On Thursday, Shohei Ohtani stole two bases, hit three home runs, went 6-for-6 and drove in 10 runs, as the Dodgers defeated the Marlins, 20-4. He became the first player in baseball history to hit 50 homers and steal 50 bases in the same season. With the win, the Dodgers clinched a postseason spot.
Also on Thursday, Donovan Walton failed to execute sacrifice bunts in two different plate appearances, both times with runners on first and second and nobody out. The failed bunt attempts weren’t the only reason the Giants lost — they were 1-for-7 in their other at-bats with runners in scoring position — but it’s one of the best possible examples you’ll ever see of a player not going 6-for-6 with three home runs and 10 RBIs in a 50-50 season. With the loss, the Giants were officially eliminated from the postseason race.
It’s not fair to compare the 28th man on a roster to one of the greatest talents the sport has ever seen, so don’t focus on the names. Just focus on the energies of each situation. It might be the greatest single-day energy difference in the history of the Giants-Dodgers rivalry. One team gave their fans everything that baseball has to offer on Thursday, and the other team most certainly did not.
More important than the who in the Giants’ situation is the why. With two runners on and nobody out in the top of the seventh inning, and a nasty left-handed pitcher on the mound for the Orioles, the Giants gave a third at-bat to a left-handed, 30-year-old utility infielder on the fringes of the major leagues. They figured he was their best chance to move the runners over, and while Walton actually has just 14 career sac bunts between the minors and majors over eight seasons, sure. Thinking he’s your best shot is at least a reason. It only looks awful when the bunt doesn’t go down.
Go back to that question of “why,” though. Why are the Giants giving at-bats to a 30-year-old fringe player in meaningless games at the end of a miserable season? Why was he starting in the first place? Who benefits? What do we learn? Why?
It’s one thing for the Giants to continue playing Michael Conforto, a veteran who is approaching free agency. He might not be a part of the Giants’ future, but it’s a bad look to bury him completely instead of giving him the opportunity to show off for his next team. It’s the kind of courtesy that veteran players talk about around the league and builds trust.
It’s another thing when the decision to play a veteran is blocking a young player with a potential future with the club.
Luciano has struggled, especially with the glove, but it’s hard to get better on the bench. (Robert Edwards / USA Today)
Marco Luciano might not ever be the star who was promised. He might not ever be a regular in the majors. Don’t write him off yet — when Heliot Ramos was the same age, he had a .227/.305/.349 line in 475 Triple-A plate appearances — but there are fewer reasons to be optimistic than there used to be. This article will not contain puffery to help you pretend that Luciano is a few starts away from the All-Star Game.
There’s a chance he can help, though. Maybe in 2025. Maybe in 2026. Maybe he can barely keep his head above water in those two seasons, but help tremendously in 2027. While it stinks that the Giants aren’t contending anymore, the silver lining in that gray cloud is that they get to play consequence-free baseball. They get to toss a young player to the wolves. They can get the kind of all-eyes scouting on their player that can be harder to come by in Triple A.
Remarkably, though, the Giants are even more confused about what to do with Luciano than they were before the season started. And they were plenty confused about what to do with him before the season started. It’s hard to invent a goofier timeline for a player who’s been a top-50 prospect before each of the last five seasons. To recap:
• Luciano was anointed the starting shortstop during the 2023 season-ending press conference with Farhan Zaidi. “We view Marco as our shortstop next year.” There’s no ambiguity there. Check that box.
• In the first week of spring training, the Giants signed veteran Nick Ahmed. It was a move made out of desperation, clearly, although we’ll never know what prompted that desperation.
• Ahmed suffered a wrist injury, and the Giants turned to Luciano, who hit .375/.444/.542 in 10 games and played abominable defense before straining his hamstring. He came off the IL and was sent to Sacramento, where he spent the next two months.
• One of those months was July, where he had a .921 OPS, with six homers and a strikeout-to-walk ratio that was almost 1:1. Seemed promising.
• The Giants traded their DH, Jorge Soler, at the deadline. The main reason — salary divided by expected future production — made sense. But there was another reason, explicitly stated. It was time to let Luciano just hit, baby. Let him focus on his at-bats, without the added pressure of learning how to play shortstop in the majors.
• The Giants gave Luciano just 15 at-bats between Aug. 1 and Aug. 14. He didn’t get a single plate appearance from Aug. 6 through Aug. 11.
• However! When it was clear that the season was mostly in the toilet, the Giants removed their Opening Day second baseman, Thairo Estrada, from the roster. There was no clearer sign that the Giants were serious about evaluating Luciano in the majors.
Bob Melvin said the plan is for Marco Luciano to see most of the time at second base this month. There will be less time initially for Luis Matos given how many outfielders they have. That could change later in month.
— Alex Pavlovic (@PavlovicNBCS) September 3, 2024
Since that proclamation, Luciano has started six out of the Giants’ 15 games at second base. Brett Wisely has started four, and Walton has started five. Luciano didn’t get a single at-bat in Baltimore. Not even when a left-hander was on the mound with runners on first and second and nobody out, and a left-handed journeyman was scheduled to come up to the plate.
It’s bizarre. Folks in the front office and the coaching staff are fighting for their jobs, so you’ll forgive them for not thinking about the future as much as the fans. But it’s been a nightmare season in terms of figuring Luciano out. They’re not sure if he’s capable of playing second. They’re not sure if the bat will let him be a full-time DH. They aren’t going to mess with him in the outfield because they have plenty of other options there.
It’s bizarre to the point of malpractice. The Giants have a week left of The Lineup Purge, where laws don’t apply. They can use that week to stop jerking one of their top prospects around. Or they can continue messing around with scrappy utility players with a sub-.600 OPS.
Somehow, the Giants have even more questions about Luciano than they started the season with. In a season filled with nonsense, here’s the most inexplicable development yet. He was the starting shortstop before the season started, and now he’s someone so untrustworthy that he can’t be trusted to pinch hit for a sub-Mendoza hitter in a favorable platoon situation.
It’s strange. All of this is strange, even though it shouldn’t be nearly this complicated. Without the pressure of a long, long pennant race, let Luciano swing for the fences. Get him that first major-league home run so he can tie Emmanuel Burriss and Ty Blach on the all-time franchise list.
It’s a simple ask, and it’s an easy one, too. Plop Luciano down at second and don’t mess with him. If he boots eight or nine grounders, so be it. He’s still young enough to improve. and those booted grounders would also help convince the fan base that Luciano isn’t ready in the near term. That, too, has value. It prevents columns (and angry comments sections) like this one. If Luciano can’t stick as a second baseman, even with plenty of major-league experience there, a lot more comes into focus.
The best part of rookies in a lousy season is that they can share a glimmer of a whiff of a scent of an echo of hope with fans, selling them on the idea that the future is bright. That maybe one day, one of these prospects will go 6-for-6 with 10 RBIs and be the inaugural member of the 60-60 club. That was the biggest difference in the energy between the Dodgers and Giants on Thursday. The Dodgers had the ultimate result that every team dreamed of, but the Giants weren’t even pretending to look for that result. It’s been a strange season, and the whole Luciano debacle might be the strangest chapter of them all. He was a great hope of the franchise before the season started, and now he’s getting buried behind Donovan Walton for … reasons.
There are different ways to slink back into the offseason ooze and feel good about the future. This isn’t one of them. As the Dodgers were making history, the Giants were flailing. You’d like to believe that this would be different going forward. The contrast couldn’t be more visible today.
(Top photo: Andy Kuno / San Francisco Giants / Getty Images)
