Can the Giants deliver another pasting or will this series go as the numbers suggest?
The San Francisco Giants could win the season series against the San Diego Padres this weekend. If you’d sent that sentence back to March you’d feel pretty good about the Giants’ chances of making the postseason in 2024.
Alas.
Still, as far apart as the Giants and Padres now are in terms of competitiveness, lol Padres. The Giants really did pack a punch last weekend in San Diego and now they have the chance to do it again this weekend in San Francisco. The Padres have gone 32-16 (.667) in the second half with a team ERA of 3.70, but in the small sample size of a 3-game series, the Giants took two out of three and the Padres had a team ERA of 4.67. Small victories for a small Giants team!
Let’s talk a little bit more about these disappointing Giants.
The star of their second half has been Tyler Fizgerald, who has homered 12 times since the All-star break but has hit zero since August 14th. Still, his .304/.356/.571 triple slash (208 PA) leads the active roster with a 157 wRC+ in value (technically, Jorge Soler’s 50 PA of 207 wRC+ is higher). He also has 10 stolen bases. Compare that to the Padres’ Jackson Merrill, the presumptive favorite to win NL Rookie of the Year, and he still comes out ahead:
Jackson Merrill
.301/.332/.601 (155 wRC+) | 11 HR 37 RBI 6 SB 5.3% BB%, 18.6% K%, +1.2 Def, +2.2 fWAR
Tyler Fitzgerald
.304/.356/.571 (157 wRC+) | 12 HR 24 RBI 10 SB 6.3% BB%, 28.4% K%, +1.4 Def, +2.6 fWAR
This is just a second half comparison, when Merrill is making headlines for his high leverage success. If you expand the scope to include the entire season you run into the pesky problem of the Giants’ poor roster management limiting Fitzgerald’s playing time, but the number still show him ahead. Just in terms of OPS, it’s .880 Fizgerald to .810 Merrill. Now, I ask you: who’s the better rookie of the year?
Ok, fine, it’s probably still Merill. And if you’re picking between the two in terms of who will have the most success over the next few years it’s Merrill just because of the age gap: Merrill is 21, Fitzgerald is 26. The Giants are still in the stage where they’re left hoping that a single season performance isn’t a mirage, but Fitzgerald and Ramos and Birdsong are all players we should have in mind when we look back on what did or didn’t happen this year. They could be contributors on the next good Giants team — or not, who knows? Nobody knows when the Giants will be good again, least of all the Giants.
But, they have the chance to win a season series against a good team. Sure, if they win one game that would technically accomplish the task while dropping them to 73-77, but try to imagine a sweep that gets them to 75-75. In either case, winning the season series against a non-Rockies division opponent is definitely a decent accomplishment. The Giants haven’t done that since 2021, when they won all four season series against division opponents.
Series details
Who: San Diego Padres vs. San Francisco Giants
Where: Oracle Park, San Francisco, California
When: Friday (7:15pm PT), Saturday (6:05pm PT), Sunday (1:05pm PT)
National broadcasts: None.
Projected starters
Friday: Dylan Cease vs. Logan Webb
Saturday: Joe Musgrove vs. Mason Black
Sunday: Martín Pérez vs. Landen Roupp
Where they stand
Padres, 82-65 (2nd in NLWC), 699 RS / 628 RA | Last 10 games: 5-5
Giants, 72-75 (4th in NLW, -8.5 WC), 630 RS / 645 RA | Last 10 games: 4-6
Padres to watch
Manny Machado: You know, the Padres have been in a bit of a slump over the past few weeks. Sure, they’ve won two-thirds of their game here in the second half, but they’re just 10-10 over their last 20 and have lost 4 of 6. Machado, though, has taken off. Over this same span, he’s 24-for-78 with 6 home runs and 3 doubles and 8 walks against only 12 strikeouts. Good enough for a triple slash of .308/.372/.577.
He had a 2-homer game against the Giants in the Padres’ sole win last weekend in San Diego, and he’s a player I often forget about just in terms of his constancy. He’s just always there, always good, and even when he’s not so good, he’s usually a big threat. But I’m remedying that omission from last week here. In 98 career games against the Giants he’s hitting .295/.353/.519 with 18 home runs. That’s as many as he’s hit against the Rockies (but in 105 games) and he’s only hit more against the Red Sox (19), Yankees (22) and Dodgers (23). At Oracle Park (52 games): .296/.350/.481 with 5 home runs. He really hates the Giants!
Luis Arraez: Somehow, he’s played just 3 games at Oracle Park (he went 4-for-9 last season with the Marlins). In 14 career games against the Giants, he’s 21-for-58 with only 2 extra base hits (both doubles) and the Giants have yet to strike him out (3 walks allowed). Please, Giants, don’t walk anybody around him.
Dylan Cease: Oracle Park seems like a perfect fit for his tremendous talents. In 2 career starts (this year with San Diego and in 2022 with the White Sox) he has a 2.45 ERA in 11 IP with 11 strikeouts against 5 walks. If Frankie Montas could lock up the Giants’ lineup, I’d imagine he’ll have no trouble, even if the Giants got to him pretty easily last weekend.
Well, unless the Padres are in the choke phase of their season. They were the team I identified as being most likely to weaken down the stretch to allow the Giants to get back into the playoff race. As mentioned, 10-10 over their last 20. The Giants? 8-12. Imagine if the Giants were actually a good team! This series might’ve mattered a lot!
Giants to watch
The starting pitchers: I annoyed myself (and some readers) when I failed to spotlight Blake Snell & Hayden Birdson in the last series preview who had big starts against the Brewers. Could Snell bounce back from his awful start previously? Yes, he could. He looked good. Hayden Birdsong was trying to wind down his season on a strong note and he certainly did. I think Birdsong has shot way ahead of Harrison in terms of excitement level, but a rotation of Webb-Ray-Birdsong-Hicks-Harrison/Black/Roupp is even more exciting. If they re-sign Blake Snell, then I think it rises firmly into “formidable.”
But for this series, Logan Webb is looking to come back from a pair of starts I thought were pretty pedestrian if not bad. The 10 hits he allowed to the Padres didn’t really make it seem like he was an ace and before that the Marlins were able to square him up pretty easily. Despite nearly pulling a Team America on the mound at the All-Star Game, he came out of the break pretty good: a 2.23 ERA (2.83 FIP) in 6 starts (40.1 IP). He’s allowed 15 runs (all earned) in his 4 most recent starts (25 IP), including 3 home runs. That’s a 5.40 ERA in 25 IP (3.97 FIP) — but this quartet of starts includes his 8-inning, 2-runs allowed appearance against the White Sox! He’s been rough his past three starts and we might be at the point where the Bob Melvin & Bryan Price braintrust’s plan to run Webb into the ground is starting to show its flaws. Or maybe not! We’ll see.
Mason Black will be making his 3rd start since the Giants called him back up and even though the Padres knocked him around last weekend, he’s certainly been a bit better in this call-up than he was in May. He’s trying to get back on track as being the young arm who stepped up to fill a rotation spot, the role Hayden Birdsong wound up stealing right out from under him.
Landen Roupp probably won’t be a starter next season — maybe like a Jakob Junis-type — but then again, maybe he could pitch his way into consideration? He looked really good in 68 pitches the other night and wrangling a tough lineup could be the next big plus to add to an increasingly interesting resume.
Patrick Bailey: The “it’s so over/we’re back” meme is funny to me in a lot of circumstances but not in the case of Patrick Bailey, whose bat has been so dead that not even a necromancer would take the case. It hasn’t felt like “we’re back” could ever be an option.
Or…
Well…
Since September 1st, he’s 8-for-26 with a couple of walks. He’s even got two doubles in there. A .308/.357/.385 slash isn’t amazing, but it’s a sign of life. Sustainable or just a 10-game sample that’s utterly meaningless? That’s why you’ve gotta watch.
Jerar Encarnación: He has a .481 slugging percentage in his 24 games (84 PA) with the Giants. Small sample and all that, sure, but a .481 slug — and even his .791 OPS — stands out to me because, well, the Giants stink on offense. It’s right to think little of a baseball player who holds a baseball bat while wearing a Giants uniform. It’s an unsexy and unproductive combination, usually. And to really prove my point here, since 2019, the Giants have had just four players with a slugging percentage above .480 (min. 80 PA), and Encarnacion is one of those. The list:
- Tyler Fitzgerald, 328 PA — .523
- Stephen Vogt, 290 PA — .490
- Alex Dickerson, 653 PA — .489
- Jerar Encarnacion, 84 PA — .481
The rest of the top 10 is unsurprising but still a bummer: Joc Pederson (.470), Brandon Belt (.465), Grant McCray (.463), Mike Yastrzemski (.458), Matt Chapman (.453), Pablo Sandoval (.452). Just for context. The Dodgers have had 13 players with .480 or better slugging percentages (min 80 PA) since 2019; the Padres 9, and the Diamondbacks 7.
So, he hits the ball hard and gets results, a combination that few Giants hitters have had since the beginning of the franchise’s next gen era. Unfortunately, he doesn’t walk much, which might make him expendable in the offseason. Folks, I’m here to tell you that the team isn’t good enough to deem a player like Jerar Encarnación expendable.
Prediction time