SAN FRANCISCO — A few minutes past 4 o’clock Friday afternoon, Camilo Doval strode from his locker in the home clubhouse of Oracle Park, down the hallway toward the manager’s office and through the door, accompanied by a team interpreter.
The door swung open about 10 minutes later and Doval walked by himself back to his locker. Rather than beginning to change out of his black sweatsuit and into uniform, as he had before each one of the past 466 games, Doval began packing his belongings into his black-and-gold designer backpack.
It was evident the message that had been relayed from Bob Melvin through Erwin Higueros, which became official moments later when reporters’ phones buzzed with the Giants’ latest roster moves. Doval had been demoted, not just from the closer’s role but out of the big leagues altogether.
“If you’re a guy like him, you don’t expect to hear that,” Melvin said before Friday’s first pitch against the Detroit Tigers. “He was sad. I don’t blame him. … He’s processing it right now. Hopefully he takes it the right way and gets back here and does the role that he’s done in the past very successfully.”
A first-time All-Star last season, Doval was optioned to Triple-A Sacramento, and right-hander Landen Roupp was called up to take the vacant seat in the bullpen.
The Giants will name an interim closer, rather than a by-committee approach, though Melvin wasn’t at liberty to share whose name he planned to call in their next save situation. Between Jordan Hicks, Ryan Walker and the Rogers brothers they have a wealth of options with either past experience or a recent track record of success.
“We’ll try to define it,” Melvin said. “As opposed to just doing a committee thing and matching up, it’ll be more defined. … It’ll be the guy we feel like has the best opportunity to do it without throwing everything else into disarray down there. Let’s put it that way.”
The hope, Melvin said, is that Doval won’t require more than the minimum 15-day stay to correct his issues, which can be traced back to his off-and-on relationship with the strike zone and came to a head again Thursday in the Giants’ eventual extra-innings win in Washington.
Blowing his fifth save in 27 opportunities, Doval walked the first two batters of the ninth inning before surrendering a game-tying home run with the Nationals down to their final strike. In 46 appearances this season, he has already issued three more walks (29) than he did in all of 2023 (26), when he appeared in 69 games and led the National League with 39 saves.
“He’s an All-Star. We expect when he comes back he’ll be an All-Star,” Melvin said. “But the strike-throwing is an issue right now. Times to the plate. He can be better than he is right now, and I think that he’ll be better-served to be able to work on it somewhere where it’s not the big-league level in a different role.”
The time in Sacramento will be Doval’s first time pitching for the River Cats since his brief stint there in 2021 — appearing in 28 games — before he was called up to the majors and established himself as a high-leverage reliever down the stretch in their pennant race with the Dodgers.
In 2022, his first full big-league season, Doval was elevated to the closer’s role and hadn’t relinquished it since, converting 91 of his 110 total save opportunities. As a 24-year-old rookie in 2021, the Giants asked him to finish both their NLDS wins against the Dodgers, and he posted a 2.53 ERA while saving 27 games in 2022 before being named one of the team’s two representatives at last summer’s All-Star Game in Seattle, going on to finish the season with a 2.93 ERA and 87 strikeouts in 67⅔ innings.
The three runs he allowed Thursday increased his ERA this season to 4.70, along with career-worsts in WHIP (1.614) and BB/9 (5.9) that both rank among the worst of any reliever in the majors who has thrown as many innings. Additionally, opponents are 8-for-8 when attempting to steal with him on the mound.
“It just needs to be a cleaner game with him,” Melvin said. “Our expectation – and our best team – is with him closing. This affords him the opportunity to go down there, do some of those things and get back here and be the All-Star that he was last year.”
It’s uncommon for closers to be sent to the minors to work through their issues, but the option was available to the Giants because of Doval’s youth and previous job security. He hadn’t been called up and down, so he still had minor-league options remaining, and he hadn’t accrued five years of major-league service time, so the Giants were able to use them, rather than move Doval into a lower-leverage role in the bullpen.
The unique circumstances required an explanation from Melvin.
“I said, I don’t think that putting you in a lesser role is going to help you iron these things out,” Melvin said. “It’s still the big leagues. It’s a role that you’re not used to doing. We’re asking you to do some things that might be a little uncomfortable at the beginning. We feel this is the best avenue to be able to do that. …
“I want him to be our closer.”
Originally Published: