The San Francisco Giants have five different relievers who have appeared in 40 games or more. The least effective one, by almost any metric — ERA, FIP, strikeout-to-walk ratio, WHIP, pitches per outing — was also their closer. The best possible argument for Camilo Doval to remain the closer was that maybe the Giants didn’t want to upset the apple cart.
On Friday, the Giants optioned Doval to Triple-A Sacramento, replacing him on the active roster with Landen Roupp. They didn’t just upset the apple cart; they flipped it over and stomped on the apples until they turned into baby food. Doval led the National League with 39 saves last season and had a 2.93 ERA (and a 2.77 FIP). Before this year, he’d never posted an ERA higher than 3.00 in his two-plus major-league seasons. But his ERA had ballooned to 4.70 after Thursday’s blown save and his walks per nine innings had nearly reached 6.0 (5.9).
Still, if you’re surprised by this demotion, you should be. Doval was an All-Star 13 months ago, and there haven’t been any rumors that the Giants were even considering a change with his role. No rumblings, no grumblings. However, the final straw was apparently his bumbling in Washington, D.C., where he walked two batters with a three-run lead in a wet, messy ninth inning and cost his teammates several hours of sleep. All he had to do was throw strikes to preserve the lead. He could not throw strikes.
LUIS GARCIA TIES THE GAME FOR THE @Nationals IN THE BOTTOM OF THE 9TH #NATITUDE pic.twitter.com/QJ9fokUxYw
— World Baseball Network (@WorldBaseball_) August 8, 2024
That’s the kind of development that generally gets a pitcher a breather. A typical reaction would be to put him in lower-leverage situations until he finds the missing command or demote him to a set-up role. It’s hard, if not impossible, to remember the last time a team skipped those steps to send a healthy, established closer to Triple A.
There are a couple of different ways to look at this then. The first is that the Giants felt there were eight relievers on the 40-man roster who were likelier to get outs in the major leagues than Doval. Possible, but a little drastic. The stuff was clearly intact, even if the command definitely wasn’t. It’s hard to imagine that, even with all of his struggles this year, he wasn’t one of the eight best options.
The other way to look at this is that it had to be Triple A. Either because they wanted the move to be a bigger wake-up call than a simple role change, or because they didn’t think he would adapt well to a new role in the majors.
It could be a combination of both. A role change in the majors might affect his concentration, mood, attention, attitude, et cetera, any of which would travel from his brain into his right arm and make him even less effective at throwing strikes.
Regardless, the Giants will have a much, much different bullpen for the rest of the season than what you were expecting. Ryan Walker has been the Giants’ most effective reliever, but Taylor Rogers has the most experience as a closer. Manager Bob Melvin could go with the dreaded closer-by-committee, but it seems likelier that one of those two will be the new closer.
The Giants’ near-loss on Thursday was one of the more aggravating games of the season, but it was hard to imagine this. It’s also hard to imagine that this was an impetuous, knee-jerk decision. This has been building for weeks, even if the organization has been very, very good at not letting anyone else know.
(Photo of Doval following the blown save: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)
