Splash Considerations Ep. 14: It's (Not) Always Sunny in Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA — The Giants won three straight series heading into their three-game set against the Philadelphia Phillies, but they leave the City of Brotherly Love with three more losses to their name — two coming during Thursday's split doubleheader. In this episode, I break down the curious decisions that were made on Thursday, from Hector Borg's non-send of Drew Gilbert to Patrick Bailey's pitch-calling to the decision to start Adrian Houser in Game 2.

Transcript

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Hey y'all, just wanted to make a quick note before the start of this episode. It's currently around eight o'clock on Friday evening Pacific Standard Time. And what you're about to hear is something that I recorded around 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Friday. As some of you know, I was out in Philadelphia for the Giants three-game series. They were obviously not only swept, but they lost both legs of the Thursday doubleheader, both being in walk-off fashion. And the original plan was for me to fly out on Thursday evening following the day game, but that obviously didn't happen because Wednesday's game got postponed. So that ends up with me having to cover the doubleheader on Thursday, which subsequently ends up with me staying an additional night in Philadelphia and having to record this episode right here just hours before they played the first game of their series against the Tampa Bay Rays. So I just wanted to quickly note that the Giants lost the first game of that series against the Rays. They lose three to nothing. It's their seventh shutout loss this season. That's the most in the majors. And a point that I've made a lot of times, but I'm going to make it again, is that they're last in runs, they're last in home runs, and they're last in walks. And I'm sure I'll get into all of the details about this series, this series being the Rays series. I'm sure I'll get into it at some point later next week, but just wanted to quickly acknowledge that because you're not going to hear any input from uh the game that happened that the Giants played against the Rays today, because I was in transit while that game was happening. So here's the episode that I recorded by my math, maybe 12 hours ago, I believe, at this point. And it's not exactly dated, is it? It is a little dated, but I think a lot of the points and concerns that were raised in this episode, a very rare solo episode, I do think a lot of the points are still valid. So hope you enjoy. And hopefully, me doing a solo episode that spans about 30 minutes by myself isn't too much to bear. Cue the intro music, welcome to another episode of Splash Considerations. My name is Justice Delosanto, San Francisco Giants Bee Reporter for the Bay Area News Group, San Jose Mercury News, East Bay Times, whatever you want to call us, as long as you read, as long as you subscribe. And speaking of subscribe, subscribe to the YouTube channel, follow us on Apple, follow us on Spotify, rate us five stars if you do feel so inclined. A lot of things in this world cost a lot of money, but subscribing, following, that's still just free 99, and just a moment of your time. And if you're watching the video, you see my gym bag right there, you see some clothes on the bed. I'm still in Philadelphia, I'm still in the state of Pennsylvania. Uh, if all things went according to plan, I would not be here right now on this Friday morning. It's currently 1111 uh a.m. Uh my checkout time is 12. My flight is at 1.30, so hopefully I'm out of here beforehand. And if all things went according to plan, I would currently probably be back home sleeping right now, to be quite honest. But as we all know, the Giants had Wednesday's game postponed. It was uh not technically rained out, just postponed, and that ended up with us having to play a doubleheader on Thursday, and because the doubleheader was on Thursday, my flight on Thursday was originally scheduled for 6 p.m. Wasn't gonna make that flight, so I'm currently here a day longer than expected. And I like this, I like Philadelphia, I like coming here. I always get nostalgic coming here in a sense because I obviously lived in Pennsylvania for two years, except on the other side, Western PA. Shout out to to Western PA. If you're if you're a Pennsylvania listener, if you happen to have any affiliation with Pennsylvania, just know that it sheets over Wawa any day of the week and twice on Sunday. But as much as I like being here, as much as I like going to spots like Angelo's, I was able to do the kind of Rocky run on Wednesday. Uh, I was personally expecting when I flew out here to be in my own bed back in the Bay Area at this time, but obviously we had the doubleheader. So uh this episode is gonna be very much off the cuff. I was at Citizens Bank Ballpark for 13 hours last night. I had to finish up a story that runs sometime today, I believe, right before I started recording, I wrote three stories yesterday, one of which broke down all of the very curious decisions that the Giants made yesterday, which we're gonna get into most of them today. I don't know that we necessarily need to get into all of them, but we're gonna get into the most consequential ones, at least in my opinion. And uh despite the fact that I'm on a little bit of a time crunch, and maybe I'm compromising my ability to get this episode out uh earlier in the day than later in the day, because again, I gotta get on this flight. Uh I do kind of want to peel back the curtain just a little bit and bring you all into what it's like to cover a doubleheader. Because as I mentioned, it's it's 13 hours at the ballpark, and you know, it it is interesting to contrast it because you know, from the time of first pitch of game one to the final pitch of game two, it was about eight hours and 40 minutes. So it's I would imagine for some of you, it's maybe that question of well, what happens in the other four hours and 20 minutes approximately. So I kind of want to peel back the curtain a little bit. I also want to mention that doubleheaders are in a very weird way kind of nostalgic for me because I covered the Pittsburgh Pirates for two years and it rains a lot in Pittsburgh. Like the amount of times that I've had to cover doubleheaders in Pittsburgh, there's too many just weird instances to count. And that's what I always say about doubleheaders in general, is that there's no such thing as a normal doubleheader. But to kind of peel back the curtain a little bit, get to the ballpark around 9.50. Manager availability with Tony Vitello, I want to say was about 10:30. First pitch of game one was 12.35. I want to say game two was about, or not game two, I want to say game one finished uh in about two hours and 30 minutes. So that left about two hours roughly by the time we got back from post-game availability. By the time we got back up, I want to say it was about two hours between you know us finishing up our stories and game two. In the meantime, you know, kind of work on other stories, eat a little bit, just kind of try to mentally refresh. I guess it's like this super weird nebulous time because you're trying to conserve energy for the second game. The second game always feels more consequential than the first game, but there's also like no nap rooms in the ballpark either, so you can't knock one of those out either. Uh for me personally, I did have a I had a solid lunch in the the Citizens Bank ballpark media dining. I I do want to say that it's probably uh the best press dining in all of Major League Baseball. I had uh with Frankie Two Scoops, he's known uh in baseball kind of Frankie Two Scoops, he's kind of the famous guy in that press dining area that scoops the ice cream. Uh I told him like I don't need I need more than two scoops. I had him get me one of like the 16-ounce cups and filled it up with this cookie monster flavor of ice cream. Just took that to I just demolished that thing, and then I've had maybe three cups of coffee over the course of the day, and then obviously we have game two as well. That ends around maybe like 9 15 local time. And then by the time I exited the ballpark, uh it was about 11:30, close to midnight. And I have not eaten a meal since dinner last night. I haven't eaten anything since dinner last night. So I don't even want to say that's poor strategic planning on my part. It's just I haven't really had time to do much of anything except go to sleep, wake up, write, and record right now. So I might have to grab a couple snacks uh at the hotel lounge on the way out, even though that is gonna lean on the more expensive side. But overall, that was a lot of rambling. Uh no, not coherent at all. But I kind of just wanted to explain just how kind of chaotic this can kind of be for the life of a B-Report. And I love it, I love I love embracing the madness of it. I I do, like I mentioned, I do love doubleheaders, um, but they do kind of drive you a little insane, so as to say. So let's get into the baseball, and I want to focus on the doubleheader, the ladder to games of the series. The Giants lost the first game uh on Tuesday, but I want to dedicate uh the time here to games one and game two, and I'm gonna kind of breeze through these games, a quick summary of them, and then I want to get into some of the consequential decision making that was made in both of these games and why I wrote the story about kind of breaking down as I mentioned, some of the curious decisions that were made over the course of the doubleheader. So, game one, it's the same starters that were projected to go on Wednesday. Christopher Sanchez, Logan Webb, obviously a pair of guys who have at some point in their career finished as Cy Young runner-ups. And not exactly the best start to the game for either of them. Christopher Sanchez allows two runs in the first inning on three hits. Logan Webb allows uh not only a solo homer to Kyle Schwarber, but the 350th homer of Kyle Schwarber's career. And just an aside, Kyle Schwarber, I think he reached base like eight total times uh in the three games against the Giants, just a complete testament to why he was the 2025 NL runner-up. But from that point on, both offenses kind of went quiet because Webb locked in, Sanchez locked in. Uh Webb did have to navigate through a bit of traffic, and it wasn't necessarily the cleanest start in the world for Webb. He did allow seven hits, but he pitches seven innings, allows just a one-earned run, six strikeouts, easily his well, I don't want to say easily, because like he did have another outing of seven innings and one run, but definitely in the mix for one of his better starts of the year. And if you just look at the month of April, if you kind of take out those two starts that he had in March, it does end up being a very solid month for Logan Webb, 3-2-7 ERA over five starts, a lot more accustomed to what we've seen out of Logan Webb and pretty much more aligned with what we're gonna see, opposed to you know the kind of two rough starts that he had to start the season. So scoreless eighth inning by Eric Miller. We get to the ninth inning, Giants are winning two to one. Ryan Walker enters for the ninth, ends up blowing the save, allows two runs at the bottom of the ninth, allows uh the game tying triple to Bryson Stott, allows the game winning or the walk-off single, the infield single to Justin Crawford. And, you know, speaking of decision making, I do want to get into some of the pitch selection there, kind of rather lack thereof, to be frank. Uh, but that's just kind of the quick summary of game one. As far as game two, a little bit more of a back and forth affair. Uh Adrian Hauser, very rough start to his outing in the sense that you know, the first pitch of the game that he throws, he allows a solo homer to trade Turner. His fifth pitch, it's another solo homer to Kyle Schwarber. But the Giants were able to battle back into the game. They tie the game two to two. Um, I can't remember what ending it was, but they ended up scoring a pair of runs on a sack. It was Sacrifice Flies in the fourth and the fifth. I want to say it was the top of the sixth when the rain just came like pouring down out of nowhere. Like it started like kind of light, like it was more like swirling winds, and then like the skies just opened up and it was pouring down. And thankfully it was a pretty quick delay. It was you know 24 minutes in total, and Giants and the Phillies kind of got back back to it. Uh, the Phillies took a 4-2 lead at one point, the Giants tied it up and then eventually took a 5-4 lead. I apologize, I'm forgetting exactly how they took um the 5-4 lead, but they did have a 5-4 lead going into the bottom of the ninth inning. Keaton win, he'd pitched the eighth inning, he comes out again for the bottom of the ninth inning, ends up allowing a game-tying double to Kyle Schwarber. Kind of looked like at one point the Phillies were just gonna walk it off in the bottom of the ninth again, but Keaton Wynne was able to get out of that mess. Uh, the game goes to the tenth inning, Giants don't score a run in the tenth, and again, we're we're gonna get to the consequential decision with Hector Borg in a second. Uh, but they don't score in the top of the tenth. The Phillies score uh on a walk-off sacrifice fly in uh the bottom of the tenth, and the Giants end up being swept in the series, as I mentioned at the very beginning of this episode. It was their first time uh losing in walk-off fashion twice in one day since I believe it was July 15th or 25th uh of 1956. So it has been quite a while since they've had a day like this, and you know, losing two games in one day is already brutal, but to lose them both in walk-off fashion is kind of a double jeopardy in a sense. So now that we've kind of gotten the game summaries out of the way, I wanted to get into the decisions, the most consequential decisions that were made over the course of Thursday. And I do think it is fair to say that there were some curious decisions that were made over the course of that double header, both from the manager perspective, from the third base coach, from the Giants Catcher. And the one place that I want to start is probably the one that I think got the most traction on social media, although I personally don't think it was the most consequential decision that was made. And that was in, as I mentioned, the top of the 10th inning. That was Hector Borg's decision to not waive Drew Gilbert home on their base. And so to kind of set the stage, Drew Gilbert was the automatic runner in the top of the 10th inning. Elliot Ramos begins the top of the 10th inning by hitting a grounder up the middle. Second baseman Bryson Stott tries to die tries to dive. Well, he doesn't try, he does dive, he dives, tries to field the ball, and it ends up deflecting off Stott's glove and rolling pretty far into shallow center field. And Drew Gilbert, who I also kind of want to note this super quickly on the Alec Bohm sacrifice fly, he does kind of field that ball pretty low to the ground. Like I think he gets only like a foot off the ground when he fields it. And I think that was just kind of trying to get uh Adolis Garcia to run early. That's just a quick aside. But Gilbert has great speed and he read that ball off the bat pretty quickly. He was at least gonna make it to third, and he with the way that his momentum was going, he was going to be able to score pretty easily if he kept going. Even if Bryson Stott or whoever was in center field made a competitive throw, I think it's very safe to say that Drew Gilbert would have scored easily if he had been waived home. But obviously, he wasn't waived home. Uh Hector Borg throws up the stop sign, Gilbert ends up stopping at third. And it wasn't exactly in the moment the end of the world. Like, yeah, Gilbert could have scored, but the Giants still had runners at first and third with no outs, with the heart of their order coming up. It was Matt Chapman, Louisa Ryas, and Casey Schmidt. And we wouldn't be talking about this decision, or at least as much, if one of the three of them could have driven that home. But that wasn't the case. All three of them failed to advance. Gilbert, the 90 feet necessary to take the lead. The Giants ended up not scoring in the top of the 10th inning. And again, as I mentioned, they get walked off in the bottom of the 10th inning. So we had an opportunity to talk to Borg after the game. And the one thing that I asked him was like, from your vantage point, were you not able to get like a clear line of sight as to how far that ball uh had rolled away from Stott? And he kind of said, Yeah, like it was just, you know, not exactly the clearest angle as to how far that ball had rolled away from Stott. And the full answer is in the story, but he said that he was confident in the decision, and he kind of cited the fact that Chapman and Arise, two guys that can at least put the ball in play, his words, um, could have given the Giants an opportunity to score in that inning. They don't end up scoring in that inning. And it's been a bit of a rough two-week stretch for Hector Borg. I know there's not a lot that you can say about a third base coach. We don't exactly have, at least to my knowledge, like metrics about you know, third base coach efficiency or anything like that. But it was during that Dodgers series where he waived Jung Hu Lee pretty uh aggressively home, and that was the play where Jung Hoo ended up banging his quad. That's where Dalton Rushing said what he said that kind of resulted in the viral moment, and this was kind of the opposite where he was taking a lot more of a cautious approach, especially given the fact that you know you don't want your first runner, your automatic runner to get thrown out of the plate, and now you have runner at first with one out, and it's not as ideal of a scoring situation. So, as I mentioned, at least for me personally, like yes, that moment did get a lot of traction on social media, but when you look at the totality of Thursday, I think it ranks a little lower on the totem pole, so to say, as far as decisions that could be questioned that were kind of curious. And another one that really stood out was the Giants' decision to start Adrian Hauser in game two. And this wasn't necessarily an indictment on Hauser necessarily, but it was more so from the perspective of how this sets up the Giants going forward, because if Wednesday's game doesn't get rained out, then Logan Webb is probably on schedule to start Monday's game against the San Diego Padres. But now the Giants are looking at a scenario where that Monday game, I think it's May 4th, against San Diego Padres, that they're kind of gonna need to figure something out as far as what they want to do, whether it be a spot star, whether they bring up somebody for that game, whether they go bullpen game. Uh, not exactly the thing that you want to do when you're facing a divisional opponent, especially one as good as the San Diego Padres. And it was an especially curious decision because the Giants had right-hander Trevor McDonald as the 27th man. He flew, I can't remember where Sacramento was, but he took a red eye. He was in the Giants clubhouse in the morning, he was chugging some Red Bulls trying to get his energy up. And you know, you don't get the 27th man back, like they're not gonna like unless there's another rainout in San Francisco on Monday, like they're not gonna have another 27th man. And McDonald didn't pitch in game one, he didn't pitch in game two, so it was like they didn't have a 27th man at all, and so they they've now kind of squandered that bullet to use. And you know, this is my opinion, but I thought it would have made a lot of sense to start McDonald in game one, or game two rather. Maybe you piggyback him with JT Brewbaker, who's also capable of giving you multiple innings, and the two of them, you know, McDonald is a starter, JT Brewbaker does have starting experience. The two of them maybe get you six, maybe seven innings, and then you kind of go from there, and then you don't waste that bullet. You have Hauser pitch on Friday, which would have been today, uh, uh, against the Rays, you kind of move everybody back, and now you're in a situation where you know you can use a normal starting rotation against San Diego Padres, and now that's just not the case. And again, it just it was a very odd decision for me, just because you have the 27th man. This is the opportunity this is exactly why you have him to use him in situations like this, so the rest of your pitching staff isn't as compromised. And again, the Giants just kind of went through both of these games without utilizing that resource, and that's just kind of what it ends up being is a wasted resource. Another decision that I want to get to, and this one doesn't require as much uh analysis, but it was the decision uh on Vitello in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs to stick with Keaton Wynne in his second inning of work against the left-handed hitting Kyle Schwarber, especially with the fact that Vitello had Matt Gage up in warming in the Giants bullpen. I understand not using Eric Miller uh because Eric Miller had pitched in game one. He couldn't have used Ryan Barucki because Barucki was used in uh earlier in game two, but that felt like it would have been, you know, a pretty optimal situation. They're obviously not gonna pinch hit for Schwarber, it's a left on left matchup. If we just saw earlier in the game or in game one and game two, how Schwarber homered off of a pair of right handers in Logan Webb and Adrian Hauser, and Matt Gage is a pretty deceptive lefty, and it just feels like if you look at the numbers, if you look at the Left-on-left matchup, it would have made a lot of sense to bring in Gage in that situation. Ultimately, uh Vitello leaves Wynn in the game. Schwarber, as I mentioned, gets the game tying double. Uh Win is able to push the game to extras, uh, but then Matt Gage in the bottom of the 10th inning. Uh it's tough to say a reliever blew a game when they inherit the Ghost Runner, zombie runner, whatever you want to call it, just because it's such an inopportune situation. Like for me personally, when games go to extras, you kind of have to throw what happens with the relievers kind of out the window, just because you're already at a disadvantage and the strategy of the game is just completely different. But I kind of saved for what was, in my opinion, the most curious, odd, whatever you want to call it. I I saved the the most intriguing of them for last, and it was Patrick Bailey's pitch calling in the bottom of the ninth of both games, and that was with Ryan Walker in game one, and that was with Keaton Wynne in game two. But I kind of want to zero more so in uh with Ryan Walker. Ryan Walker is a two-pitch pitcher, he throws his sinker, his two-seamer, whatever you want to call it, uh, and his slider. And it's not like an even 50-50 split of usage, uh, but you know, Walker does use his slider pretty often. Ryan Walker threw 21 pitches in game one, and 20 of them were sinkers. And it's just something you it was it's just odd. It's something you don't see. And when after game two, because we didn't talk with Ryan Walker after game one, it's just kind of how the way things kind of flow when you're covering double headers. Uh, when we talked to Ryan Walker after game two, he was asked, you know, why he didn't throw more than one slider, and his response was, I don't have an answer for you. And he did acknowledge the fact that he they probably threw too many sinkers. And the one at bat that like really, really sticks out is the nine-pitch at bat to Bryson Stott. And that at bat obviously ended with Stott uh hitting a game-tying triple. But the first eight pitches of that at bat, well, all nine of the pitches were sinkers. The first eight pitches of that at bat were all sinkers away, away, away, away, away. The last sinker of that at bat leaks over the middle of the plate. Like it is like a true middle, middle sinker, and Stott doesn't miss it, hits it down the right field line, ends up with a triple, and then he'll end up scoring uh the game-winning run. And feels like at some point in that at bat, might have been time to deploy a slider at some point. And you know, as I mentioned with Keaton Wynne as well, there was a point in the bottom of the ninth inning of game two where Keaton Wynne threw 10 consecutive splitters. And when we asked Patrick Bailey after game two about the decision to call his pitch or call, you know, as many pitches in succession as he did, with again Walker throwing 20 of his 21 pitches for sinkers, with Keaton Wynne throwing 10 splitters, he didn't have a ton to say as far as an explanation. He said, I trust my pitchers and the pitches. He thought that they were good pitches to call, and that was pretty much the extent of what he wanted to say in regards to why he called the pitches that he did. And it just I'm still trying to compartmentalize it because you know the strongest aspect of Bailey's game is his defense overall, and part of defense uh is pitch calling. And you know, if Walker's slider, you know, you know, make it it is safe, you know, it's fair to say that on a given day that uh you know a pitcher's not gonna have every pitch in their arsenal, but the explanation from Walker didn't seem to determine or didn't seem to say that his slider wasn't working. And another thing to mention with Walker, he was, you know, asked if he considered shaking. Uh, he said he doesn't consider someone himself to be a shaker. He wants to trust uh his catchers. Now, I I will say kind of a counter-argument to that point. I think that he's, you know, this is his fourth year in the majors. I do think that even with a little bit of the unevenness of how last year went and even this year, um, I think it is safe to say that, you know, he has that he has the liberty to shake his pitches. And I also do want to mention that, you know, at some point during his at-bat against Brighton Stott, he probably would have been in the best interest to pick off to first base for the Dolph's Garcia at first base because, you know, there was a 3-2 pitch that Stott fouled off. There was a 3-2 pitch that Stott tripled on. And on both of those pitches, Stott, or not Stott, Garcia was off and running. And maybe that's something that comes from Bailey where to say, like, hey, pick off, at least give a courtesy throw and make sure this guy isn't off and running on your first move. So that in particular just really stuck out. It's I feel like you could replay that game a couple times, and there's just not going to be too many occasions where Bailey is calling almost 20 consecutive sinkers or whatever it was, and calling 10 consecutive splitters. It was just a very odd game from a pitch-calling perspective on Patrick Bailey's part. So I think that'll do it for me from Philadelphia. Again, for anybody that's still watching, I got some unfolded clothes here. I still got to pack up. I got about 20 minutes before I gotta check out. I honestly need to get to the airport as well. It's not super far, uh, but I need to get there with enough time to grab something to eat because, again, as I mentioned, because of this doubleheader, I haven't had a meal since like five o'clock last night so far. Incredibly far from an ideal. But thank you for listening. Uh, if you were able to withstand kind of the chaotic nature of this particular podcast episode, I do promise in the next podcast episode, whenever it does come, uh it will be uh a lot more structured. Hopefully, there will be another guest, so it's not me just rambling on for 30 minutes or whatever it might be.