The San Francisco Giants Are Just Doing Whatever

The San Francisco Giants are a stinking cesspool of bad vibes and bad baseball. That is not the newsy part of this post. Sure, the Giants' place in the standings (currently 15 games below .500) and the collection of petulant homophobes on the roster have given the public plenty of reason not to prod this smoldering heap of a franchise with a ten-foot pole. But the Giants seem determined to expose every part of their dysfunction, and will not rest until they have created a public nuisance to rival the peeling paint and chemicals of the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. On Sunday, with Rafael Devers on first and the Giants trailing the Marlins by a single run in the bottom of the ninth inning, manager Tony Vitello planned on putting in Jonah Cox as a pinch runner. Cox is fast; Devers isn’t. The Giants need to win games. This is simple stuff, really. But even with these indisputable facts to back him up, Vitello clearly is not considered a great authority among the Giants, and Devers especially wasn’t having it. With a mesmerizing finger wag, the form of which was far more elegant than his running form has ever been, Devers signaled that he was not going to get taken out of the game.