Speaker 1: Yeah, San Francisco Chronicle columnist and Killian joining us right now.
Speaker 1: Is covered Bay Area baseball for a while and great
Speaker 1: to have you back on FT. We appreciate the time
Speaker 1: as always and encourage everyone to check out Ann's work
Speaker 1: in the San Francisco Chronicle and to give her a
Speaker 1: follow at and Killian And we read your article about
Speaker 1: Bob Melvin and really the Giants disaster season. This is
Speaker 1: a team that's been in pretty good health. I was mentioning,
Speaker 1: compared to many other ball clubs, what's going on out there?
Speaker 2: You know, it's so weird.
Speaker 3: It's so hard to put a finger on exactly what's
Speaker 3: happened to them. You know, they had a really good
Speaker 3: start to the season. There was so much enthusiasm going on.
Speaker 3: The Paul Park has been packed. It's felt like the
Speaker 3: old days, you know, the World Series here in terms
Speaker 3: of the crowds coming in, the enthusiasm, the whole we
Speaker 3: believe in whatever Buster's doing kind of vibe.
Speaker 2: And then they got better, right.
Speaker 3: They made the biggest trade of probably the season in
Speaker 3: getting Devs in June in mid June, and they've just
Speaker 3: been horrendous since then.
Speaker 2: So the team.
Speaker 3: Got better, as you said, it's relatively healthy, and they've
Speaker 3: just like fallen off the table. The weird thing is
Speaker 3: they're still kind of in the wild part because I guess,
Speaker 3: thank you New York Mets. But it's pretty much been
Speaker 3: I mean they especially what I think has got to
Speaker 3: be driving ownership crazy is they are packing the ballpark
Speaker 3: and I've lost fourteen out of I believe it's fourteen
Speaker 3: at the last sixteen games at home.
Speaker 4: And I hate this because I was a Giant. They
Speaker 4: blamed me one year. So are the fans blaming Raffi Devers?
Speaker 4: Are they blaming what's that? What's that?
Speaker 2: Are they blaming Raffi?
Speaker 4: I don't think so because because since I know, because
Speaker 4: but the only reason I asked it is since they
Speaker 4: got him, they've had the worst record in baseball. Everything
Speaker 4: has kind of gone wrong. It's not his fault, but
Speaker 4: you know, they all people are always looking. We're not
Speaker 4: gonna blame Buster, clearly, and they don't think so now
Speaker 4: were they going to blame? And I just feel like,
Speaker 4: and it's not fair, But Raffie Devers is the one
Speaker 4: that people point to. Oh you know, they said he
Speaker 4: was a bad guy in Boston, So now he's a
Speaker 4: bad guy in San Francisco and we can't win with him,
Speaker 4: which I completely disagree with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think anyone who's who's dug in a
Speaker 3: little bit would disagree with that take, because you know,
Speaker 3: he wasn't He wasn't really a bad guy in Boston.
Speaker 3: They loved him in Boston. He just just you know,
Speaker 3: didn't want to play first base. He felt he felt
Speaker 3: like management hadn't been upfront with him about what was
Speaker 3: going on. But you know, he's playing first base. He's
Speaker 3: actually doing a pretty good job at first base. He
Speaker 3: seems to be very welcomed, you know, in the clubhouse.
Speaker 3: And that's an other thing that the clubhouse is good.
Speaker 3: The chemistry seems good, the players seem cohesive.
Speaker 2: So when you're looking, you know how it goes in baseball.
Speaker 3: The manager gets blamed and a lot of people are
Speaker 3: pointing the finger at Bob Melvin And is that fair?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. But is it? Is it predictable? Absolutely?
Speaker 3: And you know, Bob knows that he's in his twenty
Speaker 3: second year, he's he's been fired, he's been to the playoffs,
Speaker 3: he's seen it all. So I think that is kind
Speaker 3: of where the most of the blame lies, but it's
Speaker 3: the Devers part is really puzzling, is like, how do
Speaker 3: you literally make your team better, like much better hitting wise,
Speaker 3: and then you get worse. It's it's and and you know,
Speaker 3: they just aren't producing. They they don't get runners into
Speaker 3: scoring position. When they do get them into scoring position,
Speaker 3: they don't drive them in. It's just it's it's it's
Speaker 3: roster construction is probably the main issue.
Speaker 2: And that's something Buster is going to have to address
Speaker 2: in the in the off season.
Speaker 5: Well, Buster's not going to fire himself.
Speaker 4: Blame me, Blame me like you guys did. Twenty one
Speaker 4: year is a go in two thousand. Foere, you can
Speaker 4: blame me. I don't care. You don't blame me, and
Speaker 4: it's fine.
Speaker 5: It's fine.
Speaker 4: Hylon blame me and Giants Fance, it's my fault.
Speaker 3: Well, you know they they their their favorite person aside
Speaker 3: from you. A j to blame has been far Han
Speaker 3: And actually, you know, when it comes.
Speaker 4: To Gae and Gabe, don't forget Gabe and.
Speaker 2: Gay and Gay but and you know, I mean Melvin.
Speaker 2: That was the thing.
Speaker 3: Like Melvin came in after Gabe got fired, and you know,
Speaker 3: I think there was really a sense from the players
Speaker 3: and also from the the fan base like, Okay, now
Speaker 3: we're gonna we have a real baseball manager, and we're
Speaker 3: gonna he's gonna it's gonna make sense to us. And
Speaker 3: Buster has definitely tried to kind of have that. You know,
Speaker 3: he didn't want to do the far Han train back
Speaker 3: and forth to Triple A, you know, platooning everything player
Speaker 3: you know, nobody knows who's playing when like no recognizable
Speaker 3: players on the on the all that stuff was kind
Speaker 3: of killing the fan base. People just weren't enjoying it.
Speaker 3: So Buster, you know, very much, at the beginning of
Speaker 3: the year tried to like stabilize the lineup and and
Speaker 3: bring in some key pieces. And they are a better
Speaker 3: team than they than they were now. Some of the
Speaker 3: young players, their development doesn't seem great, and that's something
Speaker 3: that you can probably have to dig deeper down into
Speaker 3: the farm system than I do, as I'm not a
Speaker 3: beat writer, I'm a columnist, but you know, and and certainly,
Speaker 3: while some of far Han's things that he did were fantastic,
Speaker 3: like Robbie Ray, others you know, are a little bit
Speaker 3: more questionable.
Speaker 2: So people still like to blame far Han too.
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Speaker 5: Okay, farhun just catching strays he's not even out there.
Speaker 5: Far Han's like, I'm working for I'm working for the
Speaker 5: enemy exact. I love I loved Farhun and I got
Speaker 5: way less rich than aj. I should be to blame.
Speaker 5: So if you could blame somebody, you can blame me.
Speaker 5: But my question is back to Bob Melvin. He shouldn't
Speaker 5: take the blame. But it's not like what Buster used
Speaker 5: to work with with Bochi Boch. He's got three world championships,
Speaker 5: goes to Texas, he gets a fourth, Bob Melvin hasn't.
Speaker 5: Is there a shorter leash because Buster knows what winning
Speaker 5: in the winning a World Series actually takes and maybe
Speaker 5: he doesn't see that in Bob.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think for sure there's a shorter leash. I
Speaker 3: don't think that anything's going to happen during the season.
Speaker 3: I don't think Buster would do that. I think he
Speaker 3: would be very adverse to throwing, you know, throwing Bob
Speaker 3: under the bus, making it look like he blames him,
Speaker 3: because I think Buster is from the things he's said
Speaker 3: during the slide, you know, it's more he feels it's
Speaker 3: more about the.
Speaker 2: Players or not.
Speaker 3: But I think after this kind of collapse, I think
Speaker 3: everything has to be looked at in the off season,
Speaker 3: and I and I, you know, they they extended, they
Speaker 3: they it was kind of weird they did the Dever's trade.
Speaker 3: They extended Bob they picked up his option for next
Speaker 3: year right away, like on July first. And did they
Speaker 3: need to do that.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 3: But I think, you know, Buster is really about stability,
Speaker 3: and I think that was kind of his way of saying,
Speaker 3: we like the direction we're going in. In July first,
Speaker 3: there was reason to like the direction they had been
Speaker 3: going in for most of the season. Not so much now,
Speaker 3: So I think I think there's going to be a
Speaker 3: hard look. I think I think Buster probably has some
Speaker 3: people in mind that he would think about as as
Speaker 3: the next manager. I don't think he is naive enough
Speaker 3: to think he can rehire Bocie or recreate Bochie in
Speaker 3: any way. But you know, that's that's the thing about
Speaker 3: what Bochi and Brian Sadian did and Buster some big
Speaker 3: shoes to fill, and and that legacy lingers on even
Speaker 3: though it's been a decade. They're they're you know, that
Speaker 3: that expectation and and also kind of the way, you know,
Speaker 3: if you remember the way that that's that era started
Speaker 3: in twenty ten was, you know, pitching in defense and
Speaker 3: a bunch of scrappy kind of take them off, the
Speaker 3: junk junkie kind of players that not a lot of
Speaker 3: people knew, with Buster ultimately being the centerpiece. And so
Speaker 3: there's a strong belief that that can somehow happen again,
Speaker 3: even in this new and different era. But yeah, they've
Speaker 3: got some serious work ahead of them in the off season,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 4: I have an idea who to blame. Four seam elevated fastballs.
Speaker 4: That's what it is. That's their problem because they can't
Speaker 4: hit them, and they keep swinging at them. That's what
Speaker 4: they need to blame. I don't know fault that is,
Speaker 4: but if you keep swinging at a pitch like the
Speaker 4: Rangers the last year and a half or so, they
Speaker 4: can't hit it up here, Pitchers keep throwing it to them,
Speaker 4: they keep not hitting it, but they keep swinging at it.
Speaker 4: So at some point, you know, I don't know how
Speaker 4: to make the adjustment, but someone's gonna have to make
Speaker 4: an adjustment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's another guy who's getting a lot of strays,
Speaker 3: is Pat Burrell, the hitting instructor. But I do think
Speaker 3: that there's you know, and we hear this throughout baseball
Speaker 3: and throughout different systems. You know that that there's you know,
Speaker 3: certain things that are emphasized throughout form systems and certain
Speaker 3: things aren't. And you kind of see it when players
Speaker 3: get to the big leagues and have they really been
Speaker 3: developed in the way they should be. I don't know,
Speaker 3: that's that's way beyond my pay grade, but yeah, they can't.
Speaker 3: They're not good at the plate. They they're awful against
Speaker 3: left handers. They're it's just it's, yeah, it's it's not
Speaker 3: been good.
Speaker 1: No doubt. Hey, I wanted to ask you about the
Speaker 1: part in the story where you're like, they look defeated.
Speaker 1: Do you have any examples of that? Have players said
Speaker 1: anything about that? You know, that's the one part where
Speaker 1: you can be a team pretty much out of the
Speaker 1: mix and still be hustling right and showing up for
Speaker 1: a fan base that is showing up for you despite
Speaker 1: a disappointing season. To me, that's the part where I'm like,
Speaker 1: is there a manager situation that can be handled here
Speaker 1: a little bit differently? And I know in your article
Speaker 1: you wrote like he's tried it all right, you're throwing
Speaker 1: darts out of board, Be strict, be loose, you know,
Speaker 1: just everything and it's not working. But what's going on
Speaker 1: with a team that looks like they're not as into
Speaker 1: it as some others?
Speaker 3: Well, and the weird thing is, at the beginning of
Speaker 3: the season, they were totally into it. They had pep
Speaker 3: in the clubhouse, in the dugout, they were cohesive.
Speaker 2: And I still think they're cohesive.
Speaker 3: But this has been such a bad historically bad a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks or two months that when things go wrong,
Speaker 3: they it just looks like they're kind of giving up,
Speaker 3: they're kind of defeated. I also think they they're tight,
Speaker 3: and even Elliott Ramo said that a few weeks ago.
Speaker 2: He said, I just.
Speaker 3: Am out there trying not to make a mistake. Well,
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the worst way to play any sport,
Speaker 3: that's when you make mistakes, right, So I think there's
Speaker 3: some mental stuff going on, and I think that it's
Speaker 3: also I mean, you know, you see it with losing
Speaker 3: teams when when when things are going bad and then
Speaker 3: a game starts and something bad happens, they're just there's
Speaker 3: not a lot of resiliency there. And I think we've
Speaker 3: we've kind of seen that over these last few weeks
Speaker 3: with the Giants, and I don't know that that is
Speaker 3: Bob's fault or if it's just human nature that that
Speaker 3: when things go bad that you just kind of are like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, here we go again, especially with you know,
Speaker 3: it's a relatively young team. There's some key veterans, but
Speaker 3: but you know, there's a lot of them that haven't
Speaker 3: had a lot of success. The weird one of the
Speaker 3: weirdest things of the season is is Justin Verlander. I mean,
Speaker 3: he's just been had the hardest luck, you know, ever
Speaker 3: and just but he seems solid and seems like he
Speaker 3: wants to keep pitching and hasn't been you know, blaming
Speaker 3: anyone about his terrible record, and it's it's uh but
Speaker 3: but yeah, it's just it's just been a weird season.
Speaker 3: Someone asked me like, isn't this boring? And I'm like,
Speaker 3: it's actually not boring at all. The past couple of
Speaker 3: years with far ha Han was like a continuous loop
Speaker 3: of boredom. This this has actually been interesting in how
Speaker 3: bad it's been.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you got lots to write about, but I gotta
Speaker 4: say this. You want to know when it's not fun
Speaker 4: for players when you're twenty fifth and run scored barely
Speaker 4: for a game and you don't get a lot of hits.
Speaker 5: That's when you don't have energy.
Speaker 4: You show me a team that's weren't a lot of
Speaker 4: runs and they're getting a lot of hits in guess
Speaker 4: what Everyone's like, Yeah, you score four runs a game
Speaker 4: and your twenty fifth in the league. Everyone's like, I
Speaker 4: don't want to get up because I'm going to make
Speaker 4: it out and uh da da da da da da.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I understand it, but it's hard when you're
Speaker 4: not scoring runs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And on sun last Sunday, their last game of
Speaker 3: their home stand, and then Monday in San Diego, they
Speaker 3: scored runs and they were they showed great energy, they
Speaker 3: did not look defeated, and they were not defeated. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean it's all kind of a function, a function
Speaker 3: of the game. But they've got you know, they've got
Speaker 3: uh they've got two more games against the Padres. Then
Speaker 3: they got to go to Milwaukee, the land of winners,
Speaker 3: so you know they've got and then I.
Speaker 2: Think they've got the Cubs.
Speaker 3: They've got twice more with the Dodgers, so they've got
Speaker 3: a lot of tough opponents coming up in these last
Speaker 3: few weeks and we'll just kind of see what they're
Speaker 3: made of.
Speaker 1: And thanks for covering and bousally joining us on this.
Speaker 1: It's good stuff. I really enjoy reading all of your work.
Speaker 1: We appreciate the time.
Speaker 2: Good to see you all right, Thanks for having me guys,