The San Francisco Giants that fans loved to complain about Part 1

On Monday, I presented you with a personal list of sentimental favorites throughout my baseball-loving life. This is not the same article. This is an article about the A.J. Pierzynski All-Stars. With that kind of description, you probably don’t need a longer explanation. The inclusion of Pierzynski gives it away.

Advertisement

This is a list of Giants who were received … poorly by a substantial portion of the hometown fans. It wasn’t always something they explicitly did, a pair of middle fingers they extended toward the crowd as they walked to the dugout every half-inning. Sometimes they toiled in the minor leagues, worked hard, paid their dues, succeeded enough to become a desirable free agent and then signed a fair-market contract that they couldn’t live up to. Seems like the owners or general manager would be the one to boo in that case, but they weren’t taking five at-bats every day, so the fans never got that chance. They didn’t have another outlet, so they took it out on the player, who was also upset with his struggles. It’s not healthy for anybody, but it sure is natural and universal.

Sometimes these players were actually good, you know. But maybe their shoulders slumped when they struck out, so they became a lightning rod.

This is not a list of Giants who drove me nuts. That list would be far too esoteric, and it would feature players whose immediate families have forgotten. You might not remember Alex Sánchez — an outfielder who was so unpleasant that the Rays waived him while he was hitting .346 — but I can still remember the sense of why-are-you-here that clung to every plate appearance. You might not remember Jim Poole, but I remember the dread that came with every one of his outings in 1997.

No, this is a list of players who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the fans pounced. And, really, that’s the only way to put it. Wrong place. Wrong time. If you happen to be one of these ex-players and you’re reading this, don’t take it personally. Wrong place. Wrong time. Every single player on this list was successful enough to be cheered throughout most of their careers, from high school through the minors, and they just stepped in a metaphorical dog pie after disembarking at SFO.

Advertisement

At least one of these players was most definitely in the right place at the right time, which makes his inclusion weirder. But his body language, see, it’s, well, it’s complicated. And dumb.

Welcome to Part 1 of a team of lightning-rod players in San Francisco Giants history.

C — A.J. Pierzynski

Was it the fact that he was acquired for a closer who will eventually get Hall of Fame votes and a prospect with some of the purest stuff the sport had ever seen?

Was it that he grounded into more double plays than any player in franchise history, a record that’s still standing?

Was it that he was on the 2004 Giants, a heartbreaker of a team that lost the division on a walk-off grand slam? Pierzynski was worth 0.3 wins above replacement that year, and he was worth 2.3 WAR the next year. The Giants finished exactly two games behind the Dodgers in 2004. Do the math.

Was it that he left and immediately won a World Series with the White Sox, one of the only teams with a longer championship drought than the Giants’ at that time?

Was it that he ended up becoming a fan favorite with those White Sox and seen as a stable, likable-if-churlish veteran good-guy presence everywhere else he went?

Was it that the Giants’ pitchers turned on him before April was over?

Was it that he supposedly kneed trainer Stan Conte in the crotch, a story that’s both hard to believe and harder not to believe?

Is it the fact that he still shows up on our televisions and phones every October, exchanging pregame banter?

Yes. The answer to all of these is yes. And I’m almost thrilled that he passed through the team’s orbit. Because if A.J. Pierzynski didn’t exist, Giants fans would have to invent him.

1B — Brandon Belt

He’s not on the list because he deserves to be. He’s on the list because there continues to be a very, very vocal minority who are absolute weirdos about him. A list of Giants first basemen, ranked by the WAR they accumulated with the franchise:

A couple of things stand out. First, it’s an extremely top-heavy list. You have two Hall of Famers and one could-be-HOFer at the top. Second, it’s apparently harder to find a reliable first baseman than you think. The 11th first baseman on the list is Travis Ishikawa. You would think that the good first basemen would be treasured. And, to be fair, most Giants fans have treasured Belt. Keep that in mind.

Advertisement

But what I really want you to notice is where Belt sits on that list. He’s closer to Orlando Cepeda than J.T. Snow.

Now consider Snow’s Giants career for a second. He averaged 14 homers per year in a power-saturated era, but he made up for it with a strong on-base percentage and slick fielding. His most memorable moment was a late-inning homer in a game and series that the Giants lost. He was so popular that when it came time for the Giants to create a Wall of Fame in 2008, eligible players needed to either have played five seasons with an All-Star appearance or have played nine seasons with the franchise. Why nine? Because that’s how many Snow had played with the Giants before he left for the Red Sox in 2006, and he didn’t have an All-Star appearance to get in with less service time.

Then, after the Wall of Fame dedication, the Giants signed Snow to a one-day contract so that he could retire with the franchise and walk off the field to cheers one last time.

Belt, on the other hand, has also averaged 14 homers per year, but he did most of that in a power-starved era. And he also made up for it with a strong OBP and slick fielding. His most memorable moment was a late-inning homer in a game and series (and postseason) that the Giants won. He will be on the Wall of Fame, not only because this will be his 10th season with the Giants, but because he’s made an All-Star team with them.

Again: Belt is just as popular, if not more popular, as Snow ever was. He’s a popular, beloved fan favorite in most circles. He’s an outlier on this list, considering that most people aren’t weird about him.

There is a vocal contingent, however, that has always been very weird about him. They’re apparently blaming Belt for not being Orlando Cepeda. They’re blaming him for not playing the part of an archetypal, chaw-spitting slugger who would snap bats over his knee when he struck out.

It’s weird, but it’s also kept talk radio humming for a decade now.

Advertisement

2B — Rennie Stennett

There was some consideration of Dan Uggla, championship-ring owner, and there was some consideration of Ray Durham, expensive and very good free agent who fell into that weird Belt zone of under-appreciation. But it has to be Stennett, who was the first major free-agent signing in Giants history. The team gave him a five-year, $3 million deal after the 1979 season, which was huge money back then.

There was only one problem: He was awful. And this isn’t Monday-morning quarterbacking, where a good idea looks lousy with the benefit of hindsight. After hitting .336 and finishing 19th in the 1977 NL MVP vote, Stennett had a .274 OBP and 60 OPS+ in 1978. The next season, he had a .289 OBP and 56 OPS+. When the ’79 Pirates won the World Series, Stennett was so buried on the roster that he got exactly one at-bat throughout the entire postseason. Again, this was before the Giants gave him a monster deal.

Wasn’t his fault. He built a major-league career, and a franchise made a decision to employ him for an agreed-upon cost. But, man, was he a disappointment for Giants fans.

There are no hard feelings. When Brandon Crawford collected seven hits in a game, the Giants invited Stennett to Miami, as he was the last player to accomplish that feat. It was a nice moment.

He did it for the Pirates, of course. Which means that it’s possible that the meeting with Crawford was the greatest Giants moment of Stennett’s career, decades after it ended. That’s almost too perfect.

SS — Johnnie LeMaster

Imagine a player being booed so much that he goes to the equipment manager and requests a jersey with the word “BOO” stitched across the back instead of his last name. I’d like to think there’s a young’un reading this right now who has never heard this story. Just one person thinking, “This is a metaphor, right? That didn’t actually happen” would make me so happy. Because it happened.

It happened and, really, it’s a perfect baseball story. What a moment of light-hearted self-awareness in the middle of unending scrutiny and ire. What a playful way to poke back at the fans. The drunken, angry Candlestick fans appreciated it, I’m told. The league hated it, and the jersey was off before the end of the game.

Advertisement

I would pay $100,000 for that jersey. After y’all loan me the money. But, still.

LeMaster really was one of the worst regular hitters in baseball history. And he happened to exist right as the Giants were transitioning from Mays-McCovey-Marichal into … whatever in the heck the ’70s were. Wrong place. Wrong time.

As the years pass by, LeMaster is something of a cult anti-hero. He’s the Crazy Crab of players, beloved because of his faults, not in spite of them. He was in that inaugural class for the Giants of Wall of Fame, after all.

Some players pass through San Francisco and stink. Some players pass through San Francisco and stink just enough to hear it from the fans. One player passed through San Francisco and stunk enough to become a local legend. But there was a whole lot of booing along the way.

3B — Casey McGehee

This is a weak crop of candidates, and McGehee is a local guy who seems like a decent human being, so I feel guilty for putting him there. The other options were Edgardo Alfonzo, who made a lot of money to be one of the dullest baseball talents of the last half-century, and Russ Davis, who played third base like his shoelaces were tied around his ears, but McGehee wins because of recency bias. He seemed like a bad idea at the time.

Then consider that the cost to acquire him was Luis Castillo, who would have been the best international free-agent pitcher the Giants have developed since Juan Marichal. The McGehee trade looks like it has a chance to be one of the worst in franchise history, and it doesn’t help that he arrived immediately after the Giants stopped winning championships.

Wrong place. Wrong time. And it’s not like he really heard it from Giants fans. He wasn’t around enough, for one, and the fans were too intoxicated on trophy wine to boo anyone at that point. But he has staying power because of how the trade will continue to haunt the Giants. He still stands for something, even if that’s unfair.

Advertisement

LF — Melky Cabrera

Not at the time, of course. While Cabrera was actually playing, Giants fans loved him. He was a five-tool marvel in 2012, smacking line drives all around the ballpark. He was the MVP of the 2012 All-Star Game, which was almost certainly the greatest All-Star Game in history from a Giants fan’s perspective. Shirts were sold. Costumes were worn. Just a big ball of fun, this guy.

Then he got popped for performance-enhancing drugs. Even though he was eligible to return for the postseason, the Giants didn’t bring him back. He floated away, and now every mention comes with involuntary eye-rolling. He’s something of an inside joke to Giants fans, but he’s only funny because the team actually won the championship without him. If they fell short, or if Grégor Blanco didn’t do such a good job in his stead that they missed the postseason entirely, it wouldn’t be funny at all.

If you don’t think Cabrera is eligible for the list because he was beloved while he was playing, that’s fine. But it’s tough to find another candidate. Here, scour the list of left fielders yourself. Fred Lewis and Mac Williamson? They were both homegrown and absolutely delightful human beings. Pick on someone else. Jeff Francoeur? Definitely a top-tier “What Are You Even Doing Here? All-Star”, but he was also a certified Swell Dude, and it’s not like he presented an existential crisis for fans. Someone from the ’60s or ’70s who I’m not aware of? Possibly. My knowledge of Giants history goes only so deep. There are definitely omissions on this roster.

For now, let’s settle on Cabrera.

CF — Marvin Benard

You can see how varied this list is. It’s not a spectrum that runs from bad to good, but it’s a more complicated, multi-axis compass of feelings. Some players were reviled, like Pierzynski. Some players were booed because of their performance. And some players were pretty darned good at times, only to become something of a lightning rod when things weren’t going well.

Benard is a part of that latter group. He was solid. At his best, he was legitimately exciting. He filled a Giants need for several years, and he did it with grace, fire and good humor. People still love him. Heck, he’s still calling games on the Spanish-language side of some broadcasts.

But when he struggled, boy, was it easy to point at him and say, “There! Him! He’s struggling! This is the problem, everyone!” It wasn’t always fair, but I can think of three reasons why.

Advertisement

First, he had an easily identifiable flaw as a hitter: He couldn’t lay off the high fastball. You do not need to be a scout to recognize this flaw. This was not a problem with hip rotation or balance or how he transferred his power. He recognized high fastballs as strikes, started his swing and then realized too late that they were, in fact, not strikes. I could see it. My mom could see it. Your dad could see it. Everyone expected it on a two-strike count. Everyone groaned extra-loud when it actually happened.

Second, he had an easily identifiable flaw as a fielder: He took incorrect first steps more often than the average center fielder. That isn’t to say that he was always breaking the wrong way. Or that he was usually breaking the wrong way. Just that he did it more than most outfielders. And, again, you don’t need to be a scout to see it. That one second of hesitation, that tiny half-step in instead of out, was enough to send the ball flying over Benard’s head and into Triples Alley. When it happened, runs were likely to score. His career dWAR (defensive wins above replacement) was just -0.5, which isn’t that bad. He really wasn’t that bad of a fielder! Just extremely noticeable.

Third, he played on absolutely loaded teams. What, are you going to complain about Barry Bonds? The double-play combination that was hitting 50 or 60 homers every year? No, in times of sustained excellence, the adequate players are subject to far too much scrutiny.

Benard was solid. He’s also on that Wall of Fame, and he should be there. But he’s in that Brandon Belt zone, where while he was playing, he was responsible for a lot of conflicting emotions and heated talk-radio takes, even if they weren’t always deserved.

RF — Carlos Beltrán

Oh, goodness, what I would have given for Beltrán to start banging on trash cans during the second half of 2011. The Giants were an incredible pitching team that season — Madison Bumgarner was the weak link among the top four pitchers in the rotation, and he made 33 starts with a 3.21 ERA — but they couldn’t hit. Absolutely could not hit, with the notable exception of Pablo Sandoval. This was made worse, of course, by Buster Posey’s injury. And I’m pretty sure that Scott Cousins made it ethically viable for the Giants to set up a trash-can-banging scheme in order to cheat.

Sometimes I like to pretend that they were cheating, and that they would have been even worse without it. This is amusing to me.

Beltrán was supposed to be the savior, but he came over at the trade deadline, hit poorly for 11 games and got hurt. The timing was, er, sub-optimal.

Advertisement

Overlooked in that narrative, though, is that Beltrán absolutely raked when he returned in late August. He hit .352/.406/.623 for the rest of the season. He was a net positive for the Giants after the trade, posting a 1.2 WAR in limited action. Consider that the prospect he was traded for, Zack Wheeler, didn’t accrue more WAR in a season for the Mets until 2018.

And it’s not like the Giants were out of it when he returned, either. When Beltrán was hurt, the Giants were a half-game ahead of the Diamondbacks atop the NL West. When he returned, they were two games behind. Still in it! And they had a future Hall of Famer in the lineup to help them score runs, which he did.

Arizona went on a 24-9 tear to finish the season, though, with the Giants merely coasting to an 18-15 record. Jeff Keppinger and Orlando Cabrera, both deadline additions, hit .177/.214/.215 and .211/.231/.289 in September, respectively. Pat Burrell hit .100 in September and never played again. Eli Whiteside, getting a lot of playing time in the absence of Posey, hit .091/.118/.121 in 34 plate appearances that month. Eric Surkamp had a 6.97 ERA in five starts.

Beltrán was raking the whole time the Giants were losing ground. He doesn’t deserve to be on this list.

But he’s here, mostly because if you bring his name up to a Giants fan in 2020, they’ll grumble and complain. They shouldn’t, but this isn’t a list of logical conclusions. Sometimes logic gets brushed aside.

(Honorable mention: José Cruz, Jr. for winning the most bittersweet Gold Glove in the history of the award.)

Not all of these players were bad Giants. Some of them were good Giants. Some of them were very, very good Giants. For whatever reason, though, they all had a period of time where they captured the negative attention of a significant portion of the fan base, and they’re a part of a rich, entertaining and hilarious tapestry.

(Photo of Pierzynski: Jed Jacobsohn / Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kG9vbW1kZXxzfJFpZmlrX2aFcMDHnmSsmZ5is7OtzZygrJufYrSqrc2tqmasmJbBbrLAp6pmpJ%2BrsqV506hknKedpbmitc1mmJunpal6sa3RrWRqZw%3D%3D