RENO – Mike Krukow is particularly attuned to this year’s San Francisco Giants team. The longtime broadcaster, who is retiring after Sunday’s game, was a player on the 1985 Giants club that lost 100 games. While the 2026 team won’t lose 100, they’ll still finish among one of the worst the franchise ever has fielded, with a 64-92 record going into Monday.
What Krukow emphasizes is that 1985 club didn’t hit much and was poor defensively, but there were a lot of young players, the team made some improvements once general manager Al Rosen and manager Roger Craig came on board at the end of the season, and the feel was entirely different just months later.
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“By the end of spring training, we all believed,” Krukow said. “Nobody was giving us any chance to do anything other than lose 100 or more in 1986, but all you had to do was see how we caught the ball. From my perspective, I thought it was game on.”
The 1986 team won its first two series, on the road, “And by then, it was like ‘OK, this confidence has started to forge,'” Krukow said. “It was the start of the Will Clark and Robby Thompson Era, it just all started to happen and we never looked back.”
Krukow won 20 games that year, his career high, and the team improved by 21 games to 83-79. The next year, San Francisco got back into the postseason.
Given that experience, Krukow doesn’t feel, as many do, that this is a particularly disappointing year to retire, with no playoffs and no exciting pennant race. Laying the groundwork interests Krukow, and he sees much to like, especially with the younger players. He attended a recent game that aired on another outlet and sat in a suite with play-by-play man Duane Kuiper and producers Jim Lynch and Jeff Kuiper and their wives and watched from the side rather than straight on, giving Krukow a new vantage point.
“I could peripherally see all the players on defense, watch them synchronize, take that first step, get that first lean, that first cheat step, see how they moved,” he said, naming Turner Hill, Jonah Cox, Grant McCray and Drew Gilbert among those he studied. “They’ve got good first steps and you see it on the basepaths, too. That’s where you separate the average intelligence baseball IQ to the higher IQ, and the only way you get that is playing a lot of baseball. There’s no shortcut.
“Right after the game, they put on the River Cats game, so I got a chance to see about eight of Marcelo Mayer’s at-bats, and I’m going, ‘Oh hell yeah!’ Then he comes here and during batting practice, he wasn’t out there trying to hit it into McCovey Cove, which every left-handed power hitter does – he centered himself to the middle of the field and when he hit home runs, they went out to center. Kuip comes walking in and goes, ‘You see him hit?’ I go, ‘Yeah,’ (mimics a knowing nod). Kuip goes, ‘Tell me about it.'”
With the 2010-12-14 championships centered around pitching and defense, Krukow has faith that president of baseball operations Buster Posey will build around those elements. He’s also on board with rookie manager Tony Vitello.
“This season has been incredibly interesting because of the 16 debuts they’ve had, because of the 11 or 12 different guys they’ve had closing out a game and because you’ve seen a manager thrown into an environment he had zero preparation for, basically going to work on the fly every day,” Krukow said. “That, to me, was intriguing. There were a couple of takes on that whole thing and I think that to a degree, there were some people in that clubhouse that took advantage of it. I think Tony gave respect out to guys who had established themselves in this game when they hadn’t quite honestly earned it yet with him.
“I think that is all going to change as he goes forward. I think Tony is a quick study, I have no concerns about him whatsoever going into next year. I 100% think he can do this job. We’re seeing now with this younger team just what this guy’s all about and I think that’s been an incredible story.
“In my mind, 2026 is going to be something that is going to have everything to do with the success of this organization as it goes forward.”
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This article originally published at Why Mike Krukow looks back at 100-loss 1985 Giants and feels good about Tony Vitello’s team.