Patrick Bailey to concussion IL; Joey Bart and Luis Matos recalled

In a season that has spun out of control, the San Francisco Giants have placed their lone position player bright spot on the concussion IL. Last night, catcher Patrick Bailey sustained a concussion in the bottom of the 7th inning on a play at the plate that gave the Cubs the lead for good. Joey Bart has been recalled to take his place.

Concussions are a potentially frightening ordeal and it’s never a good thing when the human brain makes contact with the skull. It’s usually not best practice to believe that an athlete returns fully healthy from one, at least after just seven days. So, there’s at least a nonzero chance that Bailey’s season has, effectively, ended.

If that’s the case, the Giants will have debuted and shown off an incredible defensive catcher, the envy of a lot of defensive metric systems. His 90 OPS+ was far from ideal, but it was certainly acceptable for a switch-hitting catcher. The Giants were 21-23 before his callup, 46-38 with him in the lineup, and 49-46 overall since his first start on May 20th. Sure, you could argue a confluence of other factors contributed to this meager success, but for fans of a franchise led by a future Hall of Fame catcher, it’s okay to let your mind jump to the conclusion that he served as a catalyst for a minor turnaround.

But Bailey couldn’t fix everything wrong with the Giants. No one player can; and, at least with this year’s squad, not even a group of players can. That’s okay. We should’ve known this season was always viewed by the front office as another stepping stone/rebuild year.

Bailey’s concussion probably takes him out of the running once and for all for being a dark horse Gold Glove candidate, so just throw that on the pile of disappointment along with Thairo Estrada, LaMonte Wade Jr., and J.D. Davis looking like borderline All-Stars at one point and the Giants as a team looking like a solid Wild Card contender.

Joey Bart will take Bailey’s spot which will at least serve to limit our exposure to Blake Sabol for the next week or so. In 57 games with the River Cats, he hit .248/.357/.399 (29 walks against 66 strikeouts), and just 6 home runs with 12 doubles. He really tore it up in August, though, with a .265/.393/.456 line in 68 at bats. His July was good, too: .263/.382/.421 in 57 at bats.

Left-hander Jordan Wicks starts for the Cubs today as they look to sweep the Giants and they took the opportunity to recall OF Luis Matos to replace Wade Meckler and, along with Bart, maximize their right-handedness. Matos’s at bats in August got better as the month went along, but he still hit .226/.268/.377 in 57 PA. His best stretch was over his final 9 games, though, where he hit .318/.348/.636 (.984 OPS) in 23 PA, with a home run and 4 doubles. In four September games for Sacramento: .267/.389/.733 in 15 at bats with 2 home runs and a double.