San Francisco Giants week in review: Another .500 week within a .500 season

Last week, the Giants played six games. They won three of them. They started the week 63-63. They finished it 66-66. They are the poltergeist that appears behind you when you say “.500” three times into a bathroom mirror with the lights off. Go on, try it. It’s not that bad. It’s also not that good.

The week was a perfect encapsulation of the season so far. The Giants played well enough at home against a bad team, but not so well that they completed a sweep. They played poorly on the road against a decent team, but not so poorly that they got swept.

The Giants are average. They’re a Ron Howard movie that gets 6.0 to 6.9 stars on IMDB. They’re a 10-game winning streak away from having a “Frost/Nixon” kind of season, and wackier things have happened.

The Giants are two pieces of bread with a single cold cut slice in the middle, no condiments or cheese. They might — might — surprise you with one (1) slice of red onion on the sandwich between now and the end of the season. And now that I’ve mixed my metaphors into a thick, flavorless paste, feel free to spread that on the sandwich, too.

But the 2024 Giants are simply an average team. It’s not a stupefyingly boring team, which is a huge improvement over last year. It’s just not enough of an improvement to make you happy.

Here’s the week that was. Three wins, three losses. Yep.

The Giants won a series, and I’m mad about it

The Giants scored 11 runs in a three-game series against the White Sox, who lost their 100th game of the season on Sunday. It would take a 32-winning streak for them to finish 62-100, which is undoubtedly the funniest possible outcome. Assuming that doesn’t happen, the Giants played three games against a team that’s making baseball history in the wrong way, and they couldn’t complete the three-game sweep. It’s hard to sweep a team — even an historically awful team — so don’t read too much into it.

Also, it’s not that hard to sweep this White Sox team. What I keep coming back to is the Giants scoring 11 runs in the three-game series. That’s 3.67 runs per game. They made the White Sox look like a normal team.

This bothered me so much that I wanted to see where the Giants ranked compared to other teams that played a three-game series against White Sox this season.

Not the worst, but solidly in the bottom half. At least they tied the Dodgers? (Who swept their series against the White Sox, of course.)

The White Sox have played at a 32-130 pace in the second half, but the Giants couldn’t score enough runs against them to sweep a series when they needed to. The inability to do anything against the Braves in extra innings will probably be the defining series of the season, but there’s something about this one that should bug you more than most. They were so close to doing exactly what they needed to do. All they needed to do was score runs against a team that couldn’t stop giving them up.

They still won the series, so maybe don’t get too mad. Getting a little mad is fine, though, as a treat.

Home sweet home, road sour road

This is also the perfect week to look at a phenomenon of the season. The Giants have been excellent at home and dreadful on the road. Yeah, that’s what typically happens for every team in any given baseball season. Except this disparity seems more dramatic than previous seasons. Is it?

Luckily, my job is tables. So I’ve got another one for you:

There are a few different variations of this kind of team. There’s the team that’s absolutely incredible at home and merely pretty good on the road, like the 1962 Giants. There’s the team that’s really good at home and pretty bad on the road, like the 2009 Giants. Then there’s the team that’s almost not awful at home but complete dookie on the road, like the 1985 Giants. This season’s team is the middle one. Pretty fun at home. Pretty lousy on the road.

It’s a little frustrating, but let’s all agree that this is about a million times better than what they did in 2019, where they were abominable at home and kinda OK on the road. Nobody wins in that scenario. Except for the Giants on the road. And everyone’s mad about it, as they should be.

This is the difference between a team like the 2024 Giants and a team that will go deep into the postseason. You can stack the WARs up like a bunch of poker chips, and you can make a wide swath of logical, responsible moves, but if your team can’t handle jet lag or being away from their families, it’s not going to be that effective.

Unless this is just random variance. Maybe slip a couple bottles of melatonin into some lockers, just in case.

The Giants have a history of pitchers posting excellent relief seasons. It’s normal (and expected) to paw through Barry Bonds’ Baseball-Reference page when you’re looking for some easy laughs, but have you ever spent a few minutes on Sergio Romo’s game log for 2009? It’s an absolute delight. It’s a procession of professional baseball men saying, “There’s no way I’m going to do something stupid, like chase a weird slider that lands in the visitors’ dugout,” only for them to do something stupid, like chase a weird slider that lands in the visitors’ dugout.

Walker is having one of those seasons. And last week, he faced 13 batters. He threw 50 pitches to those 13 batters, or just under four pitches per plate appearance. He struck out 10 of those batters.

Take a minute to do the math! He struck out 10 of the 13 batters he faced … but he averaged 3.8 pitches per plate appearance … carry the four …

It might have been the silliest stretch from a Giants reliever in modern history, which puts it on the short list of the silliest stretches from any reliever in modern history. And in honor of his silly week, I’m going to watch every one of his silliest sinkers and silliest sliders to declare two of them to be the Silliest Pitch of the Week.

What I’ve determined is that it’s not enough to just choose one of each pitch. There has to be separate categories for “in the strike zone” and “out of the strike zone.”

Here’s the silliest slider of the week in the strike zone:

And here’s the silliest one out of the strike zone:

See how that works? What’s the batter supposed to do with the first one? It was a strike. You should swing at pitches in the strike zone when there are two strikes on you. And once you’ve got that concept, you throw the same pitch, but an inch off the plate this time.

Here’s the silliest sinker of the week in the strike zone:

That’s a perfect pitch? That’s a perfect pitch. If someone threw that pitch to Babe Ruth, he would have folded himself into a paper airplane and flown into the ocean. There’s a lot to love about baseball, but one of my absolute favorite things is a pitch like this, where you absolutely can’t get mad at the batter. What’s Randy Arozarena supposed to do here? He’s looking for a mistake and also protecting, and then he gets a 97-mph sinker that looks like it’s heading for the other batter’s box. The only way he fouls that off is if he’s in swing mode, looking to swing at anything Walker throws.

The silliest sinker out of the strike zone is almost uncomfortable to watch. You know him as Justin Turner, but you almost knew him as Justin Thumbless.

I don’t know how anyone hits a baseball ever. Ryan Walker is currently the best example of why this should be impossible.

In an alternate universe, Ryan Striker has a 7.3 BB/9 and is about to get designated for assignment. This universe is a lot more fun.

Home run of the week

There were plenty of contenders, but this was an easy winner. It came in a two-strike count where Ramos was expecting chase bait but hoping for a hanger. If that was the plan, it was perfectly executed.

It gets bonus points for the disrespect before the pitch was thrown.

Ramso was in one episode of “Thundercats,” but he was even less popular than Snarf. Tough gig.

But this homer gets even more bonus points for becoming a lifelong memory for someone who wasn’t expecting it.

Are the Giants an average team? You betcha. Can they still make you think that baseball is worthwhile? Of course. That’s true even if you’re 429 feet away and not particularly interested in the Giants. Sometimes baseball is just cool.

(Top photo of Walker (right) and Curt Casali: Alika Jenner / Getty Images)