It's challenging to pinpoint a precise low point in this San Francisco Giants season. There are many candidates. Yet if we are judging it by one of baseball's truest standards – the clubhouse doors staying shut long after the game ends, the manager arriving very late to his postgame media briefing, the airing out of the team emerging publicly – that moment arrived Sunday, Aug. 16, when the Giants suffered a 13-7 loss to the last-place Colorado Rockies. It could be considered a seasonal nadir for many reasons, chief among them that the 50-74 Rockies won the season series against the Giants for the first time since 2018. And that Giants pitchers walked 10 batters and hit another, and let a run in on a wild pitch that rookie catcher Drew Cavanaugh could not locate just a few feet away. After the trade deadline shipped off Luis Arráez and other parts, these Giants more resemble a college team. And manager Tony Vitello would know, having made the unprecedented jump from the University of Tennessee to the Giants dugout. Yet in describing his team's play, Vitello went a step lower: Junior college. "It had more the feel of a lower level, a junior-college game as opposed to a big-league game, with how some of the things transpired," Vitello told reporters in San Francisco. "And I was a juco guy, so I’m not disrespecting junior college." Yikes.
Vitello even had one of his guys, former Volunteers starter Blade Tidwell, on the mound Sunday. Yet Tidwell was part of the problem, walking five and giving up six earned runs in 4⅓ innings. Another Vol, Drew Gilbert, batted leadoff, suddenly among the more senior members of a lineup that featured Cavanugh, Buddy Kennedy, Turner Hill and Osleivis Basabe. Not exactly Arráez, Matt Chapman, Willy Adames. And just how did Vitello's JC remarks hit in the clubhouse? "I think he did a good job," Tidwell, the former Vol, told reporters. "Everybody was locked in, and the guys were nodding their heads and stuff. So I think everybody was on board with what he was saying." This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tony Vitello says Giants' performance was 'like a junior college game'