LOS ANGELES — The Giants agreed to make certain sacrifices when they signed Blake Snell . He cost them a third-round draft pick when they’d already forfeited their second-round selection. His two-year, $62 million contract meant exceeding the luxury tax threshold for the first time since 2017.
The deal included the familiar downside risk of a player opt-out after the first season. And they would be signing him on March 18, when the first San Francisco-bound equipment trucks were being loaded at Scottsdale Stadium. Snell wouldn’t be ready to pitch in the Giants’ initial turn through the rotation, at least.
Advertisement But reigning Cy Young Award winners do not sign pillow contracts. The Giants were tickled to land one while making a maximum commitment of just two seasons. They could be forgiven for mistaking all those millions for goose feathers.
Especially when their second series of the season would come at Dodger Stadium. Against their archrivals. And against a team that Snell had dominated throughout his career.
Snell had held the Los Angeles Dodgers to a .171 average over 13 starts. How tightfisted is that? Well, consider that Snell had been even better at limiting hits against the Dodgers than Clayton Kershaw has been against the Giants (.
205 average) over a Hall of Fame career that has amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. Maybe Snell couldn’t be an equalizer in a rivalry that has been one-sided in seven of the past eight seasons. But on the days he pitched against the Dodgers, the Giants could dip a poisoned arrow.
They finally dipped that arrow Monday night. It merely took three months longer than anyone anticipated. And the result only served to push the Giants further off course at a critical juncture that will determine how the front office approaches next Tuesday’s trade deadline.
There were too many self-inflicted wounds as the Giants opened this four-game series with a 3-2 loss that knocked them five games under .500. They were 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position.
They allowed the Dodgers’ tiebreaking run to reach base in the eighth when Heliot Ramos and Luis Matos had an I-got-it-you-take-it moment in left center on Kiké Hernández ’s otherwise catchable double. They made the first out of the game at third base — while Dodgers rookie River Ryan was trying to settle in as he threw the first inning of his major-league career — when Jorge Soler reacted to a bobble in the outfield and didn’t have the speed to stake his claim. Advertisement Snell was plenty potent.
He held the Dodgers to four hits in six innings and bottled up everyone except All-Star Home Run Derby champion Teoscar Hernández , who hit a solo shot in the fourth on a shin-seeking slider and lined a tying single in the sixth that followed a two-out walk and a wild pitch. In terms of Win Probability Added, it was the third consecutive start in which Snell boosted the Giants’ chances by at least 25 percent — a welcome change after he posted a negative contribution in his first five starts while dealing with early-season rust and a recurring groin injury. The Giants had no illusions about what they were getting with Snell.
He was not a Madison Bumgarner, capable of putting the team on his back on a given day. The Giants knew that Snell, who hasn’t thrown a complete game in his career, needed a reliable support staff for his team to extract maximum value from him. They knew Snell would be a poor fit on an incomplete or flawed roster.
After signing Soler and Matt Chapman and Jung Hoo Lee and Jordan Hicks and Tom Murphy (remember him?) and trading for Robbie Ray , the Giants did not consider their roster incomplete or flawed. The evaluation might be different after 101 games. March seems like a long time ago.
The Giants might have signed Snell to augment a team that never really existed. The confidence in several of the Giants’ well-compensated veteran players appears to be getting shakier by the day. Soler, who signed a three-year, $42 million contract, is making the Dodgers’ one-year, $23.
5 million deal with Hernández look like a ground-floor investment. Wilmer Flores and Thairo Estrada have posted an OPS+ of 75 and 74, and there’s not much point in specifying which is which. Estrada, who has a .
252 on-base percentage, sat on Monday in favor of Tyler Fitzgerald , who rewarded manager Bob Melvin’s intuition by becoming the first Giants player since Brandon Belt in 2018 — and the youngest since Will Clark in 1987 — to hit a home run in four consecutive games. Fitzgerald also made a diving stop of Freddie Freeman ’s rocket shot up the middle that momentarily preserved the tie in the eighth. Ty Game pic.
twitter.com/dcdH7Uzoda — SFGiants (@SFGiants) July 23, 2024 Michael Conforto hasn’t been a steady lineup threat, either. Melvin pinch hit for Conforto against Dodgers lefty Alex Vesia with one out and runners at the corners in the sixth, instead choosing Matos, who is mired in a 2-for-22 slump.
“It’s a little bit of a coin flip but Matos is a good fastball hitter,” said Melvin, who expected Vesia to throw high fastballs. “It’s good vert at the top of the zone but that’s Matos’ strength.” Matos struck out.
So did Chapman, who has been characteristically streaky at the plate this season but might be the only example among the Giants’ better-compensated position players who has approached his career norms. Advertisement The Giants fell four games behind the New York Mets for the third and final wild card, which doesn’t sound so daunting, except they’d have to climb over four other teams plus the Mets to reach postseason play. These are not the circumstances in which teams usually clamor to be buyers at the deadline.
Heck, the Giants weren’t even buyers last season, when they were 58-49 and led the NL wild-card standings on July 31. They came away from that disappointing deadline with nothing but a broken-down A.J.
Pollock. But it’s also too early to brand the Giants as clear sellers. Not when Snell is just beginning to perform like a frontline pitcher and a critical part of their second-half plan is on the verge of taking the mound for the first time.
The Giants took on $75 million in potential salary obligations when they acquired Ray, the 2021 AL Cy Young Award winner, from the Seattle Mariners . Ray will make his Giants debut Wednesday at Dodger Stadium. Logan Webb will follow on Thursday.
Then the team will attempt to generate momentum next week with a homestand against the Colorado Rockies and A’s. Kyle Harrison will take the ball on Friday and it’ll be Snell and impressive rookie Hayden Birdsong in a scheduled doubleheader on Saturday. Melvin said that Alex Cobb , who endured shoulder setbacks in rehab from hip surgery, could make his season debut on the upcoming homestand, too.
The potential still exists for the Giants to assemble the rotation they envisioned at the end of March and for that rotation to be the waterwheel that was supposed to power this team. Once they leave Dodger Stadium, the near-term schedule appears favorable for the Giants to put together the sustained, winning stretch that has eluded them to this point and bank the wins they’ll need to be relevant in September. But they can’t very well leave Dodger Stadium at eight games under .
500, either. There’s still a small window for the Giants to resemble the team they hoped to assemble three months ago. “I have so much confidence in the group,” Fitzgerald said.
“Yeah, we’re going through it right now but we have a lot of games left. Nobody’s happy with the way the second half has started — fans, us. But what are you gonna do? We’ve just got to come back and keep working hard and hope we can turn it around and we can all kind of get hot at the same time.
” That time had better come over the next week. Because if they do not appear equipped to make a push, this team will be remembered as the one that brought a poisoned arrow to a tank battle. (Photo: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images).
