The San Francisco Giants Are Just Doing Whatever

The San Francisco Giants are a stinking cesspool of bad vibes and bad baseball. That is not the newsy part of this post.

Sure, the Giants' place in the standings (currently 15 games below .500) and the collection of petulant homophobes on the roster have given the public plenty of reason not to prod this smoldering heap of a franchise with a ten-foot pole. But the Giants seem determined to expose every part of their dysfunction, and will not rest until they have created a public nuisance to rival the peeling paint and chemicals of the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. 

On Sunday, with Rafael Devers on first and the Giants trailing the Marlins by a single run in the bottom of the ninth inning, manager Tony Vitello planned on putting in Jonah Cox as a pinch runner. Cox is fast; Devers isn’t. The Giants need to win games. This is simple stuff, really. But even with these indisputable facts to back him up, Vitello clearly is not considered a great authority among the Giants, and Devers especially wasn’t having it. With a mesmerizing finger wag, the form of which was far more elegant than his running form has ever been, Devers signaled that he was not going to get taken out of the game. 

Poor Jonah Cox, in his first month in the majors, did what his manager told him to do. Devers did not, and so Cox just stood near first looking around like a lost child waiting for some sort of answer as to where he should go. The PA had already announced him as a pinch runner, but Devers was shooing him away. What is a boy to do? Luckily for him, the first-base umpire intervened and sent Devers to the dugout.

If his exemplary finger wag wasn't enough to showcase his deep belief that he should have been left on base, Devers dodged the Giants' bench coaches offer of a back pat, the repressed man's version of a sympathetic and understanding shoulder to cry on. If only Devers could have shown that agility when running the bases, this whole embarrassment could have been avoided. Or deferred, anyway.

None of this really matters, because these are still the 2026 San Francisco Giants. The next two batters saw a combined five pitches, and the game ended with Willy Adames grounding into a double play. After all that work to get to first, Jonah Cox never even got to second.

What was left on the field was further evidence that everything these Giants touch turns into a childish mess. Most immature among this squad of finger-painting toddlers is Vitello, a high-energy former college manager who can't seem to gain the respect of the veterans on his team. Asked after the game whether he believed Devers' attempt at baserunner nullification was worth a conversation, Vitello said that it did. "We talk every day," he said. "I'm good."

Shining logic there, boss, give or take the fact that Devers doesn't refuse to leave the game every day, and Devers also doesn't storm into the clubhouse every day. But I'm sure they'll debrief it all in their daily chat. Then maybe the Giants can ditch the bad vibes and focus on what this roster was built to do—lose baseball games.