1978 San Francisco Giants: To The Edge Of Glory

After some good teams in the early part of the 1970s, including an NL West title in 1971, the San Francisco Giants fell onto some hard times. They posted four straight losing season. In 1978, the Giants made a big trade to get themselves back on the map and it worked. They contended and even set the pace for much of the year, before finally fading at the end.

VIDA BLUE ARRIVES

On March 15, San Francisco reached out across the Bay to Oakland, where the A’s were in a major rebuild mode, selling off the pieces that made them one of baseball’s all-time teams earlier in the decade. One of those pieces was lefthanded starting pitcher Vida Blue. The Giants gave up six players. While they were of varying quality, none could be described as anyone with major impact. Blue immediately stepped in, won 18 games with a 2.79 ERA and finished third in the NL Cy Young voting.

And Blue was just the beginning of an excellent rotation. Bob Knepper won 17 games, and his ERA was just 2.63. John Montefusco made 36 starts, got 11 wins and had a 3.81 ERA. Ed Halicki and Jim Barr started 25-plus games each. Halicki’s ERA ended up 2.85 while Barr’s finished at 3.53. Every night, San Francisco sent out a starting pitcher who gave them a chance to win.

The bullpen didn’t have anyone dominant, but Gary LaVelle and Randy Moffiit each had ERAs in the low 3s and combined to get 21 more wins and 26 saves. John Curtis was another respectable arm out of the pen. San Francisco’s composite staff ERA was third-best in the National League.

BRIGHT SPOTS & BLACK HOLES

While the pitching got them in contention, the problem was the bats, where the Giants ranked just seventh in the 12-team National League for runs scored.

They had top-line performers. Jack Clark batted .306, hit 25 homers, drove in 98 runs and finished fifth in the NL MVP voting. Bill Madlock was at second base and hit .309. Terry Whitfield was a respectable leftfielder who batted .289. Mike Ivie was versatile in part-time duty, getting 352 plate appearances and batting .308. Darrell Evans hit 20 home runs at third base.

The problem was that the weak spots were inordinately soft. Johnnie LeMaster was a classic go-field/no-hit shortstop. Larry Herndon would eventually become a good hitter, but at age 24, was still developing. Marc Hill was a weak spot at catcher. And at first base, the great Willie McCovey was now 40-years-old. While McCovey would have some special moments in 1978, including hitting his 500^th career home run, his production overall was meager.

THE NL WEST GAUNTLET

San Francisco’s historic rival from Los Angeles had won the National League pennant a year earlier. The Cincinnati Reds were just two years removed from the height of their own dominance as the Big Red Machine. It made for a high bar to clear in the division.

Perhaps here’s a good time to step back and remind younger readers that prior to 1994 there was only an East and a West division in both leagues. Cincinnati, the Atlanta Braves and Houston Astros (a National League team until 2013) joined the Giants, Dodgers and San Diego Padres in the NL West. Furthermore, only the first-place team would go to the postseason, advancing directly to the League Championship Series. Like we said, it was a high bar to clear.

A RED-HOT MAY

San Francisco’s play was middling for the first couple of weeks, as they started 7-9. Taking two of three from a contending team in the Pittsburgh Pirates jumpstarted a 14-3 stretch that moved the Giants into first place. They lost a series in Los Angeles, but swept Houston, and welcomed the Dodgers to old Candlestick Park for a three-game series on Memorial Day weekend.

Friday night’s opener belonged to McCovey. His two-run single set the tone in the first inning and his three-run blast in the fifth blew it open. San Francisco won 6-1 behind a complete-game six-hitter from Knepper. They lost 3-1 on Saturday afternoon, only getting two hits and wasting a good outing from Blue.

Then the Giants trailed Sunday’s rubber match 3-0 in the sixth inning. It looked like another series loss until Ivie unloaded with a grand slam off the great Dodger starter Don Sutton. San Francisco won 6-5. As the season rounded the first turn, they were 28-15, up a game and a half on Cincinnati and plus 3 ½ on Los Angeles.

HOLDING THE LEAD AT THE BREAK

After getting swept by the eventual NL East champion Philadelphia Phillies, San Francisco had a bit of an early June lull and fell into a first-place tie. They responded by winning nine of eleven, including two straight from the Phils on their return trip west. San Francisco also made a deal to pick up a respectable lefthanded bat in Jim Dwyer.

Losing two of three at home to the Reds started another lull, this one with 10 losses in 17 games. But their NL West rivals were in a lull themselves, and San Francisco maintained their narrow lead. They split four with the Reds just prior to the All-Star break and finished the first half with a two-game lead on Los Angeles and a three-game edge on Cincinnati.

FIGHTING FOR LIFE

The Giants played steady baseball in the latter part of July, winning a pair of series against the Pirates. San Francisco and Los Angeles played each other eight times in the first half of August, and it ended up a draw, each team getting four wins. The problem was that in the other games, the Dodgers were heating up and they moved past the Giants and into the lead, with the Reds still lurking a close third.

On the weekend leading into Labor Day, the Giants were two games back. A pair of two-game sets with the Dodgers were the focal point of early September, but San Francisco needed to get there first. And they were hosting the Phillies for a four-game set.

Facing the Hall of Fame Phillie lefty Steve Carlton, Evans hit a two-run blast in the third inning. In a 3-3 tie in the eight, Clark got Carlton for a solo shot that delivered a 4-3 win.

Blue pitched well on Saturday afternoon, but San Francisco went 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position, eventually dropping a 3-1 decision in ten innings. Sunday was a doubleheader.  Madlock delivered three hits in the opener, Dwyer homered and the Giants won 4-1 behind a complete game from Knepper.

In the nightcap, the San Francisco trailed 2-1 in the eighth inning, risking the waste of a good outing from Montefusco. Whitfield beat out an infield hit and then was bunted into scoring position by Madlock. Dwyer singled. With runners on the corners, Clark grounded out, but it moved Dwyer to second.

There were two outs, runners on second and third and Hector Cruz came through. A two-run single was the difference in the 3-2 win. San Francisco was just a game back of Los Angeles as the big showdowns of September loomed.

THE COLLAPSE

Unfortunately, this is the part of the story where the 1978 San Francisco Giants ran out of steam. They lost both games to the Dodgers on Labor Day, and on Tuesday. The following Monday and Tuesday, they played again—with San Francisco losing both games.

All of that was problem enough, but in between those two series, the Giants lost three of four to the Reds and Braves. San Francisco was six games back and fading fast. Then they lost two more to Atlanta and dropped another series to Cincinnati. The Giants had fallen, and they weren’t getting back up.

THE LEGACY OF THE 1978 SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS

San Francisco still finished 89-73 on the year. While they watched Los Angeles go to the World Series and Cincinnati move past them into second, the Giants still had the fourth-best record in the National League and the 10^th-best record in MLB overall. It wasn’t all that different from this franchise’s 2014 team that won the World Series. But to return to the theme above, it was a higher bar to clear to make the postseason back then.

Perhaps more disappointing than the September fade is that this didn’t start anything new for the Giants. They immediately slipped back to irrelevance for three years before returning to contention in 1982.