Without Camilo Doval or Tyler Rogers, San Francisco relievers took on new roles in victory over Mets
The San Francisco Giants are back in the win column, back at .500, after a significant freefall in the standings and subsequent flurry of deadline sales. The message from Buster Posey read loud and clear: The front office’s patience had worn out. It was time to prioritize the future over the present. And if the present was going to become anything, the change and improvement and return to form would have to come from within.
Despite the backend of the bullpen being dismantled and the notable departures of beloved and long-tenured veterans, the team’s return message to the front office and the fans after Friday’s 4-3 extra-innings win over the Mets: We’re not dead yet.
It was true. The slap of reality on Thursday got the blood flowing again. They looked rosy-cheeked and somewhat alive after a stretch of brain-dead play. Baseballs were put in play with two strikes. Baseballs were hit in key scenarios. Wise and aggressive base-running decisions were made. Leather was flashed.
They won the rematch against lefty All-Star David Peterson by pushing two early runs across the plate. Casey Schmitt’s double in the 2nd, which plated Matt Chapman from third for the first run of the day, was the first extra base hit the Giants had against Peterson in two starts, and their first hit with a runner in scoring position against the Mets all year.
Patrick Bailey added some insurance in the 7th with an RBI double against reliever Ryne Stanek. The liner looked eerily similar to the one he smoked into Pete Alonso’s glove for the final out of Saturday’s game, but this one, a tad slower off the bat, was just far enough away to Alonso’s backhand to make it safely to the outfield grass.
Meanwhile Robbie Ray logged his 14th quality start of the year. He held New York hitless into the 5th, ultimately limiting them to just four hits and one walk over 7 innings. The one run he allowed came around on an Alonso solo HR in the 7th.
For seven solid innings, good, clean baseball things happened. The Giants even looked faintly familiar, maybe a bit like those Giants of April. The ones who won. The ones who were going to contend. But with Ray done after a 100+ pitches, a glaring problem surfaced as they carried a 3-1 lead into the bottom of the 8th inning…
Who was going to pitch it?
For all of this season, and a good portion of the last couple years, it was obvious who’d be taking the mound for the Giants in this specific situation. The 8th had been Tyler Rogers’s purview, and rather confusedly Tyler Rogers was in the building, lurking in the shadows, staring, with those dark-bagged eyes, from an outfield bullpen — just not from San Francisco’s. Traded away on Wednesday, Rogers was no longer a Giants for the first time in seven years. He wasn’t an option, and Bob Melvin had to settle for southpaw Joey Lucchesi.
Settle might not be a totally fair verb. Lucchesi carried a 1.54 ERA over 17.1 innings since debuting with the Giants in mid-June. His Frankenstein churve combo-ed with a sinker have been more adept at avoiding barrels and dictating contact into the ground. He’s got a fair share of delivery funk on his own, but it pales in comparison to Rogers’s beloved weirdness. A fitting tribute might’ve been to throw his first pitch of the night underhand, to salute Rogers beyond the fence in right before dipping into an awkwardly winged submarine delivery.
Alas, most baseball players don’t have personalities. Lucchesi, in a new role with new responsibilities, boldly went up against the top of the New York line-up as himself, and by the time he left the mound, he had faced four batters, recorded just one out, given up a walk and two hits and a run while men threatened on the corners.
The Giants bullpen is now a puzzle with missing pieces. Players will have to step up and close those gaps. Lucchesi had big shoes to fill on Friday, and in trying on those ill-fitting cleats, he booted it — quite literally.
In hindsight, and in fairness, Lucchesi’s 8th was pretty Rogers-esque in terms of batted balls and tough luck. The numbers following his name on the box score don’t look great, but what happened wasn’t really his fault. He got pinched on a perfectly placed 3-2 fastball to Brandon Nimmo. The walk was followed with a ground ball single to right by Francisco Lindor. With two men on and trouble brewing, Lucchesi was looking for a groundball, and his first pitch sinker to Juan Soto did everything it needed to do to produce that outcome. The fastball tailed up towards the bat handle, coaxing a fight-it-off swing. The contact probably stung. The baseball sounded dead as it rattled off the wood and shot into the ground. It appeared to be headed right to short for what would’ve been an inning-ending double play, but en route, the ball hit Lucchesi’s back foot and trampolined away from the defense into shallow left. The deflection allowed Nimmo ti score. Lindor as the tying run advanced to third and would eventually come in on Alonso’s subsequent sac fly off SF’s newest reliever José Buttó.
After the 8th sans Rogers, the Giants weren’t losing, but they were no longer winning, and since they became “sellers” in a world of “buyers”, they seemed ill-equipped to go toe-to-toe with, or find a way through, the reinforced Mets bullpen.
Ryan Helsley, acquired from the Cardinals, huffed and puffed for three K’s in the 9th to keep the 3-3 score. Going into the bottom of the frame, the end felt near. But then Ryan Walker matched Helsley’s 0 with an egg of his own, just with a lot less triple-digit velocity and a lot more weak contact. Leading off the 10th, Matt Chapman was able to avoid an unproductive strikeout at the hands of a K-machine in Edwin Diaz with a 3-2 grounder hit poorly enough to short to allow Manfred Man Adames to advance to third. Rather than let Christian Koss hit (who pinch ran for Wilmer Flores in the 7th and hadn’t had an at-bat since June) Bob Melvin sent up Dom Smith, who on the first pitch against his former teammate, shot an RBI single up the middle.
Though it didn’t feel like it at the time, the hit would be the winner. The slim lead it provided proved to be more than enough for newly minted closer Randy Rodríguez in the 10th. And in a fun tip of his cap to recently departed Camilo Doval, Rodríguez scared the beejeezus out of everyone by losing his command a bit, hitting a batter, then walking the bases loaded, before slinging a 100 MPH fastball past Ronny Mauricio for the final out.