SAN FRANCISCO — Patrick Bailey did not intend to raise any deep, philosophical questions when he started behind the plate Saturday afternoon.
He merely wanted to catch a good game and have competitive at-bats. He wanted to lead a victory handshake line. He wanted to help the Giants wash off whatever toxic effluent they waded through in the process of losing by 16 runs a night earlier. And ideally, he wanted to do something memorable for the 15,000 fans who received his bobblehead when they entered the ballpark.
Going 4-for-4 and finishing a triple short of the cycle? That’s one way to do it. Hitting a tiebreaking, two-run home run into McCovey Cove in the fifth inning? That’s even better. Jung Hoo Lee hit his first home run in San Francisco while leading off the first inning, the Giants received five nearly flawless relief innings behind an unpolished start from Kyle Harrison and their lineup churned out baserunners galore against Arizona ace Zac Gallen. But Bailey’s performance earned the most prominent place on the mantel in the San Francisco Giants’ 7-3 victory in China Basin.
In the process, Bailey created a paradox fit for a postgraduate philosophy seminar: Can you call it a Splash Hit if it doesn’t make a splash?
Bailey’s shot off Gallen in the fifth met the standard criteria. It cleared the right-field arcade and the walkway beyond. But unlike the 164 previous home runs to land in the cove, including 102 hit by Giants players, this one did not get wet. By pure chance, the ball landed in the lap of a woman who sat in the front of a two-seat kayak (three if you count their dog, which sported an orange bandanna) — something that never happened even at the height of Barry Bonds’ pursuit of the single-season and career home run records, when the cove featured such an armada of floating craft that the water was barely visible.
This probably isn’t the smartest time to challenge Bailey to a game of “Battleship.”
“Did it really?” said Bailey, told the fate of his non-splash hit. “I guess that still counts?”
Patrick Bailey’s first career splash homer is also the first by a Giant since Mike Yastrzemski on June 19 of last season. ⚾️💦 https://t.co/UGTSJnGYJZ
— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) April 20, 2024
A splash of Bailey’s is a fine way to end any meal. Except the Giants’ 24-year-old switch-hitting catcher wasn’t done. He needed a triple for the cycle when he batted in the seventh inning and his drive split the gap in left-center field. But there wasn’t an unexpected carom or a pratfall among the Diamondbacks’ outfielders that would allow Bailey to reach third base. The ball took a hard bounce off the track and went over the wall for an automatic double. Bailey took off his helmet as he made a wide turn around second base and coasted with an air of resignation.
“Disappointed might be a stretch,” said Bailey, who was happier about the victory. “Obviously last night isn’t the baseball we’d like to play consistently. Over a stretch of 162, if we show up and do what we did today, we have a chance to do something special here for sure.”
They’ll have to be a more consistent run-producing club for that to happen, and unlike their division rivals, they don’t have the wattage of a Mookie Betts or Shohei Ohtani or Fernando Tatis Jr. to power them. They don’t have a Manny Machado or a Freddie Freeman or a Ketel Marte or a Corbin Carroll, either. If you sort all players by offensive WAR last season, you have to scroll past 10 names who are on NL West rosters before you get to a current Giant, Matt Chapman, who is hitting .224 and received his first prescribed rest on Saturday.
For the Giants to produce runs consistently, they’ll have to be one of those “a different hero every night” kinds of teams. And that will include getting contributions from their primary catcher who was a Gold Glove finalist as a rookie last season but remains a little less proven in the batter’s box.
When the Giants promoted Bailey in May of last season, he’d played a total of just 28 games above High-A Eugene, where he’d struggled while hitting .222 in 2021. He was a late bloomer with the bat at North Carolina State, too. Upon his arrival in the big leagues, Bailey showed glimpses of his hitting ability. He played a superstar game in New York that tempted some onlookers to make a lofty comparison. But Bailey wore down in the second half. He hit .121 with one extra-base hit in 18 games after Sept. 1. The Giants might have been reacting to that downturn at the plate this past winter when they spent $8.25 million on a backup catcher, Tom Murphy, whose primary attribute is his power against left-handed pitching.
Giants manager Bob Melvin was wearing San Diego’s brown pinstripes last September when a flagging Bailey played five games against the Padres. Bailey went 1-for-18 with nine strikeouts in those games. You could understand if Melvin arrived in San Francisco with doubts about his young catcher’s offensive ability.
“But in spring training, you could see the swing,” Melvin said. “You look at the matchups over the years, and one year he was better right-handed, one year he was better left-handed. So it’s all in there for him. And after the year he had last year, with a lot of confidence gained, he’s a guy we really lean on and expect big things out of.
“It doesn’t surprise me that he’s hitting … what is he hitting now, .340? Is that … right?”
All right. Maybe Melvin was a little surprised.
From left to right: Nick Ahmed, Austin Slater, Patrick Bailey and Taylor Rogers celebrate after the Giants’ 7-3 win over the D-Backs on Saturday. (Andy Kuno / San Francisco Giants / Getty Images)
You only needed to glance at the visiting dugout to appreciate what Bailey is contributing at the start of his sophomore season. Carroll, the unanimous NL Rookie of the Year last season, had an abysmal game that included an overrun in center field that turned Bailey’s bloop hit into a double. Carroll flailed at pitches out of the zone and struck out three times against Harrison on an afternoon when the left-hander’s fastball was down a tick. His hitless game dropped his average to .224 and his .609 OPS is nearly 100 points below the league average.
The Sophomore Slump comes for almost everyone. There will be times when it comes for Bailey, too. But it’ll be important that the Giants receive production from the back half of their lineup, especially when they are prioritizing defense at shortstop with Nick Ahmed hitting ninth.
Unlike the pitching staff, which in theory will receive second-half boosts from Robbie Ray and Alex Cobb, the Giants’ lineup is pretty much what-you-see-is-what-you-get. The lineup won’t be any healthier or any more stable than it is right now. They’ve quietly made just one roster move to their position player core all season — when they pared down from 14 position players to 13 on April 2 while designating catcher Joey Bart for assignment — and there doesn’t appear to be a strong compulsion to see if Heliot Ramos or Brett Wisely can repeat their current hot streaks at Triple-A Sacramento into big-league production.
(The Giants did make two other roster moves on Saturday. They activated right-hander Sean Hjelle and optioned spent right-hander Kai-Wei Teng to Sacramento. After the game, they acquired Toronto right-hander and former Dodger Mitch White for cash considerations. White, who played at Bellarmine Prep in San Jose and Santa Clara University, had been designated for assignment on Tuesday when the Blue Jays activated closer Jordan Romano and setup man Erik Swanson. The Giants created 40-man space by transferring Alex Cobb to the 60-day injured list, meaning that the soonest the right-hander can return is at the end of May. It was apparent that Cobb wasn’t close to returning after enduring elbow and shoulder setbacks as he ramped up from offseason hip surgery. The series of moves were the first changes to the major-league roster in 18 days, which is almost certainly a record-setting streak in six years under president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi.)
So they’ll rely on Lee to keep sparking them. They’ll hope LaMonte Wade Jr. (.388 average, .993 OPS) can continue to establish himself as one of the league’s best on-base machines. They’ll hope even more fervently that Jorge Soler, who has come to the plate with 66 runners on base and has driven in just two of them, will start finding the barrel when he has the potential to create the most damage.
Soler signed too late for the Giants to schedule a bobblehead day. Perhaps the marketing folks can race one into production. It worked for Bailey.
“That dude’s unbelievable,” Harrison said of his batterymate. “I mean, there’s nothing else to say. The guy’s the truth. If you can do that on your bobblehead night, it’s definitely a day to remember for him.”
Bailey’s bobblehead scores points for attention to detail. His doll includes the headband he always wears underneath his cap or catching helmet. Most of Bailey’s headbands have a patriotic theme: the Constitution, the stars and stripes, a bald eagle.
His headband selection on Saturday, when he somehow hit a home run that landed in a boat, couldn’t have been more appropriate.
Washington crossing the Delaware.
(Top photo of Patrick Bailey hitting a home run into McCovey Cove: Darren Yamashita / USA Today)
