Random blasts from social media as the season winds down in disappointing fashion...

One indication of team fielding is the percentage of runs allowed that are unearned runs. I am sure it will surprise few of you to know that 11% of the Giants' runs allowed this year were unearned. Only the Angels were worse. Perhaps it will surprise even fewer of you to know that Bruce Bochy's Texas Rangers had the lowest-- 4%. How much all of this affects the standings may be debated. The Cubs, Phillies, and Astros, all playoff-bound, have high numbers, right behind the Giants, while the 105-loss Royals and the Nationals are commendably low, just above Texas.

There's nothing wrong with criticizing the team, the offseason signings, the trade deadline inaction, "analytics" (though all teams including the Braves, Astros, Rays, and Dodgers use them), Zaidi, Kapler, or calling for them to be fired. That's all understandable and a fan's prerogative when the team is losing, and blowing what looked like a sure shot at the postseason.

What's sickening and inexcusable is: calling the players "quitters" and claiming that ownership wants to lose. "Spoiled babies" is far too mild a term for those who post that bullshit.

Responding to Tom Verducci's comment about the Giants on SI.com: "If this is the future of baseball, I want no part of it"

Hyperbole. Teams that finish out of the running rarely become examples of the "future of baseball." The continuing tension in baseball is between the strategies and tactics that managers and coaches and players believe will give their team the best chance of winning, and the style(s) of baseball that fans find entertaining.

Responding to the familiar complaint that the Giants haven't had a player with a 30-homer season since Barry Bonds, and that Oracle Park is to blame...

In 2021, Brandon Belt hit 29 in 97 games. He might've hit 40 over a full season. (Of course, "full season" and "Brandon Belt" don't really go together.) In 2021 he hit 13 (in 189 PA's) at home, 16 on the road.

It's not the park, it's the players. Judge or Ohtani, if healthy over a full year, would hit 30+ or 40+ playing at Oracle.

In response to an unhinged and uninformed rant about fans who resell tickets:

Here's a true story about reselling tickets. Saturday, July 1, 2000, Giants playing the LA Dodgers, our first visit to the brand-new Pacific Bell Park. Season tickets were sold out, so my 8-year-old son and I went down and got in line for the small amount of day-of-game tickets available. I was looking at the number of people ahead of us, and I began to realize the tickets would almost certainly be gone by the time we got to the window. I was wondering how I was going to tell my son that I'd screwed the pooch and would have to go back on my promise. Right about that time a taxicab pulled up to the curb and a guy got out. Remember, there were a couple of hundred people, at least, in line. Without looking either left or right, this man walked straight up to us and said, "I've got two good tickets here, first base line, but I have to go to a wedding. I'll sell you these for face value if you have cash." I did, and we made the deal as everyone around us stared in disbelief. "I wanted to find a father and son who are Giants fans," he continued, indicating our SF hats and shirts, "and I'm damned if I'll let these go to some @#$%&*! Dodger fan!" We went in, and the Giants beat the Dodgers 4-1. A day I will never forget, and neither will my son.

To this day we call it "The Miracle of the Tickets." So you all have your opinions about resellers, I'm sure. And I have mine.

Responses to "We knew after last year that the Giants were one of the worst fielding teams and also one of the slower teams, " and "On the broadcast tonight they said the Giants are one of the better teams in zone range (or something). So while they've made a lot of errors, they've gotten to more balls to make errors on (or something). I don't really know how that stat works"

Range (or zone) is just a fancy word for total chances. And the Giants do lead the MLB in total chances, so their fielders have excellent range. They cover a lot of ground and get to balls that others would miss. It's a fair question to ask how many of those 107 errors would be base hits for most teams. No one has yet come up with a stat to accurately determine it. Errors are supposed to be called only on plays that would normally be made, which ought to filter out such uncertainties, but errors depend on the official scorers and their biases.

Baseball-Reference has a stat, "Fielding Runs Above Average," and the Giants are at minus-30, down there near the bottom with some bad teams. I don't know whether or not this stat incorporates range as a compensating factor. Milwaukee ranks #1 in this stat, and the teams at the top are all good teams.

So it may be that the Giants are getting to the tough ones and fumbling too many of the easier ones. We've all certainly seen that this year.

Regarding speed. The Giants have more total fielding chances than any team in MLB. They get to more batted balls than anyone. Slow teams do not do that. Stolen base totals can be deceptive since strategy and tactics affect those numbers as much as player speed, and maybe more. I agree, the Giants generally tend to shy away from the "disruptive" approach to baserunning that works for more aggressive teams. And I do think stolen base totals can be more indicative of run potential now than in the past, because most teams have figured out that if you're not successful stealing at least 80% of the time, you're better off staying put. The MLB average is 81% success and no teams are below 74%. The Giants are at 79%. Not that long ago I used to see teams at like 55%, they were costing themselves games and runs even when they stole a lot of bases.

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Both Kapler and the system need to go! (The terms "philosophy" and "style" were also thrown around)

I do not know what you mean by "system" or "process." I think you're conjuring up mythology. It's baseball. Our players have not been playing well over the last six weeks. That has nothing to do with strategy or tactics, but with execution.

The Giants aren't the only team doing this, or emphasizing this. It is a direct result of 12- and 13- and 14-man pitching staffs. You cannot have a strong bench with that many pitchers on the team. So the situation demands flexible multi-position players. It's a situational response, not a designed "system." And by no means is it unique to the Giants.

It's common. The Giants don't have the players that teams such as the Orioles, Rays, and Brewers do. Those teams also routinely juggle the lineup based on matchups. Once again, if you are carrying 13 or more pitchers, you more or less have to play this way because you have no bench.

Keep in mind, "Platooning" does not mean having players play multiple positions. "Platooning" means having two guys alternate at one position.

Kapler's style, if you will, hasn't changed since 2021.What's changed is, he had better players in 2021, and his better players played full time. He had 5 good starting pitchers in 2021, and he used them all in a normal rotation with no "openers." (Dave Roberts, whose Dodgers beat the Giants in the division series, used "openers" that year-- including Game 5 of that series!)

He had multi-position players in 2021. Look at LF, 2B, CF, RF. But he had Crawford, Posey, Longoria, Belt, and (briefly) Bryant starting every day because they were good enough to start every day and he knew it. Nobody this year was that good, except perhaps for Flores when healthy.

All this idiotic talk about Kapler's "system" and "philosophy" reminds me of an old NFL story. Back in 1978, the Pittsburgh Steelers were the Super Bowl champions, and the 49ers were the worst team in the league. A popular fad of the day was "biorhythms," with some suggesting that teams played better when their "biorhythm" charts were trending positive. One of my favorite people, Tony Dungy, summed it up like this: "I think your biorhythms are going to be better against San Francisco than they are against Pittsburgh."