SAN FRANCISCO — The Giants turned the page on their season prior to Tuesday night’s game against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
They recalled infield prospect Marco Luciano and announced their intention to give him ample opportunity at second base the rest of the way. They also recalled outfielder Luis Matos and will seek to fold him into their outfield rotation when possible. Meanwhile, they’ll continue to evaluate whether rookie center fielder Grant McCray can compete well enough at the plate to allow his defensive attributes to shine at the major-league level. They’ll hope that left fielder Heliot Ramos and shortstop Tyler Fitzgerald can carry their breakout seasons to the finish line. They’ll give a few more starts to Kyle Harrison and Hayden Birdsong so that the pair of rotation rookies can establish a bigger benchmark of innings to carry into next season. Young catcher Patrick Bailey still has lessons to learn about how to compete with heavier legs in the second half, too.
The Giants’ organizational goal, as Farhan Zaidi stated shortly after being hired as president of baseball operations six years ago, is to play meaningful baseball in September. Maybe that stated goal never sat well with you. Maybe it didn’t strike you as ambitious enough. Semantics aside, the Giants certainly didn’t approach this year as a season in transition. Not when they committed more than $400 million in new money and punted two of their top three draft picks while investing in their roster prior to opening day. The Giants attempted to address every glaring weakness this past offseason. Instead, as things shook out, this group hasn’t been strong enough to compete in what might be the major leagues’ most rigorous division. And results will always matter more than the intent. When expectations go unmet and when hopes fade, bitterness tends to fill the empty space.
So maybe there’s a catharsis in turning that metaphorical page. There will be time for blame and recriminations soon enough. For now, with the season down to a few weeks and a dozen dates at Third and King, there is still meaningful baseball to be played. It just won’t be for the stakes that anyone wanted or envisioned.
There’s also the downside of turning the metaphorical page and pivoting to young and developing players: there will be nights when they’ll get the metaphorical book thrown at them.
Luciano’s first game at second base included two fumbled grounders and a missed catch in the Giants’ 8-7 loss. Harrison’s waning fastball velocity became an issue again as he got tagged for six runs and didn’t make it out of the third inning. Fitzgerald booted a ball at shortstop. McCray was charged with an error, too, but the mistake was Bailey’s when the catcher whiffed at handing the hopping remnants of the throw from center field.
You can’t win a coin-flip play at the plate when the quarter gets dropped down a storm drain.
It nearly became a victory anyway – the messy kind that gets tacked up on the refrigerator with pride. Ramos had a pair of hits that helped to fuel a four-run rally in the eighth inning and another run-scoring rally in the ninth. Bailey, who hit .283 prior to the All-Star break and entered Tuesday hitting just .110 after it, pulled off the most surprising bunt from a catcher since Tom Berenger while bringing in a run in the eighth. Luciano served an RBI single to right field to keep the rally going.
Marco Luciano cuts the lead to one 💪 pic.twitter.com/w4PBgQfANf
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) September 4, 2024
And right-hander Tristan Beck had the moment most worth savoring. The right-hander returned to a major-league mound six months after he underwent surgery to repair an aneurysm in his right arm. Beck pitched 3 1/3 innings in relief of Harrison and received a wave of handshakes from inspired teammates after he walked off the mound.
“The biggest part was just taking so much time off throwing,” said Beck, who underwent vascular surgery on March 5. “No throwing, no lifting, which presented some unique challenges. It’s the longest I’ve ever gone without throwing a baseball, so it just made for a slow process, starting from complete scratch, playing 60-foot catch. It took a lot of patience but I give a lot of credit to our medical staff and coaching staff here. It was a clean process, good communication. We were on the same page. We made a schedule, stuck to it, and made small adjustments as needed.”
There are always small adjustments to be made when you are trying to compete at the game’s highest level. There are often big adjustments, too. For as much as Harrison’s coaches and teammates praise the way he’s competed in his first full season, there’s no ignoring the consternation over his fastball velocity. If he’s throwing 96-97 mph, like he did in instructional league and the minors, then his unique fastball characteristics at the top of the strike zone give him the equipment to be one of the game’s elite pitchers. If he’s struggling to touch 91-92 mph, as has been the case in the second half, then his ceiling is much lower.
When Harrison served up a two-run home run to Randal Grichuk in the first inning, it was the sixth shot he’s allowed on his fastball since the beginning of August. The young left-hander acknowledged that the velocity questions have grown from a curiosity to a concern.
“Yeah, I’d say at this point, a little bit,” Harrison said. “Just not really used to that my whole career. Definitely don’t want to see it at this stage, at this point in my life. Definitely pissed off about that. Because I know it’s not the work. I’ve been working my butt off. We’ll just try to figure it out. Got a couple starts left so let’s do it. Why not? Just got to keep a positive mentality.
“I know how good I can be. Just didn’t have my stuff tonight. But you’ve got to (have your stuff). No excuse for that. Going into the offseason, I’ll definitely work on it. I definitely learned a lot this year.”
It’s harder to gauge what lessons Luciano might be learning, other than to tune out a cacophony of mixed messages from the organization. When Zaidi traded Jorge Soler to the Atlanta Braves prior to the July 30 trade deadline, he explained that the move would free up at-bats at designated hitter so that Luciano could get exposure against major-league pitching while the matter of his ultimate defensive position remained up in the air. That commitment lasted five games before Luciano was sent back to Triple-A Sacramento.
But the Giants sensibly pivoted after losing two of three this past weekend to the last-place Miami Marlins. The decision to outright thairo Estrada, their opening day second baseman and 2023 Willie Mac Award winner, only made sense if it meant clearing the position for Luciano. Perhaps it took longer than necessary, but Luciano and Matos replaced backup catcher Blake Sabol and infielder Casey Schmitt on the roster Tuesday afternoon. And fans who had been clamoring for Luciano had to endure a few unvarnished moments.
Luciano let Bailey’s one-hop throw get past him and bound into center field in the second inning. Luciano couldn’t handle a grounder to his right when fielding it cleanly would have meant a decent shot at beating Eugenio Suarez in a footrace to record a potential inning-ending forceout in the third. Instead, Adrian Del Castillo was credited with a hit and Kevin Newman followed with a two-run single. Luciano also committed an error leading off the sixth on a grounder to his left – a mistake that Beck was able to pitch around in a scoreless inning.
Earlier this season, Luciano’s late-inning foibles at shortstop were so damaging that the Giants began the experiment of moving him to second base. Whether he’s being developed at this point to be a part of the Giants’ future or as a potential offseason trade chip, it’ll be important that Luciano begin to establish himself as trustworthy somewhere on the diamond.
“You know what, it’s going to be a learning process for him at the position,” Melvin said.
If Luciano is enduring a season of confusion or a crisis of confidence or both, the 22-year-old didn’t speak of it when he took questions after Tuesday’s game.
“It’s something that I can’t control,” he said through Spanish interpreter Erwin Higueros when asked about how he’s handled the mixed messages. “The only thing I can control is to show up, play hard, learn and do what the organization tells me to do. If they send me to (Double-A) Richmond, I’ll play hard in Richmond and learn. That’s what I can control.”
Richmond is where you’ll find the organization’s greatest current wellspring of hope. First baseman Bryce Eldridge mashed his way there after hitting .335/.442/.618 with 12 home runs in 48 games at High-A Eugene. The 19-year-old (who wears No.19) became the second-youngest player in Flying Squirrels franchise history. Based on his current trajectory, it’s not hard to imagine him reaching the big leagues and getting a beer shower for his first hit before he’s legally able to take a sip of it.
Of course, it’s not nearly as fun or hopeful to ponder the near-term destinations. Not when the Giants are 68-71 and, given the load of postseason-bound opponents on their September schedule, will be hard-pressed to finish above .500. And certainly not when it isn’t just the Los Angeles Dodgers who are pulling far ahead of them in the NL West. The Giants aren’t just 16 games behind the Dodgers. They’ve failed to measure up while lagging 10 1/2 games behind the San Diego Padres and 10 games behind the Diamondbacks, too.
Some pages can’t be turned fast enough.
(Top photo of Marco Luciano: Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images)
