SAN FRANCISCO — Entering play on June 19, the Giants owned the sixth-best record in baseball. They were 10 games over .500 and, even if in third place in their own division, appeared to be well on their way to the franchise’s first consecutive postseason berths since the earliest years of this millennium.
Since then, only the Nationals and the Pirates have had lower winning percentages than the Giants. It would take a miracle for there to be postseason baseball on the shores of McCovey Cove this fall.
“Maybe we got a little too complacent,” staff ace Logan Webb said after his start Tuesday night, a loss to the Padres that dropped them a season-worst 9.5 games out of playoff contention.
“I don’t think anybody in this room would tell you they thought we’d be in this spot at this point,” Webb said. “You’ve gotta keep trying to win all the time. It’s not that we weren’t trying to win, but maybe the fire wasn’t there throughout the year.”
Webb looked around at the room of reporters.
“I don’t really know how to say that the right way,” he said, before walking back into the clubhouse.
Webb, though, was simply stating what has become clear heading into the final month of the season.
Since improving to 37-27 on June 18, the Giants have gone 24-40, a .375 winning percentage. They were a game up in the NL wild card race, and FanGraphs gave them a 68.8% chance of making the postseason. After Tuesday’s loss, those odds dropped to 0.3%.
Manager Gabe Kapler, who first called out the club’s energy levels amid their seven-game losing streak at the start of July, said “there has been some truth to what Logan is saying.”
“We have not had the season that we expected to have,” Kapler said before Wednesday’s series finale with San Diego. “Obviously we expect more out of ourselves and we have an incredibly high bar for the San Francisco Giants. We had it coming into this season and we’ll have it going forward. Specifically, I think we have a lot of areas where we can and need to improve. I wouldn’t isolate that one, but I would say there’s fairness to it.”
Although Webb, 25, is the youngest member of the rotation, he had earned the respect of his peers in the clubhouse by the time he was named the Opening Day starter this season. He spoke a hard truth Tuesday night, but Kapler appreciated Webb vocalizing his feelings.
“He’s a leader on our team right now, even if he hasn’t fully embraced that yet, in part because I think he’s concerned about maybe stepping on toes from time to time, maybe not feeling quite ready to take on that responsibility,” Kapler said. “He is every bit a leader and a huge, huge important piece of our future with a voice that needs to be heard right now and going forward. … I think he has all the credibility necessary to point this club in the right direction.”
