Former San Francisco Giant catcher Buster Posey takes a swing in front of Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Will Smith during game 5 of the NLDS on Oct 14, 2021 at Oracle Park in San Francisco. Posey had the season of his career in 2021 but with his retirement things have slowed down for the Giants (AP News file photo)

Time to Check the Pulse of Giants fans

That’s Amaury News and Commentary

By Amaury Pi-González

Last year at the beginning of September it seemed we had 5 million Giants fans in the Bay Area. The Giants overachieved with 107 wins in 2021 season, it was a ‘once in a lifetime’ type of season where just about every Giants player had their best season of their careers, veterans like catcher Buster Posey on his last season was the only Giants starter in the All Star Game in San Diego, also Brandon Crawford and Kevin Gaussman were selected to the ASG.

The 2021 season is now the record for the franchise with 107 wins beating their previous best of 103 wins in the 1993 season. That tends to happen in the always unpredictable game of baseball. September 2021 there were Giants fans all the time on Facebook, Twitter, all over the place, but not this year.

The obvious place to check is Oracle Park, where this season the Giants are #13 in attendance among the 30 teams, with an average of 30,609 per game. The great success of the previous season translated to thousands of tickets sold in advance for this year, a normal occurrence for teams in baseball.

Giants have an excellent marketing department and they do promote the team and their stars as good as anybody, plus winning three World Series still in the memory of their fans, and those they recruited during those glory seasons.

Some baseball philosopher once said “winning is the best deodorant”. A lifelong Giants fan and friend of mine in his 70’s told me about the Giants this season; “I didn’t expected them to win 100 games again, but I also expected more from this team” and continued “It confirmed my suspicion that last season was like finding water in the desert, a…fluke”.

The last time the San Francisco Giants had a super star (prior to the Buster Posey era) was Barry Lamar Bonds, but since then, the team has lacked that type of excitement for the local fans. We have all heard the rumors that they might go after Aaron Judge, who is on a pace to break the American League home-run record of 61 by Yankee Roger Maris during the 1961 season.

Aaron Judge hails from Linden, a very small town in the San Joaquin Valley between 1 to 2 hours away from San Francisco. The Yankees and Judge avoided arbitration with a 19 million deal for the 2022 season this past June.

A real Giant by size 6 foot 7 and about 275 pounds said about the agreement that it did not create any momentum toward a long-term extension, when he said “No. We got this one done. I was happy about that,” he told MLB.

Judge left the door open for the possibility of playing for another team, but if he breaks the Roger Maris AL home run record it will be tough for the Yankees to let him go. He is looking for at least a $300 million multi-year contract.

Aaron Judge should be the MVP of the American League this year, but in baseball one man doesn’t make a whole team. The Giants have some big time personnel decisions to make this winter and for the 2023 baseball season.

Even if they open the checkbook and sign Judge. As of today Fangraphs gives the Giants a 0.01% odds of making the postseason. In other words and like Don Meredith used to sing during the NFL national broadcast with Howard Cosell; Turn Out The Lights…The Party’s Over!

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