The expression “a tie is like kissing your sister” came from Navy football coach (and former 49ers defensive coordinator) Eddie Erdelatz, who used it to describe a 0-0 game between Navy and Duke in 1953. It’s an expression that’s lasted almost 75 years, and it’s never not been a deeply weird expression. The idea is that you’re kissing, and that’s awesome, but it’s your sister, and that’s bad, so everything evens out.
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I do not believe these pros and cons are of equal weight! Please reconsider this deeply weird simile!
The Giants had a 3-3 road trip against the Braves and Guardians last week, which means they “tied” the road trip. It was not like kissing your sister. It was like kissing an especially mean-looking dog on the nose. It could have bit your face off, but it didn’t. You got to skritch the dog on the head a little bit, and that was satisfying, but in the end, you probably would have been OK not kissing the dog on the nose. Dog noses are wet and weird. Now you’re dwelling on the whole nose thing. A 4-2 road trip would have been like eliminating the nose kiss and focusing more on the skritches. That would have been awesome.
The Giants could have done a lot worse, they could have done better, and it’s time to bury the sister-kissing simile deep underground, where future generations don’t have to deal with it.
Here are some notes and errata from the last week of Giants baseball.
One curse down, another curse to target
Heliot Ramos is an All-Star, and you can read about it here. It goes into The Curse of Chili, which is now over. The curse can return where it belongs: the bathroom of a Cincinnati hotel room after trying Skyline for the first time.
However, there are other curses left to end. Assuming that Jung Hoo Lee is the Giants’ starting center fielder next year, that would mean Ramos is a candidate to start in left field on Opening Day 2025. Which means he could be the starting left fielder in 2026. The Curse of Barry Bonds would fall, too.
That’s years away, though. A curse that could (and should) fall in just a couple weeks is The Other, Lesser Curse of Barry Bonds, which has to do with the Home Run Derby.
My theory is that these curses exist because of different ways the franchise offended the baseball gods. The Giants didn’t get All-Stars after the ’70s as penance for giving away All-Star outfielders George Foster, Garry Maddox, Gary Matthews and Dave Kingman like they were party favors. They have a carousel of Opening Day left fielders because they didn’t re-sign Barry Bonds after the 2007 season, which helped push him into a forced retirement.
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And they haven’t had a participant in the Home Run Derby since Bonds because he declined to participate in the 2007 Home Run Derby in San Francisco. My dude, just hit dingers in front of the hometown fans. C’mon.
Ramos can break this last one. A brief history of Giants Home Run Derby participants:
• Kevin Mitchell, 1989
• Matt Williams, 1990
• Barry Bonds, 1993
• Barry Bonds, 1996
That’s it! This is easily explained when you remember The Other, Final Curse of Barry Bonds, which is that the Giants haven’t had a 30-homer season from any player since he retired. Teams without dinger monsters typically don’t get slots for the Home Run Derby.
Still, there have been other worthy candidates since the last one. Jeff Kent, for one. Rich Aurilia in 2001, for sure. Hunter Pence was a legendary batting practice showman. Mike Morse could hit dingers to rival anyone else. Pablo Sandoval, man. He deserved at least one chance.
It’s time. It’s been almost 30 years, and it’s time. Don’t just put Ramos in the All-Star Game. Let him take both-cheek hacks as all the other All-Stars and their kids cavort behind him. The Giants deserve another derby participant.
A week of Jorge Soler extremes
The hardest-hit ball by exit velocity last week:
The crappiest-hit ball by launch angle, exit velocity and distance last week:
Soler also hit a line-drive homer that made the Braves announcer say “Oh, boy” off the bat.
Jorge Soler contains multitudes. (And he’s having consistently better at-bats, which coincides very neatly with the Giants playing more competitive baseball.)
The Giants had an incredible week at the plate (while the other team was hitting)
Update: The Giants have still had just two runners tagged out at home plate all season, which easily leads baseball. Maybe this isn’t entirely a good thing, as it might indicate that they’re slow and not willing to take as many risks as the non-slow teams. But it sure beats leading the league in runners getting thrown out at home.
This comes up now because the Giants tagged five runners out at home plate just last week. You can watch them all here, but pay special attention to this one, where Matt Chapman almost decapitated Brett Wisely:
Right about here, Wisely assumed that the ball was just going to get tossed in because there was no chance to get the runner.
Right about here, Wisely was forced to remember that the runner was Matt Olson, who was running like he escaped from a sack race at the family picnic.
Life comes at you fast.
Another one to highlight is Austin Slater’s throw to cut down Austin Riley:
That’s important because it was Slater’s last great moment as a Giant. He was traded to the Reds on Sunday night, and while he deserves more than an aside in a column like this, he was a good Giant. There was no easier way to tell a dedicated fan from a casual fan than with how they viewed Slater. I’m not talking about the people who took the position of “Slater has been a good Giant, but he’s lost it this year,” which was perfectly valid, even if I didn’t agree. I’m talking about the people who pretended like he was never good, or that he had a fluke season in 2021, or that he was always fungible.
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No, he was good for several seasons in his long Giants career. If you disagree, it’s because you’re a casual who doesn’t understand how 26-man rosters are built. Go along, sonny. Go find another outfielder to do what Slater did for the Giants as a fourth outfielder. You’re on a snipe hunt and won’t come back soon, but you also won’t be missed while you’re gone.
Slater will be missed, though. Maybe not this year’s version, but the general idea of a player who did everything well and excelled in two very important roles (pinch-hitting and punishing left-handed pitching). Matos might get there this season. Maybe Slater wasn’t going to get back there this season. The move makes some sense in that context.
Feel free to ignore the people sharing a “don’t let the door hit your butt on the way out” reaction, though. For they are casual baseball fans.
Home run of the week
Oof. This is a tough one. The Giants had two homers over 440 feet this week, and do you know how long it’s been since that happened (outside of Mexico City)? That’s right, it was three years ago, when Austin Slater did it himself in back-to-back games. Look it up, casuals.
In this corner, you have Michael Conforto, taking a ball just outside of the zone and depositing it where an outfielder shall never be:
Michael Conforto drives one 440 feet for his 10th home run. 💪 pic.twitter.com/vD1OVpQjLg
— MLB (@MLB) July 7, 2024
In this corner, you have LaMonte Wade, Jr. hitting a ball so hard that the pitcher did a li’l leg kick out of frustration:
Is it a cop out to say it’s a tie? Probably. They’re both extremely similar home runs.
Tie goes to the homer that came in a winning game, though. Wade’s takes it. And the homer came with this neat bonus video, too:
442'. No doubter, home run at all 30 stadiums: LaMonte Wade Jr. homers (3) on a fly ball to right center field. #MLB #SFGiants . Watch a video here: https://t.co/e6FVmx07w2 pic.twitter.com/Zi7b5AuGWV
— MLB Distance Tracker (@distancetracker) July 3, 2024
Hard not to be swayed by that.
(Top photo of Ramos: Darren Yamashita / USA Today)
