This was so close to being a downer of a weekly recap. The Giants were about to drop the first home series of the season, immediately after getting swept at Dodger Stadium. The best way to have fans check out early is a Dodgers sweep that’s followed by a poor showing at Oracle Park, especially when they’re Padres games with a “Do Not Operate Heavy Machinery after Watching” warning label.
A series win for the Giants doesn’t mean all is forgiven. It’s not like they deserved to win the series finale. The gravitational pull of Jorge Soler’s large upper torso caused a baseball to jump from Ha-Seong Kim’s glove and start orbiting Soler, which almost seems like cheating.
The Giants aren’t hitting, not even a little bit, so let’s start there.
“Oh, no, four runs is enough for me”
That’s a reference to a Louie Anderson joke about airplane peanuts that’s been taking up space in my brain since 1990. I still remember that the punchline was exactly four peanuts, even though I haven’t thought about the joke for three decades. Senators and astrophysicists don’t have Louie Anderson jokes and Rikkert Faneyte anecdotes marinating in their subconscious. That’s the only difference between us and how successful our careers have been.
In the last seven games, the Giants haven’t scored more than four runs. If you’re wondering if that’s rare, it’s not not rare. There have been only 50 streaks like it since 2000, which means there are about two of them per season, on average. There were fewer of those streaks when baseball players worked out regularly and ate healthier (1998-2004 or so), and to find the last one for the Giants, you have to go allllllll the way back to the last eight games of 2023. Which means that in 16 out of the last 18 regular-season games, the Giants have scored four runs or fewer. Oh, no, four peanuts is enough for the Giants.
Because I was curious — and most definitely not because I expect this to be meaningful or predictive — I looked up how many Giants teams had fewer games with five runs or more scored in their first 10 games. Here’s the breakdown:
Eight of their first 10 games with five runs or more: 1958, 2003, 2010
Seven games: 1962, 1964, 1998, 1999
Six games: 1963, 1969, 1970, 1971, 2000, 2014, 2016, 2017
Five games: 1959, 1960, 1966, 1973, 1978, 1988, 1989, 1995, 1996, 2001, 2006
Four games: 1968, 1972, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1986, 1987, 1991, 1992, 1997, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2023
Three games, 1961, 1965, 1975, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1990, 1993, 1994, 2007, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2022
Two games: 1975, 1981, 1983, 2009, 2021, 2024
One game: 1985, 2008
I formatted it like that so you could see the neat bell curve. Again, it’s not predictive of anything. The 1962 Giants won the pennant, but the 1964 Giants finished fourth. The 2017 Giants scored a bunch of early runs, and they were the second-worst team in San Francisco history. The 2024 Giants are now tied with the 2009 team (one of the all-time most frustrating lineups in baseball history) and the 2021 team (one of the best run-producing lineups in franchise history).
It’s not predictive or meaningful. It’s just a tidbit. One day it might grow up to become a nugget. That’s all I’m offering in these recaps: tidbits with a chance to grow up into nuggets.
Camilo Doval got his first save of the season on Sunday, and if you’re wondering if that’s weird, it sure is. Only two Giants teams in the San Francisco era didn’t have a save through their first nine games: 2009 and this season.
That group includes the teams from before the modern era, the ones without a dedicated closer. It includes the eras when teams made their starters throw 158 pitches into the 12th inning because that’s just how it was done. Even those teams had at least one save before their 10th game. Heck, they didn’t even know what a save was. It wasn’t invented yet. But they had one. The 2024 Giants didn’t.
If it makes you feel better, there’s a super-arrogant Dodgers fan somewhere who drafted Camilo Doval in the third round of their fantasy draft, and they were mad about it from the very beginning, and now it’s messing up their team. Laugh at their misfortune to this point.
What interests me even more is that after Doval struck out the side for the save, he did a dance. Tranquilo Camilo will show emotion every so often, but this one was a little different. Maybe it was because he’d been champing at the bit all month to get his chance for a save, or maybe it’s because he knew how much the Giants needed this game. Either way, he did a little leap-‘n’-strut:
I saw David Lee Roth do that same move at the Cow Palace in 1984, man, you should have been there. Look at how high that knee went. If Jeremy Affeldt tried to do that, he would have spent the next week in a dentist’s chair.
So what’s up with the move? He’s done it before. Here he is striking out Trea Turner with the bases loaded:
But it’s not just a default move that Doval pulls out when he escapes a stressful situation. Here he is blowing away the tying run for a save, but going with a standard heck-yeah motion with his fist instead:
When he escapes a bases loaded situation with the go-ahead run on base, he doesn’t even react. There’s no pattern to those pitches.
After far, far too much research, I think I have a theory. This is the “I just struck you out on a slider to the glove side” dance. You’ll see it in non-save situations.
And you’ll definitely see it in save situations:
You don’t see it with fastballs, and it’s a fairly new development that started in 2023. That video up there with the Marlins was the first recording of the Happy Glove-Side Slider Strikeout Dance™. It’s almost like he’s guiding the slider with his mind, doing that thing that golfers do when they hit a hooking or slicing tee shot, leaning in the direction of where he wants it to go. When it works, he jumps and does a David Lee Roth. He’s earned it.
So if I’m a hitter, and there are two strikes and two outs, you know what I’m looking for? I’m carefully looking to see if Doval is positioned to do that move. If he is, well, it’s a glove-side slider, and I’m calmly taking it to right field. If he’s not, that means it’s probably a fastball, and I’m speeding up my bat just a little more than usual to catch up to it, making up for the time I lost when I was looking at Doval’s feet and seeing if he was about to dance. It’s so simple.
I’d make a great hitting coach.
Bryce Eldridge was born on Oct. 20, 2004. He’s not just a teenage prospect, but one who won’t be 20 until the season is over. He would be a freshman in college if he hadn’t signed with the Giants, and he wouldn’t even be eligible for the 2024 or 2025 drafts in that scenario.
Teenagers shouldn’t be able to flick home runs to the opposite field, especially in a lefty-on-lefty situation.
B6: Giants 3 | Fresno 4
Bryce Eldridge goes the opposite way for the first 2024 San Jose Giants 💣 pic.twitter.com/KqNnLbDL5S
— San Jose Giants (@SJGiants) April 6, 2024
I’m not saying we should throw Bryce Eldridge into a river to see if he floats, but let’s just keep an eye on him.
Defensive play of the week:
There were better technical achievements this week than Nick Ahmed’s sweet start to this double play, but I wanted to point out two things. The first is that Ahmed really did a nice job. The second is that Fernando Tatis Jr. will occasionally have circus music in his head instead of actual thoughts, and it’s both endearing and fascinating. Did you know that the name of the song most people associate with the circus is “Entry of the Gladiators“? It was a military march that was written as a way to make a bunch of warriors feel like badass warriors. It was supposed to pump them up and send them into the battlefield screaming.
It didn’t quite work out that way. Tatis is a remarkable baseball talent, and he’ll occasionally spear several lions at the same time, then turn to ask the crowd if they’re not entertained. But he’ll also occasionally be a gladiator in the sense that do-do-do-do-do-dooo-doo-do is going through his head instead of baseball thoughts. It’s terrifying and fun for fans on both sides. Nothing but respect.
(Top photo of Doval: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
