Good morning, baseball fans!

It’s no secret that the San Francisco Giants have been playing baseball lately like they are cats trying to fight their way out of a paper bag whilst high on catnip. Except without the entertainment value.

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While I complain, criticize, and commiserate along with everyone else, I don’t tend to put the blame on any individuals. I try to keep my complaints about the general team/organization, not any individual players or staff members. And there is a reason for that.

Think about your job. Maybe you went to school to get a degree for what you do, maybe you had to get a special license, or have a very specific skillset. So it would be fair to say you prepared to the best of your ability. But imagine that in order to be successful at your job, you had to depend on luck the majority of the time.

That’s got to be infuriating.

I’m not saying there’s no skill involved in playing or coaching baseball, obviously. But even the best players can train, workout, take batting practice, watch the tapes, and still find themselves going 0-for-5 on any given day. Even the best pitchers can have an amazing start, and still wind up with a loss because their offense couldn’t score a run. Even the best relief pitchers can have their defense go haywire behind them and end up with a handful of unearned runs for their trouble.

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What I’m trying to say is that there is no one on this team who wants to be playing poorly. There is no one in the organization who enjoys seeing the team lose in embarrassing fashion, especially at home. But there’s only so much control that any one player has over the outcomes.

I say all this to discuss something that came up earlier this week. On Tuesday, I posted about the rumors starting to go around that the Giants might part ways with Bob Melvin after this season. Those rumors have made their way to the clubhouse, and several Giants players have spoken out in support of Melvin.

Heliot Ramos, however, may have taken it a bit too far in his statement of support. Ramos vented his frustration (likely both about the rumors about Melvin and also the way the team has been playing lately) by lashing out at the fans for not being more supportive. Ramos told Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle, “When we were winning, everybody was on our side, now it’s like all the fans are against us and all that.”

I understand the sentiment. I have been on social media, people kind of suck a lot of the time. Especially when they feel shielded by a sense of anonymity.

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That said, that’s kind of the way it goes. The fans aren’t exactly the ones out there losing all the games. People still show up, even to horrendous or horrendously boring losses. And as we saw in 2020, the team will continue to either win or lose games whether there are fans present or not. So deflecting blame onto the fans is maybe not the best look.

But again, I get it. He’s frustrated, they probably all are. And so are we.