Starless and swept - Yahoo Sports

You’ve watched baseball long enough to know an inherent truth: stars cannot save you. This is not football, where having one of the best quarterbacks alive can gift you a .500 season as the starting point. It’s certainly not basketball, where having one of best players is synonymous with having one of the best teams.

You watched Barry Bonds break the single-season home record for a team that still missed the playoffs. You watched Tim Lincecum win a Cy Young on a team that finished 18 games below .500.

And if you thinks this is just a San Francisco Giants thing, well, it’s not. The Los Angeles Angels employed Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani for six straight seasons, and won exactly zero postseason games. While Ohtani has left and found greener pastures, Trout has put together one of the greatest careers in MLB history and, more than 17 years since the day he heard his name called at the draft, is still in desperate search of his first playoff win. Not a series win; a game. Nine measly innings.

So yes. Stars very much cannot save you.

But an absence of stars will kill you, swiftly and emphatically. This is a newts and salamanders situation: not all stars play for good teams, but all good teams have stars. Plural.

The Giants entered the season with two stars, one on each side of the ball: Logan Webb and Rafael Devers. And while those two were far from the only reason that the season started as sideways as a 2004 Paul Giamatti film, you can at least draw something of a line connecting the team’s record after six weeks (14-23) to Webb’s ERA (5.06) and Devers’ OPS (.593).

Those two eventually course-corrected to varying levels. Webb mixed enough good in with the bad to make his third-straight All-Star appearance, while Devers turned the calendar in a hurry and, since the start of May, has been third in both OPS and wRC+, behind only presumptive MVPs Pete Crow-Armstrong and Yordan Alvarez.

The Giants, of course, did no such course correcting, reminding us once again of today’s lesson: stars cannot save you.

We spent much of the summer watching Devers smash home run after home run and remembering that lesson. But occasionally that aforementioned corollary — an absence of stars will kill you — would rear its head.

On Sunday, in a 6-4 loss that resulted in a sweep at the hands of the San Diego Padres, the Giants were reminded of that corollary. It was a starless Sunday at Oracle Park, unless you were one of the fans sitting in the bleachers watching the first Sunday of the NFL season, instead.

The Giants found themselves emphatically starless. Webb was pitching, yes, but just two starts removed from the worst outing of his career, and leaking oil in a big way. He didn’t look himself. He didn’t look the part of an ace or a star.

And Devers? Shortly before the game began, the Giants announced that he had been placed on the 60-Day Injured List with a core muscle injury, ending his season.

One star who, for now, is not a star. One star who, for now, is not healthy. It’s a good recipe for a forgettable baseball loss.

As if to hammer home this point, the Peacock broadcast displayed the Giants nine-player lineup next to the team they played for when the season began. Just two of the players (Jung Hoo Lee and Christian Koss) were on the Giants. Just one other (Brett Harris) was on a different team’s MLB roster. Despite that, just two (Bryce Eldridge and Drew Gilbert) began the season for the Giants’ AAA affiliate. Two more (Shay Whitcomb and Andrew Knizner) were on different teams’ AAA affiliates. And finally, two more (Jonah Cox and the debuting Scott Bandura) had opened the season for San Francisco’s AA team.

Just for good measure, the Giants turned to three players off of their bench: one more (Osleivis Basabe) who started the year in AAA, and two more who began the season down in AA (Drew Cavanaugh and Turner Hill). When Webb’s night was over, he was replaced by Matt Wilkinson, whose first appearance of the season was his AA debut. He handed things over to the third and final pitcher, Trent Harris, who began the season in AAA.

A distinct lack of stars, especially when it became apparent that Webb was all too hittable on this night. He loaded the bases before recording an out, ceding back-to-back singles to open the game, and following them up with an uncompetitive double. An unproductive out was only temporary respite before Jackson Merrill smacked a two-run double.

It was not just a first inning thing, as we’ve sometimes seen from Webb. A Samad Taylor leadoff single and steal put the Giants leader in trouble immediately to start the second, and Taylor would later score on a single by Fernando Tatis Jr., who would later score on a home run by Manny Machado.

And with that, it was clear what kind of a night it would be.

Webb would mostly settle in after that, but the damage was done. He’d give up just one more rally, when Ethan Salas cracked a triple (his first career hit) in the fourth inning, and scored on another Tatis single.

If you’re looking for a silver lining, Webb’s strikeouts returned for this game, as he whiffed seven batters, while walking just one. But it’s hard to search too hard for a silver lining given the eight hits and six runs in five innings. Really, the silver lining came from what happened after Webb left: Wilkinson allowed just one hit in three shutout innings, while Harris pitched a perfect ninth.

The offense, tasked with undoing a large early deficit without Devers, tried, but fell short. Knizner made it clear that there would be fight, when he blasted a two-run homer in the second inning to give the team life.

View Link

But an opportunity was squandered in the fourth, when Eldridge led off with a single and Cox followed with his greatest weapon: the bunt single. Bandura, in just his second career at-bat, struck out, before Whitcomb blooped a single to load the bases.

The situational opportunities still haunt the Giants, though, as Knizner hit a fly ball that wasn’t deep enough to score Eldridge, before the inning ended on a Harris fly ball.

They would chip away an inning later, though. San Diego turned to a lefty reliever for the fifth inning, and Koss led off with a single and a stolen base, before Gilbert worked an impressive same-handed walk. A double steal put the Giants in position for a big inning, but they could only get one run out of it, after Lee had an unproductive out and Eldridge ground into an RBI fielder’s choice.

View Link

They chipped away an inning later, and this time it was in memory-making fashion: Bandura, who became the franchise record-setting 67th player to appear in a game for the Giants this year, led off the inning with a single, his first career hit, which he celebrated by taking second on an error. He would later score the first run of his career, when Koss brought him home with a clutch two-out single.

View Link

But just as the Giants have grown accustomed to poor situational hitting, they’ve grown accustomed to bizarre plays on the field, and Koss had a new one for us: with Koss at first and Cavanaugh at second, Basabe ground into what figured to be an inning-ending out. Xander Bogaerts, however, tried to get the out the short way, and threw to second too late. Koss, not anticipating this, ran right through the bag; rather than an infield single, the Padres had Koss — and then, after pivoting 90 degrees, Cavanaugh — in an easy backyard pickle.

Once the shenanigans arrive, you know the game is over. And it was. The Giants tried again in the eighth, when Bandura drew a leadoff walk and Hill worked a two-out walk. They tried again in the ninth, when Eldridge bopped a two-out single, and Cox worked 10 pitches out of Yuki Matsui.

But on the 10th, he struck out swinging, and the game was over.

All credit to the kids. They’re fun. And they’re making memories.

But it’s hard to win without stars.

Read the full article here