It’s a four-game rematch against a team they faced just last week. Nothing new to learn here, but can there be a different result?
At the conclusion of Wednesday’s game, the third of four against the visiting Chicago Cubs, the San Francisco Giants will have played half their season. They could have anywhere from 36-39 wins and 42-45 losses. In terms of a series preview, it’s tough to add to the one I posted literally seven days ago. The Cubs took that series but then lost to the Mets.
This is still a battle of two teams scratching and clawing to reach the tier of mediocrity.
I’m not going to tell you that “Actually, it’s good the Giants went 1-5 on their latest road trip” or that “everything will be fine in the second half because 1) the team gets Cy Young reinforcements and 2) that’s when the games actually matter,” and I’m not going to tell you that there’s much that’s encouraging as we survey the present team.
It’s a home series. That’s good. The Giants are 20-17 at Oracle Park this season. The Cubs are 33-40 all-time at Oracle, 5-9 since 2019. They’re also 15-23 on the road this season. The only reason why it doesn’t seem like an even matchup now is because the Giants have very little in the way of starting pitching.
The Giants will be featuring three TBDs and a Jordan Hicks start in this quartet. The depth they’ve been working so hard to build since 2019 has failed to materialize. Their offseason efforts and plans didn’t take. Injuries are a part of the game, sure, and you could even argue that the Giants have had an extra special helping of bad luck, but the minor leagues are offering no help and their miracle conversion of Jordan Hicks is already starting to fade.
On top of that, it’s easier than ever to keep major league hitters down. The leaguewide OBP of .311 is the worst of this century, and the .392 slugging is second-worst ahead of only 2014. The .242 batting average is the lowest of this century. Hitters are striking out 22% of the time and walking 8% of the time, which are the exact rates at which Giants pitching is striking out and walking major league hitters. So, what gives?
We saw what happened in the Cubs series. The Giants made the wrong pitches at the wrong time and crucial defensive miscues. Their team strand rate (LOB%) of 69.1% is 6th-worst in MLB, behind (ascending order) the Mets, White Sox, Angels, Marlins, and Rockies — bad group to be in! The team’s batting average on balls in play (BAbip) is .314, the second-worst in the sport behind the Rockies (.321).
There’s a constant nagging by people who claim that BABIP will always regress to the mean, and while the math says that’s so, it’s far, far more likely with individual players rather than teams. The team data is gathered from a much larger sampling, and it’s not relative to individual player BABIP. Just look at MLB’s description of BABIP:
The league average BABIP is typically around .300. Pitchers who have allowed a high percentage of hits on balls in play will typically regress to the mean, and vice versa.
[…]
That said, skill can play a role in BABIP, as some pitchers are adept at generating weak contact, while some hitters excel at producing hard-hit balls. For example, Clayton Kershaw finished the 2019 season with a lifetime .270 BABIP allowed, while Mike Trout ended the campaign with a career .348 BABIP.
The Giants have the worst average exit velocity against of any team in Major League Baseball right now (89.7 mph) along with a 43% Hard hit rate. They’re not fooling hitters. The team 1.35 WHIP is also 6th-worst in the sport. They’re giving up a lot of baserunners who aren’t having much trouble hitting their pitches.
Conversely, we just watched this Giants lineup accomplish some things against this Cubs pitching staff. Even with Kyle Hendricks’ 5.2 innings of 1-run ball, they still mounted a comeback and lost 6-5. They made a bit of a comeback in yesterday’s game despite Sonny Gray’s perfect game bid.
Both teams are under a lot of pressure and it feels like they’re at an odd pivot point before the All-Star break. Even with three Wild Cards and a group of owners begging for their sub-.500 team to grab one of those bids, the Cubs and Giants are flailing compared to their loser cohorts. Chicago is a healthy disappointment while the Giants have certainly been that in stretches, but largely crushed by starting pitcher injuries.
It’s a four-game slap fight. If you’re a Giants fan, it might only be entertaining if they win it.
Series details
Who: San Francisco Giants vs. Chicago Cubs
Where: Oracle Park, San Francisco, California
When: Monday, Tuesday, & Wednesday @ 6:45pm PT, Thursday @ 12:45pm PT
National broadcasts: MLB Network simulcast (Tuesday & Thursday)
Projected starters
Monday: Justin Steele vs. Erik Miller (O)/Spencer Howard (B)
Tuesday: Kyle Hendricks vs. TBD
Wednesday: TBD vs. TBD
Thursday: TBD vs. Jordan Hicks
Where they stand
Cubs, 37-41 (4th in NL Central), 326 RS / 346 RA | Last 10 games: 4-6
Giants, 36-42 (4th in NL West), 341 RS / 375 RA | Last 10 games: 3-7
Cubs to watch
Shōta Imanaga: We might finally get to see The Throwing Philosopher put on a seminar. This was the starter the Giants passed up during the offseason because their scouting conflicted… or the Giants were just saving up for Blake Snell. Anyway, plenty of teams might’ve been kicking themselves for not signing the soft-tossing lefty, but the Mets roughed him up really good Friday night (3 IP 11 H 10 ER 1 BB 3 K 3 HRA). On May 29, the Brewers tagged him for 7 runs in 4.1 innings. He had some good starts in between, but against the White Sox, Reds, and Cardinals — hardly top tier competition. It combines to a 7.46 ERA (5.40 FIP) in his last 5 starts, and while we’d joke a lot about how a pitcher just like this would befuddle the Giants, I think the Cubs might be going to the well too many times.
Kyle Hendricks will get the start the day before and Justin Steele himself is a bit of a junk-tosser. Basically, the Cubs won’t be varying their looks too much and the Giants’ bats might be good enough to take advantage. Still, let’s see what The Throwing Philosopher can do.
Patrick Wisdom: The St. Mary’s College of California grad has a 5 career home runs at Oracle Park to go with a batting line of .321/.406/.929 in 32 plate appearances.
The Cubs Bullpen: Now, the obvious scenario is that the Giants’ opener-bulk strategy fails miserably and the Giants are down 5+ after the 5th inning of all four games, but if they’re not, the Cubs’ impressively 4-FIP bullpen offers the chance for comebacks and blowouts. If the Giants pitching figures to struggle for the rest of the month, the lineup might consider throwing in 6-7 runs a game every so often.
Giants to watch
Heliot Ramos: The thrill is gone? We’ll find out. He rolled into Wrigley last week with a .965 OPS, but had just two hits in the series (though, one of them was a crucial home run), and left the 6-game road trip with an .885 OPS and a 3-for-27 skid. He could always get hot against the Dodgers, of course, but extending that skid over these next four games against a pitching staff that’s ripe for feasting on is going to make it a lot easier to consign him to the Casey Schmitt’s first week/Alen Hanson realm of prospect production. Remember, the Giants were always down on him and the team knows a lot more about prospect development and winning at the major league level than any of us.
The Giants Bullpen: There are the good guys: Ryan Walker, Taylor & Tyler Rogers, Camilo Doval, and then there’s everybody else: Sean Hjelle, Randy Rodriguez, Spencer Howard, Luke Jackson, Erik Miller, Spencer Bivens. The series belongs to this group of everybody else, along with the lineup. How they do will determine the series. And if the Giants lose because Camilo Doval isn’t sufficiently impressed by the leverage or Tyler Rogers allows a runner to get to third or Taylor Rogers accidentally walks a guy, then just tip your cap to the Cubs, I guess. Those players are supposed to be as close to automatic as possible. Meanwhile, Luke Jackson largely pitches when there’s zero leverage, and even then, in games where he does not allow a run, he’s still registering a 3.90 FIP. Spencer Bivens is a nice story, but can he get some critical outs?
Giants baserunners: The Giants never adapted to the new baserunning rules and it’s going to cost them games all season long. It doesn’t seem like an issue they can fix in-season and it seems like they have a generation of coaches too far in the past to grasp the nature of the problem. As bad as the Giants 86/101 stolen base success rate against them is, I need to point out that the Cubs have allowed 65/73 stolen base attempts. If you look at the list of worst teams against the running game, it really lays bare the present Wild Card 3 environment:
30- SF, 86 (out of 101)
29- NYM, 76 (out of 89)
28- CHW, 74 (out of 88)
27- TB, 69 (out of 78)
26- TOR, 67 (out of 83)
25- WSN, 65 (out of 80)
24- CHC, 65 (out of 73)
23- HOU, 64 (out of 81)
22- MIA, 61 (out of 84)
21- COL, 61 (out of 83)
Bad list to be on. Teams in this tier are not good overall. So, maybe the Giants should try running a little more in this series and take advantage of their opponents flaws. The Giants are a faster team overall compared to the Cardinals and they didn’t hesitate to run on the poor manner in which Giants pitchers managed the running game.
To be fair, the Giants are the 3rd-worst team in the sport at defending the running game, Statcast’s way of determining run value based on how pitchers handle baserunners. The Cubs are 5th best. Imanaga and Taillon are each +3 and Justin Steele is +1. But Kyle Hendricks is -1 and Hector Neis -4. Be brave, Giants!