Giants beat writer Alex Pavlovic goes off on team’s ‘unacceptable’ play

The San Francisco Giants lost their fifth consecutive game in rather embarrassing fashion on Wednesday against the San Diego Padres. And this has resulted in Giants reporter Alex Pavlovic offering a blunt assessment of where the team currently stands on the most recent episode of the Giants Talk podcast.

Joined by his co-host, Cole Kuiper, on Thursday’s edition of Giants Talk, Pavlovic didn’t hold back about the team’s recent stretch of play, calling it “unacceptable” given the individual talent on the roster.

“I don’t even… Atrocious, horrible. I think unacceptable is the word that comes to my head. I know I have harped on this a lot lately. 35,000 people here today, 35,000 people here yesterday. To continue to play that brand of baseball, it’s just unacceptable. This is a $200 million roster that is basically completely healthy. They have had remarkable health luck this year. To lose 13 of 14 at home, at Oracle Park. You are not the Rockies. You are not the Marlins. You are not the A’s playing in front of 7,000 people. I just think unacceptable is the word for it.

“As people know, I am probably the last one to get into firing talk. Because I don’t think it’s my job as a beat writer necessarily to call for anyone. These things are normally more than one person. But this is the kind of baseball that leads to big changes. In other circumstances, it would lead to some long meetings on the off-day about if something happens before Friday. Now, I don’t think that will happen. I don’t think that’s Buster’s style. I don’t think Buster (Posey) wants to put this on one or two people when it is basically an organizational failure the last month. But this is the brand of baseball that is really hard to go into an offseason with.”

Pavlovic would go on to say that despite the fact that the organization has missed the postseason each of the last three years, this stretch of play from the Giants is the worst he has seen “in the last few years.”

“To me, this is worse than anything you and I have covered in the last few years,” Pavlovic added. “Because, again, they’re fully healthy, and this is a lineup full of dudes who are going to end up, a lot of them at or pretty close to their career norms, numbers-wise. You can point to little things here and there. (Matt) Chapman clearly not the same since he got hurt, (Rafael) Devers had a rough stretch after he got traded. But overall, if you look at the lineup every day, how many guys are you going to pull? This is the group.

“People who I’ve trusted for a long time and I’ve known for a long time are just like, ‘We have no idea what’s going on here.’ That’s kind of a scary thing to be in here because they’ve made a lot of changes the last few years, and here they sit again in August, doing this again — except almost worse, because they’re doing this all at home.”

While Pavlovic’s assessment may be harsh, he is far from alone in his criticisms of the current state of the team. Similarly, Giants radio broadcasters Dave Flemming and Duane Kuiper aired their grievances publicly during Wednesday’s 11-1 loss to the Dodgers.

Currently, the Giants sit five games outside of an NL Wild Card spot. So it is at least somewhat plausible that we could see them turn things around in the home stretch of the 2025 MLB season. But based on what we have seen as of late, it seems more likely than not that their postseason drought could continue in 2025.