The Giants are a disaster . . . wait

Has this really only been one season? It seems like at least three.

We begin with an apology.

Sorry. The fault was entirely ours. We could say it was an overreaction, but that’s just an excuse. We were wrong.

Now we were not alone. Don’t pretend. We see you over in the corner, looking all smug and innocent. C’mon. You were in this too.

When the Giants lost 14 of 15 at home, a stretch of sustained failure that the franchise has not endured since 1901, admit it. You jumped ship.

Everyone did.

Slowly, and then all at once, it seemed to turn into a season defined by a double play ground ball that inexplicably hit second base, hopped in the air and turned into a two-run single.

People said “Fire Bob Melvin” right out loud and the responses were shrugs and sympathetic winces.

And it was worse than that.

If we are being honest, the question was asked: Is Buster Posey up to this job?

Because, and we can’t stress this enough, although Buster is a Giants legend and Future Hall of Famer, but he had zero front office or scouting experience when he became President of Baseball Operations.

And . . .

Rather than sitting back, signing a few useful free agents and singing the praises of the farm system, he took some HUGE swings.

Willy Adames, Jung Hoo Lee and — especially — Raphel Devers not only represent big contracts, they are signed long term.

If they didn’t work out the whole franchise could be set back for years and years.

And it looked bad.

The funny part was, you couldn’t help but like those guys.

Adames seems like a great guy, cheerful, supportive and playing every damn game. Lee runs all over center field and for entertainment value, even catches balls with his knees.

And Devers, well he’s tailor-made to be a divisive player. Big swings, maddening strikeouts and a kind of mysterious personality. Besides, they really didn’t like him in Boston, his previous team.

Which is all prologue to saying, I can’t believe where we are now.

I know you’ve been watching, but just to review.

The Lads have gone on a remarkable winning streak, ten of 11 at one point last week. They’ve busted home runs like it is no big deal, ringing up a dinger in 18 consecutive games.

And we’re actually scoreboard watching, as the team creeps ever closer to the Mets and a possible playoff spot.

Playoffs? Playoffs?

So I’m going to call it.

Buster Posey knows what he’s doing.

His picks have panned out beautifully. He’s clearly got an idea of what he wants and goes after it.

We’ll discuss the big three at some point, but rookie Drew Gilbert kind of proves the point.

It hurt to lose popular reliever Tyler Rogers, but Gilbert seems to be turning out to be the hidden gem in the trade.

A compact ball of adrenaline, Gilbert flashes speed in the outfield, has hit for unexpected power and has so much bonus energy that he leaps in the air before every pitch.

Seriously. He does that.

The excitable New York media is already speculating the Mets might have made a mistake. And no one likes to point out a mistake more than the excitable New York media.

Lee has been serviceable at worst, and above average at best. He looks like a guy with a solid upside.

Adames kinda sneaks up on you. There were enough flailing swings at sliders down and away to get discouraged, but little by little the numbers began to stack up. He is playing great defense and now we are realizing that he’s got a shot at the mythical 30-homer season, not seen since Barry Bonds stepped up to the plate.

He’s also an upper for the team. There have been some recent stories about “what makes a great clubhouse guy,” and Willy seems exactly that guy. Chemistry and culture mean something.

As for Devers, some of the early trepidation had to have come from Red Sox Derangement Syndrome.

Devers had a much publicized beef with the Sox, raising the possibility that he was a malcontent.

And yet, doesn’t it seem like the Red Sox are always having problems? We remember how they shipped that troublemaker Mookie Betts to the Dodgers because they didn’t want to pay him.

What followed was, as Dodger Insider put it:

In 2020, Betts’ first season as a Dodger, they won the World Series, he was National League MVP runner-up and one of the jewel franchises in baseball just seemed to shine a little brighter.

Devers was probably never going to be a day-to-day third baseman, leading the league in errors more than once. But take a spin through his Wikipedia page.

Start with the three All-Star appearance and the two Silver Sluggers, but scroll down to the minor leagues and see that he has hit, for power and average, at every single level.

He does strike out, but he in the last three years he’s hit 33, 28 and 31 home runs (so far.) He also gets on base a ton. As of last week he was third in the league in bases on balls.

That has to be a reflection of the fact that pitchers are very leery of giving him a pitch he can hit. He’s that thumper in the lineup that everyone is watching out for. In some ways Devers is carrying this run.

As for Melvin, ride or die, he’s my guy. I accepted he might be fired when the team was in the dumpster, but I wasn’t happy about it. Thoughtful, even keel, he’s the right guy to weather a storm.

You’ve got to like a manager who sticks with his guys, even sometimes to a fault. By leaving pitchers in he’s showing them he has faith they can pull this out.

Sometimes they don’t. But you have to like the mentality.

That’s the kind of guy he’s been as he’s won Manager of the Year three times. When he had young guys with the A’s, he put them in spots to succeed and left them in to try to do it.

And, not coincidentally, his teams tend to gain confidence, put it together and finish strong.

Kinda like now.

Contact C.W. Nevius at cwnevius@gmail.com. Twitter and Threads: cwnevius