Did the Giants do enough to get the raucous Oracle Park crowds back?
The 2021 season started with fewer than 10,000 socially-distanced fans and ended with sellouts. Can that happen again this season? The article compares the Giants' fortunes in the baseball team to a hypothetical hypothetical scenario where they started the season 2-5 and were swept by the Dodgers in their first series against them. The article suggests that despite a flurry of free-agent signings, the team's overall performance appears to be improving. However, questions remain about whether the offseason spending spree was enough to restore the energy at Oracle Park. The author suggests that if the team starts winning, the energy will return if they are merely fine. The writer also notes that the excitement surrounding the upcoming home opener is back and that the team is still talking about not being able to maintain this level of excitement.
Published : a month ago by Grant Brisbee in Sports Tech
It’s January 1, 2024. A DeLorean pulls up to your house. A guy with wild hair jumps out and shouts, “The Giants start the season 2-5. They get swept by the Dodgers in their first series against them.” Then he quickly gets back in the car, takes it up to 88 mph and disappears.
You’re not surprised. Of course the Giants were going to stink. Not only did they not get Shohei Ohtani or Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but they both went to the Dodgers, who are clearly the better team by a factor of a million or so. It’s over. The season hasn’t started yet, but it’s already over. And you resolve to express your disappointment and disgust by not going to as many games as you typically do. Something has to change.
It’s April 4, 2024. The Giants have started the season 2-5. They got swept by the Dodgers in their first series against them. Yet somehow it’s not time to panic? Between then and now, there was a flurry of free-agent signings, and the on-field product projects to be much better. There have been enough positives from the start of the season to remain optimistic, as weird as that sounds. The guy with the wild hair was telling the truth, but he was also messing with you. What an odd use of a time machine.
Ahead of the home opener, though, some big questions remain: Was the offseason spending spree enough to get the energy back at Oracle Park? Is there a vibe-to-dollars ratio that comes with a busy offseason? Can the free agents not named Ohtani help cure the boredom and malaise of recent Giants seasons? If I ask one more rhetorical question, will an editor take it out? (Editor’s note: Yes.)
The easy answer is: “Yes, the energy will come back if the Giants start winning.” At the home opener in 2021, there were 7,390 socially-distanced fans. When Gabe Kapler was introduced before the game, he got one of the strangest reactions possible. Fans were used to giving some of their loudest cheers to the Giants manager, but it was almost like they’d forgotten who the manager was. Also, there were only 7,390 fans in the ballpark for the home opener. The response was positive but measured. Fans were trying to remember if they were supposed to cheer. They were also trying to remember what his face looked like, as it had been over a year since they’d seen it. Did he still have lips and teeth? It was a strange, strange time.
Cut to Buster Posey’s home run in September, and the park was as loud as it had been since Conor Gillaspie’s triple in 2016.
Again, that season started with an endlessly visible, exceptionally unsettling reminder that nothing was ever going to be the same. By the end of the season, though, everything felt very much the same. The intensity was back. The outstanding baseball had everything to do with it.
So ask the same question, but set the difficulty a little higher. Will the energy come back to the ballpark if the Giants are merely fine? Let’s say it’s May, and the Giants are 20-21. The Angels are in town for a three-game series. Mike Trout is day-to-day. What are the ~vibes~ at the ballpark when Matt Chapman comes up with Jorge Soler on second base?
There are still seats available for the home opener. Also, in this hypothetical Angels game, Blake Snell pitched well for five innings, and Erik Miller is warming up in the bullpen. Some guy who sounds like Jon Hamm comes over the PA and introduces Chapman, which reminds you that things are different and not always for the better. If you’re one of the insta-mutes who’s about to tweet something at me like, “i can’t believe you’re still talking about not hearing the voice of some chick at a baseball game 🤣🤣🤣”, note that, yeah, it’s something you’ll notice. There’s a Renel soundalike that replaced the actual Renel for promotional commercials during Giants telecasts, and every time it comes on, I immediately remember the Giants organization can be really weird and stupid.
This isn’t to sway you one way or the other, because I don’t not think the excitement is back. Jung Hoo Lee currently has a .660 OPS, but I watch every one of his at-bats like it’s going to reveal the secrets of the universe. Soler hit a ball so hard in the series finale at Dodger Stadium that I laughed out loud, alone in my living room, even though I’ve covered this sport for decades and shouldn’t be that surprised by a long home run from a large human being. But it was so danged funny. The baseball went really, really far.
Maybe the best way to explain this is that the Giants are 2-5, and while they were about to get swept by the Dodgers, I wasn’t actively angry at them. There were so many times that I was watching them last year and shouting, “How do you expect me to write about this? What even is this?” But other than the first game of the series, it was competitive. Players were coming to the plate that I wanted to watch. The internal monologue shifts to something like, “OK, maybe if they get a hit here …”
There isn’t a correct answer. Not yet. It’s still a mystery, and it just might be the story of the season. If the Giants pound out 11 wins in a row and Logan Webb takes a no-hitter into the seventh inning in the first game of a homestand, yeah, Oracle Park will be hopping, but if it doesn’t happen quite that way, I’m honestly fascinated with how much goodwill the We’re Trying offseason has bought. It’s still a team that’s desperate for a homegrown star, and it’s still a roster that’s several levels below the Dodgers’, but it still feels much better to care about the Giants than it did on January 1. That should show up when it comes to what kind of baseball thoughts are floating around the baseball ether.
There was a long, long honeymoon period for the Giants in Oracle Park. The excitement of a not-Candlestick baseball experience moved right into a single-season home run record, which moved right into a World Series, which moved right into the all-time home run record, which moved right into Tim Lincecum, Madison Bumgarner, Buster Posey and three championships. There were no-hitters and a perfect game, and my gosh, you’re all so spoiled.
Now you’re looking at the 2024 Giants, and they might be something. They might be something you care about for a long time. Or they might not. Either way, do you care? Are you invested? Have they already proven something to you that you didn’t think was still possible? Maybe! That’s the question of the 2024 season.
Winning cures all. Spending more money than expected on free agents cures ____? This is a season about filling in that blank, and the home opener seems like a great time for the first data point.
Topics: Football, NFL, Baseball, MLB, San Francisco Giants