Splash Considerations Ep. 22: Miami Vice (feat. Grant Brisbee)

In Episode 22 of Splash Considerations, Justice (@justdelossantos on X) is joined by The Athletic's Grant Brisbee (@grantbrisbee.bsky.social). Grant and Justice discuss the Giants' lack of offseason pitching additions, Rafael Devers' odd episode in Miami and the latest on the team's Pride Night controversy.

Additional Reading

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred cites SF Giants’ ‘lapse of communication’, says players won’t be disciplined

What are SF Giants’ options once Heliot Ramos returns from IL?

SF Giants demote Houser to bullpen as Mahle nears return to rotation

Trump administration investigating MLB over SF Giants’ Pride hat warning

Longtime broadcaster Mike Krukow speaks out on SF Giants’ players’ ‘Pride Night’ cap stance

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Welcome to another episode of Splash Considerations. My name is Justice Del Santo, San Francisco Giants B reporter for the Bay Area News Group, San Jose Mercury News, ESPAY 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. A lot of things in this world cost a lot of money, but subscribing and following those things remain free 99 and just a moment of your time. And now I'm introducing the man himself, the pride of Southern Oregon University, award-winning writer, and most importantly, someone who somehow survived a two-city road trip with me back in 2025. Grant Brisbee. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

How are you doing, Justice? It's fantastic to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Thank you for coming on. I remember when I had Bags on this show back in spring training, I had a million people saying, Well, this version of Bags and Brisbee is kind of weird, but I'm kind of digging it. So we're we're bringing we're bringing back the weird. We're running it back with the other half.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

It's like you put it into a Google Translate for French and then into Japanese and then you know back into Italian and then back in England. And now it's the Bags and Brisbee through all the Google translates, and it just sounds different, but yet you're getting the same vibes.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take this episode. I'm gonna take the episode from the spring training. I'm just gonna figure out the parts where I don't talk, splice them together, and then we'll get a coherent conversation out of it. Probably, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Maybe you can just do like the last bags and Brisbane and just like bags and Brisbane and justice! Like just like edit yourself in, like quick, boom, boom, just punch in.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Just like sneaking in there really quick, sneaking in there really quick. So, Grant, we are going to talk about a lot of Giants baseball, uh, for better or for worse. Um, but I think the place where I want to start, but let's let's start with a little bit of story time. Uh the let's start with the time that me and you almost missed a flight in uh coming out of Denver back in 2025. Basically, our flight out of Minneapolis got delayed. And when I saw you at the airport, uh you had an entire like duffel bag, like like you could not have stuck another vinyl in there. If you stuck another vinyl in there, the thing would have broke. I think you're the biggest audiophile among all of us in in the Bay Area baseball theory. So I'm gonna I'm gonna start here. Let's start somewhere fun.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

What are you what are you listening to right now? What's in your rotation right now?

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Oh, see, that's the thing. It's an audiophile is not how I would describe myself. A music nerd is, but records can sound like crap, and because I don't have a good ear, like I love it, it's fine. Like I get the cheap records, I get the the old jazz represses that the real jazz collectors sniff at, because I don't know. I don't know the difference. But I listen to like whatever I find at a thrift store. Um, I generally my Spotify is podcasts, so when I'm listening to something like I just have uh here, let me just dump my labradoodle down around. And like uh, so for example, this is uh just some old dude, uh probably with question of politics. Uh Fred Pike Pike. Fred Pike, he's just some dude on the back, is him just jamming with his sons and there's Dobros and mandolins. It's the 70s, he's got like weird old man sideburns like they had in the 70s, and you put it on his grate. And so, like, that's when I'm listening to music, I'm just going somewhere. I mean, obviously, like I saw you had Frank Ocean in the background. I'm listening to Frank Ocean all the time.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Whereas there he is, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

So, you know, and so like I've got my favorites, like next to Fred Pike is Steely Dan, you know. So it's like I've got I've got my go-tos, uh, lots of jazz when I when I write, mostly jazz or instrumental, kind of slower. Well, obviously a lot of jazz is instrumental, but like the the more vibes-based jazz, like uh there's a label in the 70s and 80s, ECM. They're still out there, but like in the 70s, they put out all this like ambient kind of weird jazz and listen to a lot of that. But it's mostly just you go to a uh a thrift store or uh the bargain bins of like an amoeba or something, and even you just gave a yeah, dude. You just go to Berkeley, go to the jazz section, go to the level below, and there's like all these like five dollar Duke Ellingtons and Charlie Parker's and stuff. It's great, it's great. That's what I'm listening to. How about you, Justice?

SPEAKER_00 4:24

Uh well, I did pull out the blonde record, it's about to be the 10-year anniversary of that album, and it was such a the uh the song that everyone like kind of like hates in a sense is the be yourself one because it's the mom, it's not Frank Ocean's mom, it's like his friend's mom talking like be yourself, don't do the when people become weed heads, they become sluggish, lazy, stupid, unconcerned. And so like listening to that song as a as a freshman in uh college was like a very it's like I feel like that album was made for me at that certain time. It's funny you mentioned Steely Dan because in a in a group chat that I'm in with you know a bunch of you know either active or you know inactive, well, I guess it's only two types of active baseball writers. Uh, we have this running joke called Greatest Song of All Time of the Day. Because, you know, depending on the day, yeah, it's a different song that's the greatest of all time. And one of our friend of the program, Alex Stump, he constantly puts in there Dirty Work by Steely Dan because one time out of the set one time in a week, I guarantee you that song will be the greatest song of all time of the day. Grant, I I wish we could talk about uh music just forever. Yeah. As opposed to uh Me too. All season. All season.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

We should write about music.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

But we do have some Giants baseball uh to talk about. We've got a lot of uh not so fun details to get into. Uh but the place that I want to start with this, and I'll kind of lob it over to you by starting with this uh if it wasn't evident by now, if the last week of Giants baseball did not make this evident by now, uh the 2026 Giants cannot stop getting out of their own way.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

No, it is uh and you know I texted you Frank's above the beans. I didn't know how fluent you were on something about Mary uh references. I I wasn't that flew right over my head. Okay, yeah. So when when you're zipping yourself up, if you get uh the beans above the Frank, that's hard to do. I I did so the Giants uh they're Ben Stiller in the bathroom, uh, but it's every day. Every day's prom night for the Giants, and they're in there, they're all dressed up, they're looking in the mirror, they're smiling. Today's the day they get unstuck, and then you know, Frank's beans, whatever. And that's the story of the Giants season. They just cannot get out of their own way. They're Homer in the, you know, stuck in the vending machine holding on to the bag of chips and the fire crews all around them, and they they just can't ungrass the bag of chips and let everyone go about their day.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Yeah, and when I was thinking about this recent road trip, the Giants go two of three. Um, they're still looking for their first sweep, which I feel like it's kind of apropos in a sense that like they had this opportunity to go for a sweep, and it's like, oh no, you gotta play that game in uh in August to see if you still get it. But I feel like in a in a way, like this recent road trip, they go two of three, they take two from the from Atlanta, and then they lose three against Miami, and then again you have every like this other timeline, or not timeline, you have this other thing around covering around the team. I think that's a very I feel like that like it's been the season in a nutshell, essentially, where you know you have these flashes where it's like, okay, there might be something here. It's the one step forward, two steps back, and then this kind of for those of you who are who aren't watching, it's kind of like this waves hands, everything else around it that's just not pretty.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Yeah, it's they can't there's something extra to everything. I mean, just the the the ability to turn a really gritty walk with no outs in the ninth inning of a one-run game into a viral story that makes the organization look bad. That's amazing. That's a talent. That is just and they've it's it's not like this is the only time they've done something like this. It seems like every week there's just some unforced error, some kind of own goal. Uh, and it's frustrating because I don't know how you like my landing page is baseball reference. Some people, it might be fangras, but we're like, I wake up and I go, you know, like scratch, I crack, and I say, okay, what are the giant statistics? And all my landing page is baseball reference. And I'll just kind of go on and kind of poke around and go, oh, I had didn't notice that he was having a go down to the mine or stuff like that. But when I pop onto that giant's baseball reference page, the hitters are what I look at right away. And they're all the adjusted OPS, they're all 100 or above. Like these guys are hitting like like in this in spring training. I said, Man, if these guys could just hit, if they could pitch and like you're starting to put all together, and the names I'm thinking about, the names in my head, my mind's eye, that I'm seeing good 2026 Giants team are kind of doing what I thought they would do. Obviously, Devers, you know, and Chapman got a slow start, and all we understand all that stuff, but right now, you freeze frame it, you're looking at an offense that can produce, can get shut down, right? But if you're losing a lot of games five to two, it feels like the offense just, you know, they're part of the problem. But you need a couple games where you win two to one and then the offense goes off again to kind of have that balance. But I think the offense is doing what they're supposed to be doing, and that's what makes it so frustrating is that of all the own goals and all the hey, we're gonna, we're going to disrupt Pride Knight, we're going to do this, and we're gonna shake people off when pinch runners off when they come out. None of that matters as much to me as the biggest unforced air of all, which was just like, yeah, we're probably good with pitching. You know, ah, we'll get a couple low-end free agents. Because when I'm looking at all this nonsense and all the noise around the giants, how many how many wins is it really costing them? You know, like if you're doing like a nerd, the nerd math, like the war of like the vibes, three wins? I don't know. Like, that seems like a lot. That's a crazy amount. Saber metro uh stat heads would just like yell at me like it's too many wins. I don't know. But I still feel like the biggest problem, the biggest unforced air is just like looking at the pitching staff and saying, we'll figure this out, like the Brewers or the Rays. And they're not, they're just not that kind of organization as far as pitching development.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Yeah, I actually have a note in uh in my notes app, and it's kind of a it's a log of the nine free agents that the Giants signed in the offseason. And every once in a while, if something happens to one of them, I will update it just to you know make sure that all my you know dots are kind of in a row. Because I think it I think people kind of forget that they signed nine, they signed nine guys. Two major. I I did forget that, yeah. And so I think this is a good chance as we're or a good opportunity rather, as we're kind of on the cusp of July here to kind of go over how I think we're almost 81 games in, actually. We're kind of right in the dead point. So they signed nine guys. Let's let's run through them, including the position players as well. Will Brennan, DFA'd Ryan Barucki, TFA'd. Luisa Rise, probably gonna be an all-star, might not be a giant by after August 3rd.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Let's just be clear, as long as we're just bashing the Giants, one of the most pleasant surprises of like. Oh, for sure. You know, just a just a tremendous player, fun to watch, anyway. Onto the justice.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Freddie Sanchez walked, so Luisa Rise could have been. Uh Harrison Bader, injured most of that time. When he's been healthy, it's injured most of the time. Uh Sam Henshes, headlines for the wrong reasons, which we'll we'll get into later. Uh Jason Foley was gonna make his season debut and then he had a setback, so we still have not seen Jason Foley. Rowan Wick, the guy that I think people most forget that they signed to a major league contract, he's not gonna be here till 2027, which do we have baseball 2027? Who knows? Uh Tyler Malley, coming off the injury list, but at the time of him going on the injured list, he had the worst qualified ERA among qualified starters, or if you want to nudge that a little bit, basically the worst ERA, and uh he's gonna be back on Wednesday against the high-powered A's offense and Adrian Hauser. It's time for the bullpen for Adrian Hauser. So to the point that you made, it's this giant's like since May, if you just kind of eliminate- I know you can't eliminate April, but basically since May, they've been one of the best offensive teams, whether it's by OPS, WRC Plus, they've been hitting the hell out of the ball. It's just it they've been one of the worst pitching today. It's not even a you know like separation of rotation and bullpen, it's the whole thing. So it's like, what do you do here? You and you mentioned this in a PC role recently, like you can't get that much like the pitching that they need, the amount, you can't get that much at a deadline. And so it's you kind of shrug your shoulders, it's like this is what we got, and you know, Wizen Hunt looks solid in Atlanta, maybe Tidwell comes up at some point, bird song's gonna be out until 2027. There's just not a lot that they can do right now, so you're kind of like you have this great offense, this is everything you could have wanted out of the offense, and it's just not there.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

I I just remember it, yeah, and I remember ranking the because I love in the offseason, at least for the first month, I love the space and I love the freedom to just look at a guy and say, What about this guy and the Giants? And people think like I'm going through the motions. No, I kind of like it. It's like a little thought experiment in my head, like, oh, you know, what if this guy? And so I went through all the starting pitchers, and you've got guys like like Fromber Valdez, who's just uh talented but bizarre. I mean, that's I I reached up. It's continued to be bizarre, right? He's just he is like if if you're like like how do I put it? Like Raphael Deber's just like, oh my gosh, like he's you know, he's just uh Mr. Happy Go lucky compared to Valdez. So I get that that's not exactly working out um uh out up in up in Detroit, but it's uh I'm trying to think of the other like Ime, uh you know, okay. So that wouldn't have been you know gotten the Giants to the promised land. But you can see that there are pitchers above that Molly Hauser level who would have helped, would it have helped the Giants get out of whatever in the heck has gone wrong this season? I I think relidigating the offseason in that respect, like they were never going to be uh chasing the Dodgers, you know, no matter what kind of off-season they had. But I feel like they could have been chasing 500, which it sounds weird to make that sound exciting from here. But I I'm so sorry, Giants fans of the past. I didn't mean to make fun of 500. 500 is a beautiful, sweet place to be. Very calm.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Yeah, it's I I'm not necessarily someone that's on the board of like you need to spend X amount of dollars in order to field a competitive team. Because, like you said, like look at the teams like the Brewers and the Rays, obviously, but you know, obviously different set of circumstances regarding uh those teams. But you know, I I kind of pointed this out when you know the Giants signed both Hauser and Mally. I'm like, yeah, like there's upside there, but there's also equally, you know, it wouldn't take a lot for those signings to not go wrong, and you know, I don't want to slap a definitive grade on them yet, but we're about halfway through the season, and it you can't say that either of them have been a net positive, and then there was the bullpen as well. Like, again, I'm not saying some like they should have gone out and signed Edwin Diaz. I know there's probably a good segment of the fan base that still has PTSD over Mark Melanson. Like, yeah, like you don't necessarily spend that much money, but you know, there is a point where like you are gonna have to spend a certain amount to get like a baseline level of competency, like for example like Zach Gallon's probably not a good example, but like that's if we want to if we want to go back a couple years, like a bad season for Kevin Gaussman, for example, is very different than a bad season for Adrian Hauser. Like, if they and again, this is just to provide an example, like a bad Kevin Gaussian, that's like a like 410 ERA, he still gives you like 170 innings. A bad season from Tyler Mallee is or Adrian Hauser is what we're seeing now. So that's kind of where it's you know, from the pitching perspective, it's like, yeah, you don't have to spend like a million bajillion dollars, but at some point there is like a you get what you pay for.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Yes, and listen, free agency is completely imperfect. It's not like the brewers just steamroll through free agency, you know, they've had their missteps, they just uh DFA'd Luis Rengifo, and it's like they kind of paid a little bit extra for him. He was like the perfect fit for what the brewers are trying to do, it's just a total flop. So it's not like these teams have the magic sauce to just see through and go, like, oh, we're gonna ignore free agents and make our own superstars. But what they can do, so for example, when when a lot of people are talking about, well, you know, Kyle Harrison, obviously, he's gonna go to the All-Star game with the Brewers, it's an amazing story for them. And people are going, gosh, I wish the Giants still had him. And I don't think he's that Kyle Harrison on the Giants. And the problem to me isn't necessarily trading Kyle Harrison for a hitter that you couldn't spend for, couldn't get, couldn't develop, whatever. That was everyone knew that was the play at the time. It is it's that you are trading away, guys, that other teams lesser teams, teams with fewer resources, they're making them better. That should embarrass the Giants. That should them not knowing that Kyle Harrison should do this, should embarrass the Giants. They should look at that and go, dang it. You know, we got we got a wedgie and we got run up the flagpole. Like that is, and I feel like it's like that throughout the organization. And I just feel like and we're talking about teams like the Brewers and the Rays, well, the Dodgers do it too. You know what I mean? Like the Yankees do it too. Like these are teams that can take just raw clay and mold a pitcher in a way that the Giants haven't been able to do. There have been exceptions. I mean, Logan Webb is obviously the gold one. Landon Roop, you know, he's inconsistent, but I I feel like everyone can see his path to becoming an above-average starter. But the the infrastructure around that just hasn't been there. When you're bringing up guys like um, you know, Trevor McDonald or Tang, or you know, that that that level below over the last couple years, it just hasn't popped. The tidwells, the you know, all these Carson Seymour's, just these guys that have raw talent. I mean, the nastiest pitch I think I've ever seen in my life, I was 10 feet away from a Carson Seymour slider once, you know. It's just like the a spring training slider that to him is like one of a million. And to me, I saw that thing. I was like, oh, baby, if he can just, if he can just keep popping that. And it was during live BEP and I can't remember the hitter, but it was like Luisa Rise. He spun him into the ground. It was like, oh my gosh, this guy's gonna well, they can't do anything with it. It's like you can throw one out of a hundred, maybe one out of ten. I don't know what the ratio is of like garbage pitches to fire pitches is in order to get to the majors and and thrive, but the Giants don't have that ratio yet. There's too many uncompetitive pitches, they just they don't know how to attack the strike zone, they just can't put the ball where they want to. And you see it, you see it in the walk rate, you see it in the uncompetitive at uh at bats, you see it in when it's like situations like the henches O2, you know, and you're trying to protect one red lead and you hit a guy. Like that's the kind of stuff. And I'm not trying to blame him necessarily, come back from Tommy John, your control's gonna be off. Whatever. I'm just saying overall as a pitching staff, they don't know where the ball is going. And that in 2026, maybe you could have gotten away with it in 20, I don't know, 15, like a team like this just chucking it all over the place. Not gonna get away with it in 2026.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Yeah, they have not gotten away with it in 2026, and something that they also have not gotten away with in 2026 is the headlines, of which there have been many. And we we've alluded to the Devers thing. We're about 20 minutes in. I think we should probably talk about Raphael Devers at this point. And you you kind of said it is World Cup season, it is kind of the most i i it's not even like we accidentally like we're trying to flick it to the goalkeeper so that he can. I'm not a soccer guy, but like we're not trying to you know when they like flick it back to the goalkeeper and then like he he hits it, he kicks it down the field, and they get the offense going. This is more like a penalty shot on your own goalkeeper. Like it was just the most, and again, I wasn't there in Miami, so I'm I was kind of just seeing it as you did, and it was just such a bizarre thing where I had to watch it twice to be like, does did that really just happen? And you know, but for the most part, you know, in it someone pointed out that it happened on Father's Day, which you know, for the Giants to trade for Rafael Devers last Father's Day for this to happen on Father's Day, there's kind of that loop there, but you know, but for the most part, you know, despite all the boss the drama that happened with Devors in Boston, like things like this pretty much haven't happened. Like, yeah, he's not the most chatty of fellows, like he's not gonna be that forward facing the face of the franchise like Matt Chapman or William Adamas or Logan Webb will be. But it had been relatively drama-free in that regard, and now it is no longer drama-free. And you know, regardless of who's talking pregame, you know, this is something that is going to have to be addressed.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Yeah, I'm gonna read uh uh my colleague Andy McCullough's text uh without his permission. Um, and I just I hope he he's okay with that. But he sent to a group chat uh with myself and Sam Miller, it's just uh quote, being an all-consuming prick at exceedingly random times is a great bit. And it is, it's just like that's kind of what you got. It's just all of a sudden just to pop up and like, wait, what a minute? That's right, you're weird. That's right. You're kind of like you see things, and on the scale of player offenses, like this is so low. It's so, you know, you can almost see the good faith argument that Tony's making, where it's like he's competitive, he's he's got in his head, he was just he's in, he's feeling the emotions. He worked out, he really did go from an 0-2 count to work that walk, and that's exactly the walk the Giants needed in the world.

SPEAKER_02 21:05

Yeah, it's a bat.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

So he's on there feeling like I'm a part of the team, and maybe you know, that's the part that he's been struggling with this year. I don't know. In general, it's not taking a swing at a teammate, it's not you know that I'm not making excuses for Devers. What I'm saying is that when he pops his when he does something silly like this, you just gotta say that's devers being devers. You know, you gotta that's that's the echoes of Manny being Manny, and it's unfortunate that it's another Red Sox player that's trying to get out of the shadow. But it's I think it's a the tautological, like, this guy is just gonna be this guy works for some players. And I think it works for Devers to where every so often he's gonna do something that makes you go, I think almost everyone else on the planet would have handled that differently, but okay. Um, and I think you'll notice him less when you have superstars around him. When he's just a guy in the background, you he'll pop up and be weird, and you'll go, that's that weird guy. He's like the fourth best hitter. On the team, which is pretty good. We have a really good offense. Okay, go be weird guy. Like, he's not going to come out, he's not going to give the quotes, he's not going to explain how he's changed his swing. He just wants to be a shadow in the lineup that produces. And I don't think that's like it's not what you want out of a guy you're paying nine figures. Like you want a lot more. But when the Giants traded for him, they weren't trading for raw, rah Rafi. They were trading for a guy to hit dingers and to blend in. And if the Giants had the players to let him blend in, you would see things like that, and you'd be like, that's weird. You know, that's kind of weird. Like if the Giants were 10 games over 500, Jonah Cock comes out there, endeavors to shake some off. It's like, that's odd. That's it, you know, I bet you Tony's gonna have a little talking to there. But when the team's on fire and the manager, like I've been very patient with Tony, but I I I'm looking for evidence that anything he's doing is working, right? Like I'm trying to be like, you know that I try and attack all sides. When when we're uh talking, you know, ball, just the scribes, you know, just going back and it's unfiltered and it's not for public consumption. Like I'm the one that's a little bit quiet and gone, I don't know. You know, maybe I don't know. But like now, it's like there's no evidence for me. There's no, there's nothing going back. So in a season like that, where the Giants is the records down, the managers is what's going on, and you've got Pride Night, and you've got all this stuff. And to do it in that context is like, well, guess what, Rafi? Now you are the most visible player on the Giants. Uh, you know, you don't want to be just just be just take a breath and be like, I will be weird when I get back to the dugout. And as a as a weirdo myself, like it's yay, you know, I don't play nice with others all the time. Like, I get it. Like, I work alone. Like, who am I to talk about all this stuff? But just save the weirdness for a good season and when you're back in the dugout. So it shouldn't be that hard.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

Yeah, it it feels like there's like a kind of vibes threshold where it's like something like this, if they were 15 games over 500, if they were 15 games below 500, if they were which they are, if they were right in the middle, the vibes are gonna take a hit when something like this happens. But it's like you've built up a currency of if you if you play well enough, you built up a currency to where if they're 15 games over, it's like, eh, that was weird, we'll talk about it, and it you keep winning. But as you mentioned, the Giants, they don't kind of have the vibes currency in order to withstand something like that. So now it and especially with the off day on Monday, like it becomes there's no there's no game to immediately gravitate or latch onto. And you pointed this out in the story. I this is the thing that immediately stuck out in the video. I I I don't think I've ever seen somebody dodge a butt tap in the way that he did, which again, like on the spectrum of like what really matters in all this, like that's really low. But I think it was it was just the many ways in which it was a bad look. That was kind of the oddest one. I was like, Is it is it really were you really offended that much?

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Yeah, that was Sam Miller who noticed that. I mean, I noticed at the time, but I didn't I didn't clock it, like I was like, God, he's really mad.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Yeah, because I was wondering like, what was that movement that he made? I was like, was he what was he dodging? I was like, Oh, it was Jace Tingler.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

It's trying to escape the tingler, the iron hand of the tingler. Um, no, it's yeah, it's just it is uh in that article. I'm trying to figure out like what was his plan, man? One run game, bottom of the ninth. What is what what plans are you working up on first base that Jonah Cox can't deliver, Raphael Devers? Is it a X-rinning home run once the Giants tied up? Is it uh just being being there for the team? Like, I and he won't talk about it. So it's like you don't know. Like, I think after the game, if he had someone who really knew the the media landscape and the sport and the fans and all that stuff, they would have just said, dude, just go out there and say, like, I lost myself. I was just so excited and so I wanted to win so bad that I just forgot myself. I apologize, like, dude, that's a common like you have to have someone in your camp who can just pull you aside and be like, dude, this does not reflect poorly on you if you say these things. If you go boom, boom, boom, everyone will wash us away. And to just not have that person, because I always look at it like, okay, so Raphael Devers, I'm assuming, signed into the Red Sox organization as a teenager, right? And so now he basically didn't have the young adulthood that anyone else is gonna have, and then you add hundreds of millions of dollars to it. That situation, whether it's baseball or anything else, it's there's a famous tweet, it's like being kicked in the head by a horse, right? It's like we can't process their emotions through our emotion. They are, they have a totally different frame of reference for life than we do. And so it's easy for us to say, like, oh, you know, don't take it so hard, you know, just uh uh just let the pinch run or come. But he had something cooking and it was weird and it was wrong. Um, but he just has to have someone in his camp to just say, come on, man, this is such an unforced error.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

Yeah. And there's a couple of points I want to bring up just as someone that, you know, as a beat reporter, someone that's you know covers, you know, you know, these these guys, like these are people like I have to talk with. I think the one thing that I think a lot of fans I don't want to say don't realize, but maybe need like a little refresher is like, especially with like the players that are not from here, like Rafi is a Dominican, for one. And so it's not you're not just talking about a language barrier, it's also a cultural barrier. And you know, I again I don't want to use that as an excuse, but you know, for one, some guys just like just forget the the cultural element, like some guys just aren't comfortable like speaking up in situations like this. And I think another thing to mention is too, just as even as a beer reporter, even as someone that's around these guys, like I don't feel like entitled to their time. Like, would I prefer to have an explanation on something like this? And yeah, Rafi didn't talk to any of the reporters in Miami, it's like yeah. But I think that sometimes the discussions, specifically when it comes to Latino players, like when they don't they don't want to talk to the media or they're kind of like standoffish, I think that it can very much veer into this uncomfortable space. And I'm not gonna make accusations, but sometimes when I'm on the the beautiful website that is uh twitterx.com, whatever it is, uh don't use it. Melt your brain smokes I saw I saw it with Camillo, saw I still see it with Elliot. Like it veers into these very like you're not just talking about baseball anymore. Like you're using them as vessels for some um very uh troubling thoughts. So that's kind of the point that I want to bring in on this. But that all that being said, all of that being said, this is also a man that's still making nine figures on the on the whole. And even if he's not the face of the franchise, even if he doesn't want to be that forward-facing figures, that is still a a lot of money, and with all that money comes a lot of responsibility. And I think I can count on one hand how many times he's talked to us as a scrum. There was spring training, there was the time in Philly when he kind of opened up about his struggles, there was a homer that he hit at Oracle, and I think that's it. I think that's it. Yeah, maybe, maybe today, maybe, but we'll see.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

And I get that the in in some way because he came from uh Boston, which is not an easy uh not not an easy media market, right? Boston is famously uh let's just be frank. The East Coast shouldn't exist. All the people there are freaks.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Um, but wait wait until August, wait until we go to Boston and then we can eviscerate the East Coast. Shout out to Knicks, though. Knicks are having a great time.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

Yeah, good job, Nick's. All right, but it's so he's coming over, he's expect he's got his dukes up, right? He was traded in a maelstrom. I get that. Someone needs, I feel like, and maybe someone did tell him this, but like the Giants media, we're not softies, but we're also not looking to make a story just to like make a storet of something. Like the Giants media, like we just kind of want to write about good baseball, I think is our vibe. We don't we don't like clicks. I mean, clicks help, but like we're mostly just like, can we get to the part where they're winning championships every other year? Like, that is that's you know where the Giants media like comes out, and we're never mentioning Hunter Pence, we're bringing in the heroes and Cody Ross and all that stuff. Like, that's what we're looking to do. We're looking to lionize you at some point. Just hit some dingers and and kind of shut up. It's like the the Mark McGuire and uh the Simpsons. You want to watch me? Yes, that's that's Devers, dude. Just yes, we just want you just please. And once the dingers start flowing, and once all this, because uh listen, the the White Sox are up right now. Two years ago, the worst team ever, right? So you know that these clouds blow through, they just they blow through, and this one will blow through. And if it blows through, and Devers is untradable, like I'm sure he is, and he starts hitting dingers, he has a 900 OPS in the one of these seasons, the next two, because sometimes a guy like him can run into a season where he has a 950 OPS and just hit the snot out of it. When that happens, it'll all make a lot more sense in the context of this just Stephen King like cloud that's hovering over the Giants. Dude, the worst player at the or not the worst, but a bad player at a bad time.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

Yeah, and to kind of pin a bow in this conversation again, it this wouldn't be better. Maybe it'd be a little better, maybe a little easier pill to swallow if Devers was that 950 OPS guy that was on pace for 40 homers and 200 RBIs, and you know, but he's only been like a route league average this year. I haven't I didn't check the numbers recently, but you know, he's kind of been, you know, one day it's like 98 OPS plus, the next day it's like 101. Like he's been a lot better since April ended. I I will give him that. But and he was great in May, he was fantastic in May, but you know, June, it's kind of been a lot of up and down. So again, this isn't to say like that's excusable if he is like that 150 OPS guy, but it definitely doesn't help that he's been closer to league average than anything.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

Yeah, I mean, and so if you get rid of April entirely, right? You can't do that. That's part of that's part of the story. But if you if you just roll around in the good faith and you say, listen, this guy had a slow start to spring training. He was he didn't get a lot of at bats. That was a mistake, clearly. If he slow played it in order to save some stamina for the season, he's having different thoughts about next spring training and how he might, you know what I mean? It it didn't work out. I'm not sure if he's I'm just saying, like if he just didn't rush back or whatever, he probably needs those at bats more than the typical hitter since then. So May 1st or whatever, until present day, 868 OPS. That's just devers, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's it's uh it's coming with maybe not the average and the on-based percentage, you want to see the walk rate still down. There's concerns about his bat speed, so it's not like, oh, he'll be fine, he'll be fine. But he's 29 years old, he's hit like the same old devers for the last two months. He's probably gonna be that guy. And once if Eldridge becomes a monster star, if the Giants develop someone else around him and he gets to become, you know, if you've got Eldridge clicking like he's clicking, if you've got Jung Hu Lee, if if apparently this is like his new final form, you know, that would be great. And then you get like one more guy, and then you've got devers to clean it up, right? It's right there in the baseball parlance. Like, that works, that works. And if you don't think the Giants can succeed with the a guy hitting home runs and being weird, you were born in 2007. You know what I mean? Like you missed or 2008, you you missed the entire Barry Bonds era because that was one guy creating his own cloud over the clubhouse, but it was he was so good that they just kept winning, you know what I mean? And like all the other players were weren't nearly as good, and they needed better players. Devers is never gonna be bonds, so he needs to split the bonds among he needs to pour here's a piece of Bond Zeldridge, a piece to uh Jung Hoo, a piece to I don't know, Johnny Level. And now we're all uh Bonds Voltron, and that's he just wants to be the leg of the Bonds Voltron. You know what I mean? He wants maybe like a wrist guard or something. He just doesn't want to be the bonds and doesn't want the responsibility. Uh it's just a bad fit for a team going through whatever they're going through right now. Doesn't necessarily mean he's gonna be a bad fit going forward. I think a lot of this is recency bias and stuff like that. But it's just a weird season. Just I'll I'll just say it weird season.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

It has been a weird season, and granted, I think it's time to talk about the uh transition to the most fun element of this conversation, which is gonna be the uh the latest on everything related to the controversy is like not the right word. I still don't know what the right word is for this, but everything that's kind of happened with Pride Night because we're about a week and a half in since Landon Roop and JT Brewbaker and Ryan Walker wore the Bible had the Bible verses on their caps, and then Sam Henches abstained from it entirely. And I feel like every single day there is something new to this story that includes yesterday, yesterday being Monday, and that Commissioner Rob Manfred uh issued a letter to Missouri Senator Josh Howley saying that the Giants communication with its players was inadequate. He's he's blaming the Giants for a good part of this, but essentially he's not basically the the main part of the letter that matters is Giants players did not know based off their inve or based off whatever investigation that the MLB had that they didn't have to wear it. That that wasn't kind of informed, and it led to, you know, I don't want to say it would have been better or worse if they just abstained from wearing it altogether. It still would have been a story, but it becomes a different story because of the nature of the Bible verses, and then I guess to backtrack, there was the there was the warning last Monday, and then there was the follow-up statement saying, hey, they were warned not because of what they wrote, but because you're not allowed to do that. And then again, that's kind of addressed in Manfred's statement and like Rob Schneider's involved in this too, which I think the funniest part of you gotta get off asked too. Which I think this is a deep cut right here. And I'm only saying this because I had it. Do you know that the Giants had a Rob Schneider bobblehead at one point? No, I thought I would have it's I have like a whole stack of bobbleheads over there, but it wasn't just a Rob Schneider bobblehead, it was a Rob Schneider bobblehead with a talk box. So you would click on the button and in his accent, he'd be like, Go Giants, you can do it. And I like I played that so like before the battery audit ran out. I don't even know where it is anymore. Uh, it's not in my possession, I know that for sure. But like he's a character in all this, like you got senators on both sides. You want to talk about unforced errors. And I and we're not in the future yet. I don't know when this kind of slows down, blows over. I don't think blows over is the right term, but Landon Rup is starting on Thursday. It's gonna be his first time starting since all this happened, and I cannot imagine it is going to be a warm reception for him.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's listen, you don't want to say, oh, don't you know you're playing in San Francisco? I don't, I don't think that should necessarily matter. I and you know, most of these players, they're not living in the city, they're not taking in the culture of whatever city they're they're passing through. I mean, this is a very, you know, oh, I worked in uh, you know, worked in Frisco, Texas for uh six months on a project. Like that's kind of the feeling that they're gonna have for San Francisco writ large. Not all of them, not obviously you've got guys like Hunter Pence who come here and like, this is great, and then they just kind of put down stakes. Uh so this is just about anywhere. And like I can I think my whole shtick is that I try to see all sides, right? My whole shtick is to twist myself into a pretzel being like, well, you know, the good faith explanation, and in this one, the good faith explanation is that you've got pitchers who believe that the this is something uh more important than baseball, right? This is this, you've got you know, you've got the what the Marines do, they've got uh the core god, you know, like but they're they're ranking a god at the top and the baseball second. And you will I don't remember. Do you remember the shirts uh that they would be wearing during warm-up? So it was it was like uh Jesus is greater than baseball or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

It was there are those, there's a lot of Jesus one shirts throughout Major League Baseball.

SPEAKER_01 37:49

Right, right. So it's it is if you're stripping it down to its roots, I think that's a perfectly you know valid uh thing to believe, to believe that there's something bigger than baseball. I think that there is, you know, because I personally there's I believe that civics are more important than baseball. I believe that you know the the state of the world is more important than baseball. So I get that what I think with a lot of these demonstrations, so it's it's not it's showing that there's just um ah God, I don't want to step in anything, but it just when I'm coming through and I'm seeing I feel like it's just a lack of listening. And it feels like the when you were presented with here is a night, and when you look at that and you say, that's the other people. That is these these don't represent where I'm from, these don't represent the faith that I was taught, these are the others, right? I feel like that misrepresents, I feel like that's like closing the book on you know a history of World War II and and you know, just coming away with like, you know what, you know what Canada should have done differently. It's like you know, it's like that's not like you you totally took. It's like, come on, man, there's there's uh the Sermon on the Mount. Like, what's he talking about? The Ten Commandments, what are they? It's like boom, boom, it's like you're going through. It's like just listen, the there's people out there who are likelier to self-harm. They are it's a it's a group of people, uh human beings, souls who, when they grow up, they're told they're different, they don't belong, that you know, you get out, you are not a part of society, we're gonna have everything is catering to this heteronormative you know idea of society, you're not a part, and it leads to uh suicidal ideation, it leads to uh you know all sorts of just bad things for society, but also just as a human, bad things if you're looking at just another human being feeling like they shouldn't have to feel, and they're saying this night is going to help, you know, having nights like this, sense of community helps you know lift all the boats with this rising tide. And we're just gonna, you know, it's it's a very Christian thing. Like if you are looking at it from the perspective of if you are someone looking at like look, it I'm not gonna quote Bible. I actually had a lot of Bible verses in my in my uh in my article. They took them out because it's like, well, we're writing for general audience. My I was kind of writing to the giant's pictures in a little bit, just sort of like like when when when you go into like Luke and you know uh uh Jesus is getting his feet washed by a prostitute and she's crying and he says, Ah, your sins are forgiven. Like to me, and I said this on Blue Sky, it's such a blue sky post, but it would be like being in the room you know with the Jesus and the prostitute and booing and go, boo, prostitution's a sin, boo, stuck, prostitute, stuck. You know what I mean? It's like like just just read Luke, you know, uh 36 uh to 50. It's it's like it's it's it's there, you know. It's like that's the whole thing right here. You have to listen. You have to could you have to think. If you think something's a sin, guess what? The soul of that person is more important than the sin. You know, you have to uh the humanity of that person. I could go off, but I'm just saying, like, justice, you had me, like I've had a couple podcasts canceled. Uh, I used to have two podcasts, now I have one. You put a microphone for me, I'm just gonna start talking, dude. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

It's it's the back end of a 40-minute conversation. But I think the the one point that I want to, you know, kind of iterate in in all this is that, you know, obviously Brew Baker and Roop and Walker and Henches, they were all asked about why they did what they did. And all of them iterated the point. Like they really iterated the point that this does not come from a place of hate. And I can't get inside their minds, I can't determine whether that's what's something that they truly believe or not. But being in a place like San Francisco, I think that there are more than enough avenues to what you said to listen and understand why people of the community might think differently. And, you know, whether or not they take that opportunity, that's you know, to be determined. And we have seen, you know, with a very important pitcher in this franchise's history, Jeremy Affell, kind of a you know, 180 in regards to thoughts of this. We saw it with, you know, to go to another sport, Tim Hardaway Sr. You know, he had some homophobic thoughts that he did some listening, did some research, and now he's an advocate for the community. So it's not my go go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

Yeah, I mean, Steve Young, I mean, look at his career. You know, you go, you go, you're you're going to Brigham Young, and you're just completely that's not the community he's growing up in. I mean, talk about someone who embraced San Francisco. And yeah, I think the listening is is gonna be key. It's but I also think the the big the biggest problem to me, and I think this goes society writ large, this is in order to succeed at being at anything at the level, at the highest level of being a baseball player, it takes so much brain power away from the world. Like in order to focus on you on your health, your mechanics, your uh how you're gonna attack hitters the next day, in order to stay at that level, not get waived or DFA'd, like it takes so much brain power. And you're just like you're not going to be reading John Locke on your day off. Like you're not going to be exploring, and I'm not saying you have to like go excess get all the philosophy in before you come in with a uh an opinion on anything in life, but it's just these are opinions that are formed with a bare minimum of information based on I'm just guessing. Like, I don't know these people. Maybe they are like their fifth read through like a Sam Harris book and go, This guy sucks with post-it notes all over. I don't know. But you know, it's just their job is baseball, their brain is baseball. And I don't think that they once you have this level of faith and you're it's it's a part of your community and you're comfortable with it. The comfort buoys you in a way to where digging deeper isn't necessarily rewarded. Um, it isn't necessary, it's it's not gonna just get them better baseball results. You know, it's gonna take time away from their like I'm not excusing it. I'm just saying these are baseball brain people who find comfort from uh uh uh the faith that they were introduced to. And I I think that there's more under that faith. Um, but I don't necessarily expect I can't say to everyone in the world who's got their busy life like you've got to dig deeper or something like that. It's just we're all bombarded with information and we're all trying to do the best we can. I think if you just strip it down to what are who's asking for help, how can I give them help? I think if you can just push that noise, get that noise out of the vacuum. And if you can just ask yourself, what are they asking? And are they asking for help? It, you know, if they're told that they're asking to push the homosexual agenda and you know, convert our kids in school, well, that's a much different story. You know what I mean? It's it's they just I don't think that's where they're coming from. I hope, I hope not. I just think that they need to do a better job of asking, what are they why is there a pride night? I think is what you know, explain it to me. Explain it to me like I'm someone who cares about individuals on an individual level. And if you can't come back from a conversation like that and say, yeah, there's still less, you know, I still can't respect that. I don't know. I don't think that's happened though yet. Justice, I'm rambling. This is the end of a podcast. I have a lot of thoughts that are just kind of. Here we go, Grant.

SPEAKER_00 45:22

World's hardest transition. 30 seconds, who are they trading?

SPEAKER_01 45:26

Honestly, um I could see them trading Ramos. I know I wrote about it and it's kind of like a I could see them just kind of open up a spot. I could see him having value to a club that that like the Rays, the Brewers, the Guardians, that aren't looking to make a you know, even a uh six-figure contract signing, or not six figure, uh, seven, eight figure, whatever. The double to tens, tens of millions. They're not gonna sign someone for tens of months. They want something like Ramos. And I could see that happening. Just the guys, even Casey Schmidt, guys with a little bit of arbitration left, they're gonna be cheap. Uh, the Giants have a little bit of a roster gum up. Um, other than that, it's just a rise and rays, right? A rise, Ray, uh, maybe henches. Um, I mean, Tristan Peters. I don't know if you if you've paid attention to what he's doing in Chicago. Tristan Peters having a whale the season as the White Sox center fielder. He was a former Giant. He was he was acquired for Trevor Rosenthal, the pitcher who never appeared for the Giants. Just an injured reliever. They trade him at the deadline. He never pitched for the Brewers either. And like now he's a starting. So my point with that is like Henches, Foley, like, I don't know. Like, there could be a team out there that's like, yeah, we'll give up an interesting fella, and then he turns into a starter. So I think one of those guys could move. Um, but it's gonna be, I think, fairly quiet.

SPEAKER_00 46:41

Yeah, to the point about Ramos, he did start a rehab assignment last week, last Wednesday. He's played four games. And at some point, they are going to have to figure out what they do when Ramos comes back because there is not a perfect solution. And I think the most straightforward one that doesn't involve any personnel is putting Ramos and Schmidt at the corners and moving Jung Hoo to center. But the whole freaking offseason was hey, let's improve the outfield defense, and that is not a great outfield lineman. And you know, if they trade a rise, that clears things up. If you know Matt Channel's name has been floated around as well, you know, it'd be difficult to trade just because of how much money he has left. But if they trade him, that opens up a spot up as well. But we'll kind of see. I I wouldn't you could give me based off how honestly how based off how the season has gone, you could give me any number of outcomes, and I'd just be like, yeah, that sounds about right.

SPEAKER_01 47:35

Yeah. I I mean I could see there I don't want to say they're definitely trading a rise, but that's obviously the the the one that every team's gonna want. I mean, you every team wants a rise going to the postseason, he's just gonna drive pitchers nuts. Ray, you know, he makes a lot of money for you know the kind of pitcher he is right now, but teams are gonna jump on that. Uh yeah, I I think that's about it. Oh, they could trade Patrick Bailey. Grant, I don't I don't know how to tell this to you. Uh I haven't been paying attention.

SPEAKER_00 48:04

Patrick Bailey's he doesn't he doesn't exist, Grant.

SPEAKER_01 48:08

That was another timeline. You just snapped into this one.

SPEAKER_00 48:15

Grant, this is this is a lot of fun. What uh any parting thoughts, work we find your work? Uh the athletic. Even though I'm asking you that, if you're listening to this podcast, like you know where you I'm the one you should be asking where you can find my work.

SPEAKER_01 48:25

That's well, here's the thing. So I have met uh a lot of scribes in my time, a lot of a lot of ball writers, uh, a lot of up-and-comers in uh justice. I gotta say, you got the goods. Justice, uh, if you're listening to this, you know that justice has the goods. Um, he has the deep institutional knowledge of Giants baseball. Like he's popping off with guys the same way I can pop off with guys like Jim Barr, like who pitched before my time. Like, you know, you're popping off with guys before your time because you know you've done the history and you're a hell of a writer. And my dad constantly sends me your stuff. I honestly don't know if he has an athletic subscription. Honestly, I I honestly uh he it come, it's like kind of come up in roundabout ways where he's like, I just don't quite know how the app works. And but he's always sending me screenshots of justice articles uh in portrait mode. Uh so I have to you know flip the picture, turn my phone around. Um, and then I get, you know, that's how I get my daily dose of justice, and I'm saying you should too if you're a gentle reader. Appreciate that, Grant. Appreciate that as always.

SPEAKER_00 49:25

I think you've just secured another uh repeat appearance on those great podscap. Justice those Santos, Grant's Brisbane Splash Considerations podcast. We will see you in the next one.