It\u2019s hard to remember now, but after the San Francisco Giants\u2019 win on Friday, they were on an honest-to-goodness roll. They weren\u2019t just beating good teams, but beating them soundly and without drama. Three straight wins, all with five runs scored or more, all with excellent pitching. If you zoomed the microscope in enough, they looked like a contender.<\/p>\n
Then, over the weekend, they looked like the worst version of themselves, giving up runs in bunches, losing hitters in 0-2 counts and flailing at pitches outside of the strike zone. Beyond the poor play, there was also a sense that the baseball gods were mooning the Giants, as well. The Baltimore Orioles kept winning ABS challenges by a third of an inch, while the Giants were out of challenges by the middle of the game because they kept losing them by a third of an inch. The Orioles\u2019 flares fell in, and the Giants\u2019 hard-hit balls started double plays. That kind of luck wasn\u2019t the difference in the games, but it was a rancid cherry on top of the sundae, your boss saying \u201cand your dog\u2019s ugly, too\u201d after he fires you. A little something to make you feel worse as you can\u2019t fall asleep.<\/p>\n
Thoughts on a series loss to an Orioles team that really needs to pick different colors.<\/p>\n
The bullpen is both unsettling and unsettled<\/p>\n
The first time I was in a high school chemistry class, with actual Bunsen burners and vials of strange liquids, I knew that I would eventually do something very, very stupid. I didn\u2019t know exactly what, mostly because I didn\u2019t know what any of the stuff actually did. I just knew that I was going to do something for laughs that might start a large fire or create mustard gas. It was simply my nature.<\/p>\n
Which brings us to the Giants\u2019 bullpen and how it\u2019s being deployed. It\u2019s a bit of a science experiment, and fires will get started. They\u2019re not doing it for teenaged yuks, though, they\u2019re doing it for science. They, too, are accidentally creating mustard gas, but it\u2019s in the spirit of discovery. Tony Vitello and the front office are experimenting with different pitchers in different roles, and they\u2019re bending, if not breaking, traditional roles to do it. Ryan Walker is both a closer and a middle-inning guy, depending on the need, which makes him the unsettling bullpen equivalent of an old SNL gag<\/a>.<\/p>\n Erik Miller is the only reliever whose usage looks semi-familiar, as he\u2019s only been seen from the seventh inning on, but even that\u2019s not entirely normal. He\u2019s expected to be an \u201ceighth-inning guy\u201d, if not exactly the eighth-inning guy, but the Giants haven\u2019t given anyone a lot of opportunities to protect a lead late and close. Here\u2019s how far the Giants have been ahead or behind at the start of the eighth inning in every game.<\/p>\n Giants games entering 8th inning<\/p>\n Game<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Score<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n 1<\/p>\n minus-7<\/p>\n 2<\/p>\n minus-3<\/p>\n 3<\/p>\n minus-2<\/p>\n 4<\/p>\n plus-3<\/p>\n 5<\/p>\n plus-5<\/p>\n 6<\/p>\n minus-2<\/p>\n 7<\/p>\n plus-5<\/p>\n 8<\/p>\n minus-8<\/p>\n 9<\/p>\n minus-9<\/p>\n 10<\/p>\n plus-1<\/p>\n 11<\/p>\n minus-2<\/p>\n 12<\/p>\n plus-4<\/p>\n 13<\/p>\n plus-3<\/p>\n 14<\/p>\n plus-5<\/p>\n 15<\/p>\n minus-3<\/p>\n 16<\/p>\n minus-5<\/p>\n That\u2019s a minus-15 overall, which confirms your suspicions that the Giants have been \u201cbad\u201d and \u201chard to watch\u201d for most of this season. They\u2019re not even losing the close games in the eighth or winning dramatically in the ninth. The last couple of innings of Giants games this season have been like watching dry paint, which is different than watching paint dry. At least with paint drying, you get some kind of transformation, some kind of narrative arc. This is just the dry paint. You know what\u2019s going to happen.<\/p>\n Regardless of the aesthetics, it\u2019s just a reminder that the bullpen usage might seem even weirder because there haven\u2019t been a lot of traditionally close save situations for the Giants, for better and (more often) worse. That doesn\u2019t entirely explain away the mystery box that has been the Giants\u2019 bullpen, though. It\u2019s still hard to know who the most trusted \u2026 anybody \u2026 is on any given day, and maybe that\u2019s for the best. Maybe that\u2019s for the manager to know and us to find out.<\/p>\n When it works, it looks like bullpen optimization at its finest: Every pitcher willing, capable and ready to pitch in the scientifically determined spot of maximum advantage, wherever that might be. You don\u2019t want your seventh-inning guy to face Bryce Harper in the seventh; you want the pitcher who is likeliest to prevent runs from scoring in that inning, however it happens and whomever it might be.<\/p>\n When it doesn\u2019t work, though, hoo boy, you can see the mushroom cloud from the next high school over, and it doesn\u2019t look great. It was an easy problem to spot from the beginning. You wonder why it was allowed to happen in the first place.<\/p>\n Adrian Houser has been exactly what the Giants should have expected<\/p>\n This is not a compliment or a slight. It\u2019s not backhanded criticism or anything like that. This is me pointing at a pencil and saying, \u201cThat\u2019s a pencil.\u201d Houser\u2019s three starts so far:<\/p>\n Game 1: 5 1\/3 innings, 1 ER, 1 BB, 4 K<\/p>\n Game 2: 6 innings, 4 ER, 2 BB, 3 K<\/p>\n Game 3: 4 2\/3 innings, 4 ER, 2 BB, 3 K<\/p>\n When a team is signing a pitcher like Houser, they are signing a pitcher who can give you one of three kinds of starts. These are those three kinds of starts. There\u2019s the pretty good one, where the hard stuff is hitting the corners and the soft stuff is missing bats. Then there\u2019s the yeoman\u2019s effort, the one where he keeps the team close enough to have a chance. And then there\u2019s the one where he doesn\u2019t pitch out of the fifth inning. Choose your path, fifth starter.<\/p>\n