SAN FRANCISCO–Pablo Sandoval’s walkoff home run to end the 2017 season was a fitting sendoff for the Giants.
But a win in the final game of the season will never be able to atone for all the mistakes the Giants made during the first 161 games they played this year.
With a victory on Sunday, San Francisco rounded out the season with a 64-98 record, tied with the Detroit Tigers for the worst mark in the Major Leagues. The Giants will pick second in next year’s MLB Draft, but manager Bruce Bochy knows the club needs to do more than just draft well to have a chance of competing again in the future.
“We have some work to do,” Bochy said. “There’s no sugarcoating this. You lose 98 games, we’ve got some things we’ve got to fix, and forget the injuries, whatever, but I think you look at the numbers on both sides. We’ve got to get better. Especially in our division, you look at the years that LA had, Arizona, Colorado, we’ve got a lot of work to do. As I said, we’ll be relentless with this work to get back on track. All of us. We’ve talked with the players, we’ve met with them individually. We know what’s ahead of us as far as hard work.”
Sandoval’s home run was just the 128th the Giants hit this season, by far the fewest in the Major Leagues. After signing a Minor League deal with the Giants in July, Sandoval worked his way back to the Major Leagues and hit five home runs with the club in the season’s final two months.