San Francisco Giants 2017 Season Review: Management

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PHOENIX, AZ – SEPTEMBER 25: Manager Bruce Bochy #15 of the San Francisco Giants calls out to his players during the seventh inning of a MLB game against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field on September 25, 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Ralph Freso/Getty Images) /

The 2017 Season for the San Francisco Giants was absolutely miserable. A 98 loss season was not how most expected the 2017 Giants season to go. But here we are. So now it’s time to hand out grades for 2017.

We’ve done all of the actual field positions. Everything from Orlando Calixte, to Buster Posey, to Corey Gearrin, we’ve looked at the 2017 Giants roster and what they did. We did our best to take into account expectations, injuries, and much more. The players got what they got. But now, it’s time to look at management.

Bruce Bochy and Bobby Evans are going to get graded. Why? Positions of leadership should always be questioned and evaluated. But with the results this season, held side by side with their own expectations, the San Francisco Giants group of management needs to be scrutinized.

They had high expectations for a reason. So how could they have been so stinking wrong? Well. That’s something we’ll have to look into. How do we come up with a grade for management? Bochy will ultimately have a different set of criteria than Evans, mainly because they can’t be evaluated the same way.

But the big issue there is that Bobby Evans didn’t see it coming. It’s his job to see that decline coming, and prepare for it.

For Bruce, it’s about his game management, lineup decisions, leadership of players, and the overall way the Giants played in 2017.

For Bobby, it’s his offseason deals, his own evaluations of the team at the beginning, middle, and end, and whether or not they were correct. There is a lot to analyze with these guys. So I’m going to stop telling you about how we graded them. First up, Bruce.

Manager. San Francisco Giants. BRUCE BOCHY. C-.

Oh Bruce. It’s hard to fault him too much for the way things went on the field this year. There was a significant underperformance from the guys who he should’ve been counting on. Bruce is still one of the greatest managers in Giants, and MLB history. However, this season will still take a knock on his resume. We gave him a C- mainly because even despite this not being mostly his fault, we didn’t think Bruce really helped the situation. Did he hurt it? That’s subjective. But there are a few ways I don’t think he helped it much.

One of the main ways was his bullpen management. It’s become clear that he doesn’t trust virtually anyone in the bullpen. Granted, he shouldn’t have. The bullpen was miserable. Their 4.34 ERA was in the bottom half of the league, and if you went by xFIP, they were the sixth worst bullpen in baseball. So I get that it’s incredibly difficult to trust a bullpen. But time and time again they were dealt a pretty tough hand.

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The Giants bullpen had three players in the top 50 pitchers of most inherited runners in the National League, four if you want to count George Kontos (Gearrin 7th, Kontos 11th, Strickland 44th, Okert 49th).

There were way too many times where Bochy went to his bullpen just too late. It’s not like their starters had done much to earn that this year. The Giants’ starting staff threw the second most innings, but were in the middle of the pack in terms of ERA. Why?

A 4.58 doesn’t constitute that many innings. There were good enough pieces in the bullpen for them to use. They had the worst K/9 rate of starting units within the top 18 in innings. You’d have to go nearly to the bottom third of the league in innings pitched by a starting unit to find someone with a worse K/9.

Countless times this season, Bochy didn’t really measure where his starters were at. Because of their inability to strike people out in 2017, there was no way they should’ve gone as deep into games as they should. That resulted in a ton of “unclean” innings for their bullpen to walk into. Not the greatest situation. That’s a significant reason, among a lot of small things as to why Bochy gets a C-. Also, if you are the manager of a 64-98 team, you really shouldn’t get anything higher than a D.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – JANUARY 20: Norichika Aoki poses for a picture with Larry Baer, President and CEO of the San Francisco Giants and Bobby Evans (left), Vice President and Assistant General Manager of the San Francisco Giants during a press conference where he was introduced as the newest Giant at AT /

D-. . General Manager. San Francisco Giants. BOBBY EVANS

There is only one reason why Bobby Evans escapes a failing grade here, and that’s because the trade for Sam Dyson took incredible MOCSE to make. Considering the context of the Giants place in the standings, and how awful Sam Dyson had been in a Rangers uniform to that point, what the Giants ended up getting from Dyson pretty much saves Evans from an F.

You know what? Throw in Nick Hundley. That’s the best thing he was able to do for 2017. When you put it all into perspective of the team goals, expecations, the results, and how two role players were the best thing he did in all of 2017, that D- is exactly right. But what else was so bad?

The Bobby Evans’ apologists would scream at you that nobody could see this coming, and that he didn’t play a role in what took place on the field. That’s semi-valid. Truly nobody saw this coming form the Giants. Winning records from 2014-2016, with a world series trophy and a hard fought playoff series against the eventual champs had everybody blinded to the fact that this was one of the oldest rosters and was significantly on the decline.

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But the big issue there is that Bobby Evans didn’t see it coming. It’s his job to see that decline coming, and prepare for it. The Giants in 2016 were a closer away from winning another World Series. That much is true.

But plenty of people at the beginning of last offseason saw there were some other pressing needs. People saw that Denard Span was not going to cut in center-field for much longer, and that overall, the outfield defense was on a sharp decline. People saw that this lineup was significantly aging and powerless. People saw that the bullpen was very right-handed heavy and worse in quality. But no. Nothing. Nothing to fix what truly turned out to be significant, pressing issues.

The Giants spent a bajillion dollars on a closer and just trusted that everything else would continue to be as it had been for the 7 years prior. That works when the pieces you’re relying on are currently 25-28. But the San Francisco Giants’ average age was 29.6. That’s the oldest they’ve been since 2010, and even then they underwent a complete and total overhaul of their position players. Why? They recognized what happens when you rely on aging rosters.

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If they had tried to cover up one or two more of their big issues last offseason, then maybe we’d be talking about a playoff run right now. We’d be praising Bobby Evans for his creativity on reconstructing an aging roster and keeping them a prime contender. But everybody in the front office, including Evans settled.

Frankly, Bobby Evans deserves to be fired. The Giants are now an incredibly expensive, injury prone, and aging roster. Sounds a lot like the Giant teams of old! Hopefully they don’t head down that path again, but Bobby Evans isn’t really doing much to convince us that they aren’t.

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