Free For All Friday #18

Today marks the end of the first full week of daily hanging sliders. I hope you’re enjoying the more frequent content for both paid and free subscribers. Feel free to drop a line and tell me what’s working and what else you’d like to see as we get into the postseason.

To recap, paid subscribers received three newsletters this week: Monday, on the near no-hitters on Sunday; Tuesday, on the Rays’ starter Tyler Glasnow; and Thursday, on how the Brewers are in first place with such a paltry offense—plus the two free issues. Free subscribers received two newsletters this week: today and Wednesday, on whether the Braves have any weakness at all and, if so, what it may be.

The National League Wild Card race is crazy

On Wednesday night, a friend asked to me explain where the Giants stood in the Wild Card race and what would need to happen for them to sneak in as the third Wild Card team. I gave him the basic rundown and then thought about the tiebreaker scenarios should the Diamondbacks, Reds, Marlins, and Giants end up in a 4-way tie for the final spot.

Then my head exploded.

Heading into Friday’s games, the National League Wild Card standings look like this:

Four teams vying for one spot separated by percentage points with 16 days left in the season.

Remember that MLB eliminated all tiebreaker games in favor of a triage formula to eliminate teams. As this MLB.com article explains, ties are broken first by head to head record, then by intradivision record, the interdivisional record with the teams’ league, and then by a corn hole tournament. Okay, the last part isn’t true, but it might as well be.

Andrew Baggarly, the Giants beat writer over at The Athletic, figured out all the permutations of the tiebreaker rules that may be called on to decide which of Arizona, San Francisco, Cincinnati and Miami gets the third Wild Card spot.

If that doesn’t decide things, then intradivision records come into play. The Giants have a big edge there, with a 22-14 record against the NL West, but the Giants final 16 game are all against NL West opponents. The Marlins have the second-best intradivision record at 21-22, with 9 games remaining against NL East teams. The Reds have been dreadful against its division (19-27) and only has 6 games left against division foes. So the Reds can’t end the season with a winning intradivision record. That will hurt Cincinnati.

Got that? Good. Now y’all can figure out the AL West and AL Wild Card scenarios based on the same rules.

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The Blue Jays crapped the bed this week

A week ago, the Texas Rangers had fallen out of a postseason spot after leading the AL West nearly the entire season. Between August 16 and September 8, the Rangers went 3-16. The pitching was in shambles and the hitting had gone cold. Texas turned things around against the A’s—a cure for what ails you—winning 2 out of 3 last weekend. Then the Rangers rolled into Toronto for a pivotal 4-game series against one of the teams fighting for an AL Wild Card spot.

Texas stomped on the Blue Jays, winning all four games in convincing fashion. With Marcus Semien and Corey Seager greasing the wheels at the top of the lineup, the Rangers scored early and often in each game, knocking out all four Blue Jays’ starters (Chris Bassitt, Hyun Jin Rye, Yusei Kikuchi, and Kevin Gausman). Yes, the Rangers lost Max Scherzer for the rest of the season, and probably the postseason, too, but the other starters—Dane Dunning, Jordan Montgomery, and Cody Bradford—more than held their own against Toronto.

The Blue Jays have been plagued all season by a lack of timely hitting with runners in scoring position. As a team, the offense has -1.04 Win Probability Added. And that certainly played a role this week against Texas. But Toronto also looked overmatched in every facet of the game. That happens to every team in the course of the season. It couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Blue Jays.

Heading into the weekend, the Astros lead the AL West by 1/2 game over Texas and 1 1/2 games over Seattle. In the AL Wild Card, Texas is in second position, 1 game ahead of Seattle, with the Blue Jays on the outside looking in, 1 1/2 games behind the Mariners.

The Red Sox fired Chaim Bloom, President of Baseball Operations

You’ve likely heard that Chaim Bloom’s time in Boston is over as the Sox relieved him of his duties yesterday. As many baseball analysts have written, Bloom’s tenure was doomed by the early 2020 trade that sent Mookie Betts to the Dodgers for a fairly paltry return. But the question is: who engineered the trade and under what conditions? The best reporting suggests that Sox ownership was not prepared to pay Betts the hundreds of millions he’d ask for in free agency, thus tying Bloom’s hands and willing him to trade Betts to get some value back. Or, more directly, ordered Bloom to trade Betts. Either way, within a few months of taking the reigns, Bloom’s fate was essentially sealed.

Jeff’s tweet struck a nerve with me, as Giants fans and Bay Area sports columnists debate whether the Giants should move on from Farhan Zaidi and Gabe Kapler. Managing General Partner Greg Johnson told the San Francisco Chronicle this week that he intends to bring back both Zaidi and Kapler next season, whether or not the Giants somehow slip into the postseason as the third Wild Card team.

To me, that’s the tell that what ails the Giants is ownership’s decision to spend less money on players and rely on Zaidi’s skill in maximizing the platoon advantage. It’s a failing strategy.

From 2010-2020—aka the Championship years plus the afterglow—the Giants were consistently one of the highest spending teams in MLB. San Francisco edged into the Top 10 in 2010 and even moved up to the second spot for a time. But that changed in 2021 with Greg Johnson running the show.

In the last three seasons, the Giants have dropped out of the Top 10, and the difference between what San Francisco spends and what the Dodgers, Phillies, Mets, Padres, and Atlanta spend has grown. Look at the numbers; here are the team payrolls ranked from 1-30 for 2021, 2022, and 2023.

Yes, San Francisco’s downtown has taken a bigger pandemic hit than other cities. Offices are empty as companies continue to permit employees to work from home. That emptiness has brought other problems, including some deteriorating conditions on city streets.

But that’s all the more reason to spend big. The Giants need to give fans a reason to come to the ballpark, other than proximity to the office. Building a team for the platoon advantage may be efficient, but it results in a team without any star power.

The Giants opened Pac Bell/SBC/AT&T/Oracle Park in 2000 and quickly shot to the top of MLB’s attendance rankings. Part of that was the new yard; part of it was the spectacle of Barry Bonds. But Bonds left after 2007 and the Giants still packed fans in in 2008, 2009, and 2010. They came to see Tim Lincecum contort his body like a rubber band to throw nasty and effective sliders. They came to Pablo Sandoval become the Kung Fu Panda. They came to see Randy Johnson in the twilight of his amazing career.

Fans come out to see stars and they come out to watching exciting teams. The Giants have had neither for a while. This year, San Francisco ranks 17th in attendance.

I was reminded of that when I attended Wednesday’s Giants game against the Cleveland Guardians. It was a 12:45 start and the ballpark with pretty empty. Paid attendance was a bit over 26,000 but there’s no way that many fans attended the game. The Giants fell behind 4-0 in the first inning and game sat at 5-1 for several innings. San Francisco scratched and clawed their way back, led by a miraculous 3-run home run by J.D. Davis that juuuuuust scrapped over the left field wall in the bottom of the 8th. The Giants then won it on a walk-off sacrifice fly in the 10th.

To my ears, the biggest ovation of the day was for Brandon Crawford, when he pinch hit in the bottom of the 10th. Crawford is having a miserable season (the final year of his contract). He’s batting .199/.272/.316 and his defense is just not what it used to be. He’s accumulated -14 Defensive Runs Saved this season.

But Crawford will always be loved in San Francisco because he played a huge roll—with his bat and his glove—in helping the Giants win the World Series in 2012 and 2014. Crawford was a local kid with long, flowing locks who became our star shortstop with a knack for dramatic home runs.

The Giants’ championship teams were largely home grown (Posey, Crawford, Belt, Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner) with free agents sprinkled in. But if the farm isn’t producing that level of talent, then it has to come from somewhere else.

The Giants have tried to some big-name free agents—Aaron Judge and Bryce Harper, in particular. But the ballpark and the weather make it very hard to convince the game’s great hitters to come play 81 games in San Francisco.

You know what? Then you have to pay big bucks to star pitchers, even though pitchers are highly risky. And you have to trade for young stars on other teams knowing that you’ll be on the hook for big money even before they hit free agency. Trading Mookie Betts may have sealed Chaim Bloom’s fate, but kudos to Andrew Friedman and the Dodgers for going and getting Betts knowing that he’d cost hundreds of millions to re-sign.

Nibbling around the edges might be efficient, but it results in a boring team with no stars. And who wants to watch that?