Sunday’s 13-7 loss to the Rockies landed with more than just another bruise on an ugly Giants season. It pushed San Francisco into its first series loss to Colorado in five years, and it also drew rare, full-throated criticism from two voices the fan base knows better than almost anyone: Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper.
The Giants did plenty wrong to invite it. Their pitchers issued 10 walks and hit a Rockies batter, while the defense added a few sloppy plays, including a run scoring on a wild pitch that was only a few inches away from catcher Drew Cavanaugh.
By the end of it, manager Tony Vitello had seen enough. He tore into the team afterward and told reporters the game had “more the feel of a lower-level, a junior college game as opposed to a big-league game.”
Krukow didn’t push back on that assessment when he talked Monday on KNBR’s “Murph & Markus” show. He called the game “horrible,” “disgusting” and a sign of larger problems.
“The verdict is in. They know how their season is.
And it’s just like, ‘OK, now we’re at a point where let’s just get off the field, let’s get them off the schedule, play them and go home,’” Krukow said. “Well, their concentration is out the door.
And you know, you still have to have pride when you go out there and put that uniform on.”
He pointed directly to the walks as the engine behind the mess, saying they can knock a defense out of rhythm and snowball into more mistakes. In his view, Sunday made the lack of focus impossible to miss.
“It was so obvious in Sunday’s game that they had lost concentration, and it all had everything to do with the pitchers - and it wasn’t just the young pitchers, the old pitchers as well,” Krukow said. “And I just think that was a big indication that everybody’s mind was not where it’s supposed to be. So Tony Vitello afterward, you know, he did what he should have done: reminded them that they need to be in a better place when they come out here and play this game.”
Kuiper followed on Tuesday and took the same basic lane, but with his own dry touch. He opened by poking at Vitello’s junior college line.
“I was insulted, because I played junior college baseball,” Kuiper said. As Murph interjected that Vitello apparently did, too, Kuiper continued: “And we didn’t play like that.”
Kuiper said the Giants were so bad that fans “really should offer the people their money back,” and he agreed they had earned the postgame blast from their manager.
“…It was bad,” Kuiper said. “I mean, I had the one inning on radio and I turned around to [producer] Darren Chan and I said, ‘That’s the worst half inning of baseball I’ve ever seen.’” And that includes his experiences watching Giants “fantasy camp,” he continued.
The bad day didn’t end when the game did. Kuiper pointed out that the players then had to carry it onto a five-hour flight to Cleveland, where the Giants are set to face the Guardians on Tuesday. He said he was already likely to watch the matchup between his two former teams, but Sunday’s collapse and the reaction around it made the trip feel even more pointed.
“Well, now they can come back today and see if they can do something about it, because that was a bad act, it really was,” Kuiper said.
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