MLB schedulers completely screwed SF Giants for series vs. Nationals

The SF Giants blew yet another game on Monday night. Many have been criticized for this from the man on the mound, Keaton Winn, to the man in the dugout, Tony Vitello, to the men in the front office, Buster Posey and Zack Minasian. But one entity that should not escape blame are the MLB schedulers who screwed the Giants.

The Giants played the Chicago Cubs on Sunday night so they could be televised on a nationally broadcast game. While the Cubs got an off day on Monday so they could travel to Colorado to face the Rockies on Tuesday, the Giants had to travel back across the country on Sunday night and got back to San Francisco in the wee hours of Monday morning. Then they had to take on the Washington Nationals on Monday night.

That feels more than a little unfair. Thankfully the Giants got eight strong innings from their ace Logan Webb otherwise the team would’ve had to rely heavily on a gassed bullpen. That tired relief corps did end up burning them in the end as Vitello opted to go with Winn who coughed up the game in the ninth inning when he was clearly tired after pitching the previous two days.

Vitello deserves blame for opting to go with Winn, but if he had been fresh and rested after an off day it is very possible that game turns out differently.

The Giants' schedule makes absolutely no sense

No schedule is going to be completely fair and logistically it’s hard to schedule 30 different MLB teams especially now that they all have to play each other at least once every season, but the Giants have an off day on Thursday even though they are not traveling. They start a three-game series at home against Chicago on Friday night. 

So they get an off day when they’re just going to stay in San Francisco but they don’t get one when they have to travel halfway across the country after a night game and play the next night. Make that make sense.

Not only does this flawed schedule impact the Giants on Monday, but it impacts them the rest of this series. The bullpen is still going to be tired even though Webb did give most of the bullpen a break last night.

But the position players have to be feeling it too. They played back-to-back extra inning games on Saturday and Sunday in Chicago and that was after they were probably tired from hitting so many home runs on Thursday against the Milwaukee Brewers and Friday against the Cubs.

Obviously the schedule is not the only reason the Giants lost on Monday night but it’s worth noting and shouldn’t get lost in all the finger-pointing currently going on.

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