Giants sell at deadline as playoff hopes dim

The San Francisco Giants were 41-29 on June 13th and tied for first place in the National League West with the defending World Champs, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Since then, everything that could have gone wrong for the team by the Bay, has gone completely worse. The Giants have fallen into an abyss of losing and have no way of escaping as they currently sit six games out of the final Wild Card spot in the National League held by their division rival the San Diego Padres.

San Francisco thought they were going to be buyers at the trade deadline but losing their first 10 out of 12 games after the All-Star break and being a major league worst 13-26 since that opening win at Chavez Ravine against Los Angeles. Instead, the team turned into sellers as they traded late inning relievers Tyler Rogers (to the New York Mets), Camilo Doval (to the New York Yankees) and right fielder Mike Yastrzemski (to the Kansas City Royals) for prospects.

Two days after beating the Dodgers on the 13th, Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey and his staff stunned the baseball world when they traded for Boston Red Sox designated hitter Rafeal Devers for pitchers Kyle Harrison, Jordan Hicks and two minor league prospects. Devers had established himself as one of the best hitters in the American League since coming into the league as a 20-year-old rookie back in 2017.

Devers was batting .272 with 15 home runs and 58 RBI when he switched coasts and leagues for the first time in his career. While there was a lot of drama with Devers in Boston, he seemed to put all that behind him once he donned a Giants uniform. The big issue was would he play first base if asked to by San Francisco, something he was against when asked before this season after the Red Sox signed Alex Bregman to play third base this past offseason. That irked Devers as that was his position since he came up with Boston. The relationship was beyond repair and Devers welcomed the change of scenery and a fresh start he now had in San Francisco.

Since then, Devers is hitting .219 with just four home runs and 15 RBI. It has been a microcosm of the Giants overall batting woes that have been catastrophic for the past six weeks. It hasn't been just Devers who hasn't been coming through in the clutch (and it would be unfair to place the blame solely on him) the entire lineup has failed time and time again with runners in scoring position.

Over the past two weeks since coming out of the All-Star break, the Giants have found new ways to lose ballgames. Poor hitting, bad defensive play and inexcusable baserunning blunders (i.e Heliot Ramos not knowing the infield fly rule) have been the difference in the Giants losing winnable ballgames. They just went 0-6 on this past homestand. The last time they went winless on a homestand of six games or more, you have to go all the way back to two centuries ago in April of 1896.

One of the most glaring stats during this past homestand was the Giants going 0-23 with RISP in the three-game series against the Mets. It's no surprise they were swept by the National League East leaders. San Francisco has had no problem setting the table in games but finding that clutch hit is harder than trying to find a needle in a haystack. In the six games during the homestand, the Giants scored only one run in four of those. It's no wonder why the team has dropped below the .500 mark for the first time all season long.

Have the Giants hit rock bottom? It depends on who you ask. Manager Bob Melvin has run out of answers and is more mind boggled than the fans and media are on why this team is currently where they're at in the standings.

"Yeah, this is the worst feeling we had," said Melvin when asked that question after his team's 2-1 loss on Wednesday afternoon. "I would've said last night was but today is. And we lose a guy today (Rogers being traded to New York). So yeah, it's based on the way we've played, yeah."

Third baseman Matt Chapman said he didn't know how to describe that feeling but his mood and all the rest of the players in the clubhouse after game was beyond somber.

"You know I don't know how to describe that, but I think that it can't get much worse than losing every game on the homestand. I think they only other way we can go is up."

Chapman blames himself and the players for putting Posey in the position to be sellers instead of adding potential pieces to help make a playoff run. "It sucks. It's not how we saw this coming," Chapman iterated.

In his final interview in a Giants uniform, Yastrzemski believed the team still had plenty of time to turn things around and they were just going through a tough rut in the season.

"Rock bottom is maybe a little extreme," said Yastrzemski who made his major league debut with San Francisco in 2019. "There's still a lot of good things happening in the game. When you take a step back from the results you know there is a ton of effort being put in, guys care. You know they're playing hard. There's a few little things that haven't bounced our way that I think has affected us emotionally a little more than they should. I think we just have to be the team that we were in the beginning of the year, rely on the chip on our shoulder when people didn't think we were going to be a good team and that helped us play really well."

Before being traded to the Royals, Grand Yaz believed anything can happen with two months of baseball left as "crazier things have happened" and that no one has quit or will quit on the season.

In the midst of all the losing, one positive thing that happened was starting pitcher Justin Verlander earned his first win in a Giants uniform after starting the season 0-8 and going winless in 16 starts. Verlander could easily have four wins had the bullpen not blown three leads during his starts earlier in the season. Verlander in his last two outings has pitched 10 innings giving up just one earned run with 10 strikeouts.

Looking ahead to the month of the August, the Giants play the Padres seven times in an 11-day period. San Diego used the deadline to stack their team for a deep playoff run with numerous deals including the acquisition of sensational closer Mason Miller from the Athletics. At the end of the month, they play the top two teams in the National League Central, the Milwaukee Brewers and Chicago Cubs, in back-to-back series. But before that, they start on the road against the two teams that just swept them at Oracle Park in the Mets and Pittsburgh Pirates.

Of course, if they don't snap their losing streak soon, it may not matter when they play San Diego in the middle of the month as their playoff hopes are hanging on the last thread of the rope. Posey and company will have a long offseason to contemplate on how a promising season with playoff aspirations went so wrong in a blink of an eye.