar had a ball in his glove but couldn’t hold on when he hit the wall, and Dereck Rodriguez just kept giving up hard contact that brought home more runs.

The Giants would end up with just four hits, with three of them coming off the bat of Stephen Vogt, in the kind of deflating, boring game that you definitely turned off before Travis Bergen gave up three runs in the eighth inning. Good for you. There was no reason to watch that. If you did, you’d deserve a pin of some kind.

MVP: Madison Bumgarner

Look, on the one hand, neither of his starts were world beaters that they’ll sing songs about in Valhalla. They were both competent, but flawed, starts that the Giants ended up winning behind strong offensive performances.

On the other hand, he was a starting pitcher who wasn’t shooting runs out of a runs cannon while wearing a runs suit in the runsth inning at Runs Field for the Giants in two different starts this week, and apparently, those aren’t easy to find.

LVP: Drew Pomeranz

Boy, there are a lot of options here, aren’t they? It’s an embarrassment of opposite of riches. An embarrassment of debts, maybe. Has a ring to it.

Just on the pitching side, Drew Pomeranz was bad enough that he was phantom DLed, Dereck Rodriguez was bad enough that he got sent to the minors, Derek Holland was bad enough that he was sent to the bullpen, which might have had some unfortunate ancillary consequences, and Pat Venditte was bad enough that he got DFA’d and no one picked him up.

The answer here has to be Pomeranz. Rodriguez wasn’t really that bad, and Holland at least had the excuse that he was pitching through a blizzard in Colorado. Pomeranz just had an awful day in Cincinnati, where he absolutely could not do anything right and ended up getting pulled in the second inning. Venditte would complete the Giants’ entreaty to no, please, do something constructive with your time by giving up five more runs, but it was really Pomeranz who got the ball rolling uphill, just so it could come back down the hill and smash everyone in its way.

Takeaway:

The Giants are kind of a mess. There’s not really any other takeaway possible after their starters got sufficiently shellacked for one to get sent to AAA, one to get sent to the bullpen and publicly air some grievances, and one to get sent to the phantom DL. The one who got sent to the phantom DL isn’t even the one who complained about the phantom DL!

The Giants are losing games, they’re losing face, and they’re losing their clubhouse. Maybe their record this week was just two games under .500, but things were a lot worse than that.