SF Giants Press Clips Sunday, June 25, 2017
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SF Giants Press Clips Sunday, June 25, 2017 San Francisco Chronicle Giants bullpen coughs up team’s 50th loss Henry Schulman The Giants’ landscape has changed a lot since the start of the season. Christian Arroyo, Austin Slater, Kyle Crick and now Ryder Jones have been brought to San Francisco far earlier than anyone would have predicted on Opening Day, when the 2017 nightmare began with a blown save and a loss in Arizona. The Giants show no signs of waking up, either. Incomprehensibly, they lost their 50th game Saturday, 5- 2 to a Mets team that was staring at the reaper itself before arriving at baseball’s Lourdes and collecting two wins. More changes will come, with players traded and the Giants beginning to audition some of the starters they have in Triple-A, such as Tyler Beede and Joan Gregorio. As the Giants turn toward youth, as best they can with so many older players under long-term contracts, they have an obligation to their fans to scrap out as many wins as they can. They have one in the past two weeks to go with 11 losses. “We have a lot of baseball left, and these guys have a lot of pride,” manager Bruce Bochy said after a bullpen that engenders no confidence coughed up four runs over the final two innings after Brandon Belt tied the game 1-1 with a seventh-inning homer against Jacob deGrom. “The last thing we want is to keep this thing going. For some of the guys in there, this can be embarrassing at this point. The only thing you do is keep going, keep playing, keep fighting, and they are.” Bochy rarely uses a word like “embarrassing” to describe his team’s play. Belt, who has a .228 batting average despite a team-leading 14 homers, had no counterargument. “I think that’s a pretty good word to use,” he said. “It is embarrassing to come out and lose every day, especially with the guys we have. That’s why we’ve won World Series. We want to come out here every day and win. We’ve got to try what we can to turn this thing around. “The way I look at it, we had a great first half last year and a bad second half. Hopefully we reverse it this year and have a good second half.” To convert Belt’s words into numbers, the Giants are 57-92 since they rolled into the 2016 All-Star break with the best record in baseball, 57-33. That is more than enough sample size to conclude that the roster as constituted is not going to cut it. Management’s job is not deciding whether to rebuild, but how, and concluding whether the Giants should build for 2018 or 2019. Looking at younger players who excelled at Triple-A this year is a good start, ergo Jones, who was tearing up the Pacific Coast League before the Giants summoned him to be the everyday third baseman — at least until Eduardo Nuñez comes off the disabled list. Jones went 0-for-4 in his debut, but he made three of those outs against deGrom, the reigning National League Player of the Week, who held the Giants to Belt’s solo homer over eight innings and has a 0.72 ERA over his past three starts. Johnny Cueto bolstered his trade value with one of his best starts of the year, allowing only Wilmer Flores’ solo homer over seven innings. Minutes after Belt tied it, Sam Dyson, Steven Okert and George Kontos all pitched in the eighth, and each allowed a hit to his first batter, starting with Curtis Granderson’s triple off Dyson. The Mets ended the inning with a 4-1 lead. The Giants’ 50th loss was in the bag. “It is hard to believe,” Bochy said. “It’s hard to make sense of it, to be honest. We do have a lot of talent here. It shows you how every year can be different than the year before. You need normal years from your guys and some surprises, and we haven’t had that.” San Francisco Chronicle Giants promote big-hitting prospect Ryder Jones Henry Schulman Ryder Jones, the Giants’ third-base prospect who made his major-league debut against the Mets on Saturday, showed extreme confidence when he said he was glad to face a great pitcher like Jacob deGrom in his debut to help him get “locked in.” Actually, after learning he was being promoted to the bigs, the 23-year-old faced deGrom on Friday night — on PlayStation. “He threw me some good pitches,” Jones said with an absurdly straight face. “I got a knock and a popup.” Good friend Christian Arroyo controlled deGrom on the video game. Against the real deGrom, Jones grounded out twice and flied out. Jones is a tall left-handed hitter who batted .299 with 10 homers and a .944 OPS at Triple-A Sacramento. “He’s a strong guy,” former RiverCats teammate Austin Slater said. “He puts the ball in the air really well, and he can drive the ball all around.” One line on Jones’ stat history stands out, and it’s not home runs. In 2014, the year he turned 20, he struck out 114 times in 476 combined at-bats for rookie-level Salem- Keizer, Ore., and low Class A Augusta, Ga. Since then his strikeouts have fallen as he has risen to tougher leagues: 80 in 432 at-bats in 2015 at high-A San Jose; 79 in 473 at-bats last year at Double-A Richmond, Va.; 26 in 197 at-bats at Sacramento this year. “I think patience at the plate has been the biggest thing for me,” he said. “All of the years in low minors I was a little too aggressive, a little too antsy.” So he swung at everything, hoping to put the ball in play. Jones learned to be more selective, looking for good pitches to drive, picking a side of the plate on which to focus and spitting at everything else. Once he did that, his strikeouts fell and his power rose. “The biggest thing is not trying to impress people and just be yourself,” he said. “I was 19, 20. I wanted to be worth the second-round pick, so I thought I had to hit a home run, steal a base, make the plays every time, and you can’t do that.” Hill gone: To clear a spot for Jones the Giants designated Aaron Hill for assignment. Hill was hitting .132 and had no real role on a rebuilding team. Whither Hwang: Jones’ promotion does not bode well for minor-leaguer Jae-gyun Hwang, who is hitting well at Sacramento but does not have a spot with the Giants, who need to look at future starting position players rather than potential role players. Hwang has the right to opt out of his minor-league deal next week. It’s not clear what Hwang will do, but the Giants do not appear to be spurred by the potential opt-out to bring the 29-year-old to the majors. San Jose Mercury News Giants waste another Johnny Cueto gem, suffer 50th loss in just 77th game Carl Steward SAN FRANCISCO — There’s still another week until July rolls around, but the Giants are outrunning the calendar to failure of historic proportions. They are now halfway to 100 losses after just 77 games. Even with Johnny Cueto on the mound and highly touted prospect Ryder Jones making his major league debut, the Giants couldn’t avoid loss No. 50 Saturday at AT&T Park. Jacob DeGrom pitched eight stellar innings and the New York Mets struck for four runs in the eighth and ninth innings against the Giants’ bullpen to take a 5-2 victory. It was San Francisco’s fourth straight defeat, 11th in 12 games and and their 17th loss in 22 games in June. At 27-50, the Giants are actually now on a pace to lose 105 games, which would be an all-time franchise worst. Losses have been coming at a rapid rate, but reaching such a mind-boggling and embarrassing milestone at this stage of the season, manager Bruce Bochy said many of veteran players have to be feeling pretty embarrassed, and Brandon Belt couldn’t disagree with that. “I think that’s a pretty good word to use,” said Belt, whose seventh-inning solo homer briefly tied the game 1-1 until the bullpen gave it away. “It is embarrassing to come out and lose every day, especially with this group of guys we have and just the mentality we have of wanting to win. That’s how we won World Series in the past … we want to win. So when you’re losing as much as this, it is embarrassing. So we’re trying to do whatever we can to turn this around.” If the Giants do manage to turn it around, they’ll have to do it with a different kind of mix of older veterans and green youngsters who are now getting a chance to show their major-league worthiness with the club so far out of contention. “This is a good time for them,” Bochy said. “This is what they play for, to get up here and show what they can do, show that they can play in the major leagues. Between Jones and (Austin) Slater and (Kyle) Crick, because of our situation, we’re going to take a look at these guys.