The Giants knew this would happen. There was no avoiding it.
It would be subtle at times. It would be obvious at times. It would have a destabilizing effect. It would have a cumulative effect.
The Giants were really, really going to miss Buster Posey this season.
They missed Posey’s presence throughout a critical game Monday night at Coors Field, when nine clean innings would have been the ideal way to start their longest road trip of the season. Instead, they made a series of mistakes in the Colorado Rockies’ five-run sixth inning.
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And amid the sludge that included a dropped fly ball and an overthrown cutoff man, there came a symbolic moment. It was when the Rockies’ Chris Owings came around third base and recognized an opportunity.
There was nobody covering home plate.
Chadwick Tromp made a rookie mistake and went after the overthrown ball in foul ground.
Whether the misplays are physical or mental or hatched in the incubator of inexperience, the Giants keep on making them this season. They entered Monday’s game having committed 11 errors, the most among National League clubs, and they added to their total with more shaky play in a 7-6 loss at Coors Field.
The first loosened lug nut came when right fielder Alex Dickerson muffed a deep fly ball into a triple. Five batters later, the steel-belted radial was rolling away on its own volition. Dickerson sailed a throw past cutoff man Brandon Crawford, Tromp didn’t realize or didn’t see that pitcher Wandy Peralta was backing it up, and the rookie catcher left the plate unguarded.
The extra run burned the Giants on a night when their two-run rally in the top of the ninth wasn’t enough.
“As a team, it’s really important we tighten up our play,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler said. “Particularly in one-run games at Coors Field, every out is so critical. Our offense has shown they can score runs in bunches. So we really need to keep every advantage we possibly can.”
For close to a decade, the Giants have been able to rely on a catcher who served as a coach on the field, who tightened up their play in countless immeasurable ways, who had a knack for setting the tempo and for keeping everyone on the same page. Then there are the measurable ways: his pitch-framing skills, his accurate arm, his total familiarity with opposing lineups. There is a reason that Posey’s defensive WAR remained so high even as his offensive production faded. There is a reason that he remained the most important Giant in the clubhouse when pitchers and catchers reported to Arizona in February.
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Back in November, Posey was the first player to publicly support Kapler’s hiring, and Posey sat in the gallery with the media for the manager’s introductory news conference. He was on board with new methods and new ideas. When Kapler asked him to wear a wristband behind the plate so that he could lean on data-driven pitch sequences, Posey thought long and hard about it. He always prized the importance of instinct, feel and experience. But he wasn’t so prideful to assume he knew everything. So in mid-March, just a few days before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the Cactus League, Posey decided he would do it. He would wear the wristband. When Kapler learned of that decision, the manager reacted with emotion in his voice.
“That’s awesome — just awesome,” Kapler said in March. “It just speaks to a willingness to try new things and to be open to change. And I think that those are the characteristics that suggest somebody who can extend their career and be great for another portion of their career.
“Every step of the way, Buster has been open to change, and … it’s not easy. It’s not easy to do something for your whole career one way and to be willing to be open and listen. And that’s the sign of somebody who is truly intelligent, in my opinion.”
The entire Giants team has been asked to embrace the unfamiliar under Kapler and to take on the challenge of being uncomfortable. Not two weeks into the season, it’s clear that it’s easier to make yourself uncomfortable in a workout than in the middle of a major-league game.
Dickerson was making just his second major-league start in right field — Kapler said he wanted Steven Duggar in left, where he perceived there was more ground to cover — and while the misplay on Ryan McMahon’s generously scored triple wasn’t a reflection of his lack of familiarity on that side of the field, the errant cutoff throw probably was.
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“There was a lot of moving parts to the play,” Dickerson said. “Visually, there was a lot going on. I haven’t played a ton of right, and part of it is getting used to that movement. Part of it caught my eye, and I sailed my throw. I just sped myself up is really what happened. Just gotta calm down and flip it in there.”
Johnny Cueto was cruising along, and the Giants led 4-1 on the strength of home run swings from Dickerson, Tromp and Mike Yastrzemski before the Rockies started their sixth-inning rally with a single from Charlie Blackmon — a hard grounder that probably would have been an out if Crawford hadn’t been shifted up the middle. Cueto had a visible reaction as he stepped off the mound. Then he served up a two-run home run to Nolan Arenado.
Cueto, following his season-opening start at Dodger Stadium, was critical of the coaching staff for lifting him so quickly. He was just as honest in his criticism on a postgame Zoom call with reporters on Monday when asked whether he customizes his pitch plan to generate contact into the shift.
“I pitch to get outs,” Cueto said through Spanish interpreter Erwin Higueros. “I don’t look and see where the defense is. I know it’s rolling to short. I told Crawford it’s not his fault. It’s the fault of the coaches who make the shifts. But that’s the game.”
Cueto was on his way toward delivering the kind of start the Giants desperately needed at the outset of a four-game series in this ballpark, which eats arms like a wood chipper. While he was mostly efficient with his pitches, he clearly had trouble getting into a rhythm. He stepped off several times and shook off Tromp, even when there weren’t runners on base.
The fastball to Arenado was the mistake that drove Cueto from the game, and Dickerson’s misplay with one out complicated what otherwise should have been an easy inning for Peralta. Matt Kemp tied the game with a single when Peralta doubled up on a changeup. Owings lashed another single. And then David Dahl rolled a grounder that would’ve been right at a straight-up second baseman. Instead, Donovan Solano was shifted over, the ball rolled through to Dickerson and the Giants went into full Yakety Sax mode.
Kapler said he watched the replay five times after the game and wasn’t certain that the Giants would have thrown out Owings at the plate if Tromp had remained to cover it.
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“It’s one of those jailbreak plays,” Kapler said. “I’m not sure there’s an answer.”
As for the shift that doesn’t go their way, Kapler said he goes to the video room with bench coach Kai Correa and third-base coach Ron Wotus after every game to “just beat up the play.”
“What could we have done differently?” Kapler said. “We’ll watch it over and over and then come back to it the next day. It’s never finished. It’s always a work in progress, and we’re always trying to raise the bar and put these guys in the best position to make plays.”
It’s not as if the shifts are handed down by royal decree. Crawford said that Correa goes over hitters with him before every series to seek input and suggest changes to positioning suggestions. And earlier in the game, Crawford threw out Blackmon because he had been playing to the right of second base. That leadoff single in the sixth was just an instance when the best combination of information and instincts didn’t work to the Giants’ benefit.
Good teams simply don’t allow those small bits of misfortune to spiral out of control into five-run innings. And the Giants have allowed that to happen far too often in their first 11 games.
“I’ve got to look at it as a fluke,” Dickerson said of his two mistakes. “Otherwise, that’s when these things steamroll into a bigger problem.”
By the time this season began, the Giants knew that Posey would not be a part of it. He and his wife, Kristen, spent several agonizing years attempting to adopt a baby. They were matched with a birth mother who was having identical twin girls. The babies happened to arrive on the day the Giants reconvened to stage their first workout on July 3. The decision was obvious and immune to criticism: Posey opted out for the health and safety of his family.
The baseball ramifications of that decision are pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but you’re here to read baseball analysis and I’m fortunate enough to get a paycheck to write about it.
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So yes, after less than a dozen games, it’s already become obvious: The Giants miss Posey.
They’ll just have to tighten up their disoriented and costly play without him. Because as life turned out, the wristbands that mattered were the pair of tiny ones in the NICU ward.
(Photo of Kapler, Peralta and Tromp: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)
Andrew Baggarly is a senior writer for The Athletic and covers the San Francisco Giants. He has covered Major League Baseball for more than two decades, including the Giants since 2004 for the Oakland Tribune, San Jose Mercury News and Comcast SportsNet Bay Area. He is the author of two books that document the most successful era in franchise history: “A Band of Misfits: Tales of the 2010 San Francisco Giants” and “Giant Splash: Bondsian Blasts, World Series Parades and Other Thrilling Moments By the Bay.” Follow Andrew on Twitter @extrabaggs
