Valuable lessons Giants can learn from watching 2024 playoffs

Valuable lessons Giants can learn from watching 2024 playoffs originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO — Before the World Series, Major League Baseball sent out a graphic on social media that might have made some Giants executives throw their phones against a wall.

It featured Juan Soto, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton on one side and Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto on the other. With the exception of Betts, every one of those players was a Giants target at one point.

The organization had a trade in place for Stanton when he was an MVP with the Marlins but he used his no-trade clause and forced his way to New York. Two years ago, the Giants went all-in on Judge in free agency. Last winter they finished among the finalists for Ohtani and Yamamoto. Before those pursuits, they tried to trade for Soto but found they didn’t have the right mix of prospects.

The last decade for the Giants has been in part about their failure to land a franchise-altering star, and this month they were reminded of just how important that can be. This was a postseason dominated by some of the game’s biggest names, with Soto and Stanton leading the way for the Yankees and Betts and Freddie Freeman pacing a deep Dodgers lineup that dominated the World Series.

There were the usual surprises — the Dodgers might not be here without Tommy Edman — but this was a month of star power, and the title went to the organization that gathers more of them than anyone. The Dodgers are the sport’s juggernaut and have been for years, and as the Giants watched their rival wash away all remaining 2020 jokes, there had to be a realization that the gap between the two is about as wide as it has ever been.

The Dodgers should be even better next year, with Ohtani joining a rotation that was absolutely decimated by injuries during this title run. The Giants, on the other hand, enter another offseason of uncertainty.

They’re now run by a man who has more rings in the past three decades than the team he is chasing, but Buster Posey knows he has a lot of work to do. As Posey and the Giants officially enter the offseason, here are three lessons from the postseason that they should keep in mind …

Power Plays

The World Series was a meeting of storied franchises, but also of the team that led the American League in homers and the team that led the National League. Last year’s champion, Texas, was fourth in the majors in home runs. In 2022, the Astros (fourth) edged the Phillies (sixth). The Braves won the 2021 title after finishing third in homers.

It’s obviously a huge positive to lean on power in the regular season, but in October, when the pitching steps up a notch, games are won and lost on big swings. That was the case over the past month, with the Dodgers hitting 27 homers in 16 games and the Yankees going deep 22 times in 14 games.

Game 1 was won on a memorable grand slam by Freeman and all four Dodgers runs the next night came on homers. Freeman went deep again in Game 3 to set the tone and both Yankees runs came on an Alex Verdugo homer. The only Yankees win included eight runs that were scored on homers, including a grand slam from Anthony Volpe. They jumped out to a huge lead in Game 5 behind homers from Judge, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Stanton.

Aside from that comedy of errors from the Yankees in the fifth inning on Wednesday, the offense in the World Series came nearly entirely from home runs, but Posey doesn’t need to be told how important those swings can be. His most memorable postseason moment at the plate was a grand slam off Mat Latos in 2012 and the final homer of his career was a near-splash hit in 2021 against Walker Buehler, the man who closed out the season.

Posey was part of the attack as the Giants set a franchise record with 241 homers that season. In the years since, they have hit 183, 174 and 177, although this year’s team was actually sneaky-powerful. Oracle Park isn’t kind to hitters, but the Giants ranked fifth in home runs on the road with 112. A lot of them, however, came from players who already are gone or likely will be.

Michael Conforto hit 17 homers on the road, Jorge Soler had eight and Thairo Estrada hit six. The lineup has a couple of 20-homer anchors in Matt Chapman and Heliot Ramos, and Bryce Eldridge is on the way, but more power will be needed this offseason. The RTIs (runs thrown in) helped them win titles a decade ago, but postseason games in the last few years have been won and lost with the long ball.

Bullpen Games Are Fine, Actually

The previous regime made a lot of mistakes, but the constant complaining about the use of bullpen games really wasn’t fair. Are bullpen games as aesthetically pleasing as a six-inning start? No. Are they what we all grew up on? No. But the game has changed in massive ways since Madison Bumgarner put a team on his back a decade ago, and some fans — and some media members — really need to accept that.

The Dodgers went with a bullpen game in Game 4 of the NLDS and eight relievers combined for a shutout that saved their season. They did it twice more in the NLCS, losing the first one but clinching the pennant behind seven relievers. Their bullpen game in the World Series was a mess and their only loss, but they weren’t bothered by doing it, and a night later they essentially had another one after Jack Flaherty melted down. Six relievers got the ball to Buehler.

The Dodgers are the last team in baseball that should be relying on openers, but they entered the postseason with Clayton Kershaw, Tyler Glasnow, Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May, Emmet Sheehan, Gavin Stone and River Ryan on the IL. They were forced into bullpenning, but it’s something they do often anyway, and Farhan Zaidi and Gabe Kapler tried unsuccessfully to make it a weapon in San Francisco.

Ironically, this current Giants roster is positioned as well as just about any to effectively play the matchups. The 2025 rotation could include Jordan Hicks, Kyle Harrison and Hayden Birdsong, all of whom are still working on consistently getting deep into starts. The back end of the bullpen could be tremendous if Camilo Doval finds his way, and there’s plenty of depth in guys like Sean Hjelle, Erik Miller and Randy Rodriguez. With depth like Tristan Beck, Landen Roupp and Spencer Bivens, the Giants also have pitchers who are comfortable in either short stints or extending to 50-plus pitches when needed.

Bob Melvin used more than a dozen openers in his first season in San Francisco and the Giants shouldn’t throw that plan out just because Zaidi is gone. They have the depth to effectively run a few bullpen games if there are rotation injuries next season, and the Dodgers just provided a reminder that sometimes it’s a good way to get through a postseason start, too.

Build the Statue

Alright, now to the complete opposite end of the spectrum …

This postseason was played 10 years after the last Giants title, a run that included six starts from Bumgarner of at least seven innings. In the entire 2024 postseason, there were just eight starts of at least seven innings. Seriously, the entire month. Gerrit Cole and Yu Darvish were the only pitchers to have multiple starts of at least 20 outs, something Bumgarner did twice in the NLCS and twice in the World Series in 2014.

There wasn’t a single pitcher to throw a complete game this postseason, but that wasn’t a surprise. It has happened just six times since the start of the 2014 postseason and three of those games belong to Bumgarner, who did it twice during the last title run and then again two years later in the NL Wild Card Game.

That was the last postseason shutout, and given how the game has changed, it might be the last one for a while. It’s been just a decade since Bumgarner threw 52 2/3 innings but nobody even reached 30 this October. Only two pitchers — Cole and Flaherty — even threw 20 innings.

This is a long way of saying that if you’re a Giants fan who is a bit down today, well, just pull up some clips of the big lefty coming out of the bullpen in Kansas City. And if you’re a Hall of Fame voter, you should probably give all of this some extra consideration when his name shows up on a ballot in a few years, even if the regular season numbers fall well short.

The Giants themselves have been undecided about how to handle honoring Bumgarner. There won’t actually be a statue — Barry Bonds, Bruce Bochy and Posey are probably next in line anyway — but there should be a jersey number retirement in the coming years, and nobody knows that better than the new president of baseball operations.

Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast