At this point, no one can really sugarcoat this wretched start to the San Francisco Giants‘ season, not even one of the men behind building the roster.
General manager Zack Minasian was the next man up for the weekly Giants Executive Show on KNBR’s “Murph and Markus” morning show, tasked with talking a day after the Giants lost for the eighth time in their past nine games and fell into a tie with the Rockies for the worst record in all of baseball at 14-23. In a 25-minute interview Thursday, Minasian was blunt in making several direct statements about the team.
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The most stark assessment was about the team’s massive offensive struggles. The Giants’ 3.1 runs scored per game is more than half a run per game fewer than even the second-worst team in baseball (the Mets, at 3.7), and they are dead last in several key categories: homers (23), steals (10), walks drawn (72) and on-base percentage (.282). While the Giants have a few other trouble points, host Brian Murphy asked Minasian if the offense is the key thing that is wrong with the team.
“Look, when you’re 30th in any one particular category, it’s tough to overcome,” Minasian said. While he later said it might be unfair to put all the blame on the offense, he added, “When we really just try to simplify things, I think everybody knows if we’re 30th in runs scored at the end of the season, it ain’t gonna work. So yeah, scoring more runs, I think, would be paramount to us winning more games.”
The spotlight is shining brightest on the struggles of the Giants’ three middle-of-the-order stars: Rafael Devers, Willy Adames and Matt Chapman. The three highest-paid players (per Spotrac) are all well below their career averages and have hit a combined seven homers in 37 games. Even after Devers hit his third homer of the season on Wednesday, he is still ranking as one of the worst players in baseball by wins above replacement (WAR).
Of course, it is a long season. Even with this horrific 14-23 record, the Giants still have 125 games to go, and lots of teams have overcome worse starts to win big. (The 1951 New York Giants started their famous pennant-winning season 2-12, after all.) But that hasn’t made this first month and a half any easier to swallow for Minasian, especially when a major roster shakeup on Monday didn’t lead to a notable change in the results.
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“It’s easy to sit here and say, ‘It’s early’ and ‘We have time.’ Some of that may be true, but it’s tough for me, personally, to lose a game,” Minasian said. “All the times my mom told me, ‘Don’t be a sore loser,’ I don’t know if those things rang true. So yeah, it can be frustrating. We try to look at the big picture, we try to look at trends, we try to look at things under the hood to see maybe what’s not happening that should be happening, that will turn. And even with us seeing some of those things, that time has come where we need to start playing better baseball.
“It certainly can be frustrating. You try and keep a level head. We try and do everything we can do, at this point, in our control to make improvements and make changes – hence the moves with Bryce Eldridge and Jesus Rodriguez – and once that game starts, we’re a spectator.”
Later, Markus Boucher specifically asked if it was fair for fans to call the shakeup of bringing in Eldridge and Rodriguez a “desperation move to help save this offense.” Minasian agreed, with a small caveat.
“They’re correct in saying it’s a way to try to save the offense,” Minasian said. “There’s zero doubt, zero debate. That’s why these two were brought, to try and see if we could spark the offense. Is it entirely fair to put it all on one or two guys? No, not necessarily.”
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Minasian said the front office’s message to the duo was to simply “do what you do” rather than to try to carry the team’s offense on their own. He even suspected the team’s superstars have been trying to do too much themselves. That’s why Minasian is hoping the team can refocus its efforts on smaller goals.
“We can’t get back to .500 tomorrow,” Minasian said. “We’re going to have to shrink those goals. It’s cliche, but it really is going to be one day at a time, win a ballgame, we wake up the next day and try to do the same thing.”
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This article originally published at SF Giants GM offers blunt assessment of team’s brutal start.