SAN FRANCISCO — On July 11, Tyler Rogers sandwiched three groundouts around a Hyeseong Kim double to protect a one-run lead in the eighth inning against the Los Angeles Dodgers. The hold was his 20th of the season and 192nd as a Giant, which moved him into a tie with Sergio Romo atop the franchise’s leaderboard.
Rogers has the most holds in baseball since 2022, and as he walked off the field that night at Oracle Park, it was a lock that he would soon hold the franchise record by himself. But when he was traded on Wednesday, he remained in a tie with Romo.
If you are trying to piece together how it came to be that Rogers would be the one to jumpstart a sale, you can start with that statistic.
The submariner pitched six times as a Giant after getting that 192nd hold and pitched well, but only one of those appearances came in a win. He appeared five times with the Giants trailing.
The same was true for Camilo Doval, who was traded a day after Rogers. The closer followed Rogers on that Friday night against the Dodgers and locked up the win. His next and final five appearances in orange and black came in losses.
The Giants dropped 12 of 14 heading into deadline day, so it made all the sense in the world for president of baseball operations Buster Posey to sell. What still is baffling to everyone involved is how exactly it ended up this way.
How did a healthy and talented roster all of a sudden turn into the worst team in baseball right before the deadline?
“I haven’t been able to come up with anything to explain it,” Posey said on Thursday’s “Giants Talk” podcast. “It’s part of the beauty and the torture of baseball, I think, is you don’t know. You’ve got to go play the games. You can make an addition that looks good on paper and unfortunately doesn’t work out.”
That addition, Rafael Devers, arrived on Sunday, June 15. Two nights earlier, his new teammates briefly slid into a tie for first in the NL West. Since the Devers trade, the Giants are 13-24, the worst record in baseball. Their new-look lineup has scored just 134 runs — 3.62 per game — which again puts them dead last.
Posey said he’s still “over the moon ecstatic about Rafi Devers being a Giant for a really long time to come,” noting that Devers loves the game and has fit into the clubhouse. Devers has a .692 OPS for the Giants after being at .905 in Boston, but his new boss still has plenty of faith that he will become the cornerstone that the lineup…