Barry Tompkins: The ebbs, flows, and woes of Bay Area baseball

The great Bill Walsh once pointed out to me that there are certain teams in every sport you watch that regardless of any situation, you somehow know they are going to win.

One of Bill’s players, Randy Cross, said that with Joe Montana in the huddle, everybody on the team knew that someway, regardless of the scoreboard, something was going to happen, and “we’d win.”

I heard that same sentiment from Oakland Raider’s players when Ken Stabler was their quarterback.

I get the same feeling from the current NBA Minnesota Timberwolves; and I get it from those dreaded L.A. Dodgers, too.

The opposite is also true. There are some teams that you watch and just know something bad is going to happen and your team is going to lose.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 2024 San Francisco Giants.

The truth is, this is not a horrible baseball team. Try being a Chicago White Sox fan if you want to know about pure masochism.

What the Giants are is faceless. With but a couple of exceptions, they are a team composed of apparently very nice people whom, were you to see them on the street, you’d have a hard time distinguishing them from the check out guy at Safeway, or your Uber driver.

They just aren’t very interesting.

For me the exceptions are Logan Webb and Jung Hoo Lee. Both because they have what seems to be missing in the other 25 guys on the team– an ability to rise to the moment, and a personality that gives you hope.

If in fact it’s true that C students run the world, then the San Francisco Giants should all be politicians, corporate bigwigs, or tech moguls. But, as a baseball team – they’re just average.

By the end of last season I would sooner watch SpongeBob SquarePants reruns than I would a weeknight game against the Cleveland Guardians. On this last road trip, by the time they played the Monday day game against the Phillies, I was searching desperately for Judge Judy.

I know they just had a winning series in Denver, but beating the Rockies is like shooting Bambi.

I just got tired of waiting around for something good to happen.

Old familiar faces like the Brandons — Crawford and Belt — and J.D. Davis were jettisoned, while Farhan Zaidi dusted off the check book and sprung for $385 million to buy Jung Hoo Lee, Matt Chapman, Jorge Soler, and Blake Snell.

For that, Farhan earns his Participation Trophy. His selections however, seem to come from the school of “Cross my fingers and hope this works.” So far, it hasn’t.

I do believe that Lee will wind up being a steal. He’s an outstanding defender, contact hitter with just enough power and speed, and an infectious personality. He’s just learning the American game and, I think, will wind up this year as maybe the team’s best, with a future that to me says Gold Glove and All-Star.

I understand the Matt Chapman acquisition, but not sure I understand the investment.

Chapman is a great clubhouse guy, a savvy baseball man, and his manager, Bob Melvin, really wanted him. On top of that he’s a Gold Glove third baseman. That’s all good. But his performance thus far has frankly been consistent with his last couple of years. After leading the league in hitting last year in Toronto for the first month of the season, he was a sub-200 hitter for the rest of the year. He had 17 home runs, a drop off from earlier seasons. He has four home runs this year and has been less than average at third base.

Jorge Soler has been a power guy everywhere he’s been since coming from Cuba. He hit 48 home runs with 117 RBI at Kansas City in 2019. He had 36 homers last year in Miami. He’s on the DL right now and hasn’t moved the needle at home plate. In fact, he looks utterly lost. He’s hit five home runs this year and has eight RBIs to show for it. He chases bad pitches, is undisciplined, and carries with him a look of apathy which seems to be infectious.

Blake Snell is…….well you know. He’s won two Cy Young Awards, so you know somewhere in him he’s got the goods. He should be back – for better or worse – next week at the latest.

Do you suppose there’s any significance to the fact that in the four years between Cy Young Awards Snell was 25-26 with a 3.62 ERA?

Lost in all of this is the season that LaMonte Wade is having. He leads the league in on-base percentage, is hitting in the .340 area, and has played solid defense. He’s been a model of consistency.  And yet on this team, he somehow manages to be invisible. Wade, Patrick Bailey (also on the IL at the moment), Kyle Harrison (and to a lesser degree Jordan Hicks), and Camilo Doval are the only even semi-consistent thrill givers.

The Giants are a team in search of both an identity – and a personality.

All the while, those homeless misfits, the Oakland A’s, have put together a team that is young, interesting, sometimes entertaining, overachieving and – don’t look now – has a better record than the San Francisco Giants.

I can’t even begin to vent on how bad this team and the Oakland fans have been treated by their greed-driven owner. To say they deserve a better hand is probably the greatest understatement of the decade.

As sad as it is, and as deserving as it may be, the A’s are averaging a mighty 6,410 people per game. And, I promise, right now it’s a better show in Oakland than it is in San Francisco.

Here’s how bad it is. According to sports business website Sportico, the A’s draw fewer people than 533 of U.S. based pro and college teams over every sport. A’s games are the least attended of any team in any of the five major professional sports leagues.

They are bested in average attendance by the International League Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, and the American Hockey League Cleveland Monsters. Three indoor football teams, a pro women’s volleyball team and two college wrestling teams draw more people. So does one NBA G-League team and two Division III college football teams.

The A’s have the lowest payroll in the major leagues by $20 million. And, last year John Fisher’s Oakland A’s netted $62 million.

There oughta be a law!

Barry Tompkins is a 40-year network television sportscaster and a San Francisco native.  Email him at barrytompkins1@gmail.com.