The Bronx Bombers visit the Mission Rock Mashers.
I wake up most mornings wondering if the San Francisco Giants are actually good. It’s hard to know, but after taking two of three from the Philadelphia Phillies, a team I’m confident the Giants are not better than (overall), I have the sense that I can’t outright dismiss them. For years and years it was really easy to measure one’s favorite team against the very best in the business: the New York Yankees. But times change and the Yankees aren’t so much the standard anymore so much as the Kleenex of being a great team.
So, it’s really annoying to see that the Yankees aren’t coasting on name recognition; they’re actually great this season. And to add to that annoyance are two scoops of unfairness: Aaron Judge and Juan Soto.
For Giants fans, it’s unfair that Aaron Judge’s management team expertly used San Francisco as a stalking horse to get a 9-year, $360 million deal from the Yankees. He should be struggling to hit 25 home runs at Oracle Park each season for the rest of his career, and not already at 18 through 58 games in 2024. He gets to play in front of friends and family, though, so good for him, I guess…
It’s a big weekend for Aaron Judge, who will play in San Francisco for the first time in his career. Judge said he will have lots of friends and family on hand for the series. (The Yankees visited SF in 2019, but Judge was out with an oblique injury.)
— Bryan Hoch ⚾️ (@BryanHoch) May 31, 2024
For Baseball, it’s unfair that the Yankees didn’t have to give up their entire farm to get 25-year old Juan Soto, even if he’ll be a free agent this offseason. The masher has mashed to the tune of .312/.415/.584 (.999 OPS) with 15 home runs, 11 doubles, and a pair of triples. He’s also walked 40 times while striking out just 42 times. His current 181 OPS+ would be the second-best of his career, following his 217 OPS+ season in… 2020. So, if you toss out that irregularity, he’s on track to have his best season so far — with the Damn Yankees.
For me, the cherry on top of this competitive imbalance between the Giants and Yankees is Brian Sabean. Sure, sure, the Giants made the smartest man in the history of professional sports their President of Baseball Operations which automatically makes him the greatest executive the Giants have ever had, but the ornery and perpetually aggrieved Brian Sabean was the dude who actually put together a championship team after Barry Bonds left.
I have no idea what he does for the Yankees as an “executive advisor” to GM Brian Cashman, but I’m inclined to give him a bit of credit for this somewhat surprising Yankees team. Did he advise on which prospects they could give up to get Soto from the Padres? Did he introduce the team to certain technologies — such as AI — to regain the competitive edge they seemed to lose during last year’s 82-80 season?
That team is notably, but not dramatically, different from this year’s team, and this year’s team hasn’t had any innings from the AL Cy Young, Gerritt Cole. Then again, one-time Giant Carlos Rodon has gone from a bum (6.85 ERA / 5.79 FIP in 2023) to a star (3.09 ERA / 4.37 FIP) and, like I said, Juan Soto is a Yankee.
Since I was so blinded by the Phillies superiority that I failed to note that they’d actually been bad in Oracle Park for many years, I will make it a point to mention that the Yankees are 4-2 at Oracle Park — 12-6 against the Giants in the lifetime regular season series (19-23-1 in the World Series, which doesn’t look as bad until you realize that the Giants have lost 5 of the 7 meetings) — and 21-11 on the road this season.
The Yankees have the best run differential (+97), best offense (122 wRC+ – tied with Dodgers), best defense per FanGraphs (+11.3 Defensive Runs Above Average), and best team ERA (2.80) in MLB. Soto (3.5 fWAR), Judge (3.3), and Anthony Volpe (2.7) are 3 of the 10 best position players in MLB right now (again, by fWAR).
So, when I compare the Giants to the Yankees, I come away thinking the Giants aren’t good. When I consider this Sam Miller tweet from yesterday:
There are only six good teams. I’ve never seen anything like it.
— Sam Miller (@SamMillerBB) May 30, 2024
I cannot fathom a scenario where the Giants make it onto that list or disprove it entirely. I’m not sure it’s totally right, either, as — just going by record — I count these division leaders as good: Dodgers, Phillies, Brewers, Yankees, Guardians. Atlanta (31-23) losing Acuna perhaps knocks them out of consideration, but there are still the Orioles (35-19) and Royals (35-23) vying for 6th position. In any case, it’s tough to see the Giants in that bunch; and, if you do a long list out to 10, that folds in the Twins (31-25), leaving the Mariners (31-27) and eight teams hovering around .500 (Giants, Padres, Cardinals, Cubs, Red Sox, Rays, Tigers, Rangers) battling for the 10th spot.
I concluded the Phillies series preview post with this:
The Giants, who have been just fine at home (15-10), will have their work cut out for them against Philadelphia. Being swept again seems unlikely, but even if it happens, it doesn’t necessarily prove anything about the Giants and their current state. No matter what, they’re nowhere close to as good as the Phillies.
It’s still the case that no matter what the result, it doesn’t prove anything about the current state of the Giants. But if they somehow take it to the Yankees as they did the Phillies, it will be unequivocally great for the Giants’ confidence. We know the Giants don’t have the firepower that the Yankees do, but Luis Matos and Heliot Ramos seem like they have the juice. And the Giants didn’t have Patrick Bailey on the roster when they opened up the season in Yankee Stadium last year.
The pitching matchups are a series of mirrors: Jordan Hicks & Marcus Stroman are both groundball pitchers striking out about 7.5 per 9. Cody Poteet’s profile is basically Logan Webb’s (sinker-slider), and well, Nestor Cortes is a craft lefty while Blake Snell is a power lefty — but they’re both lefties!
Anyway, figuring out if the Giants are good at all is the first step in determining if there are any teams they’re better than.
Series details
Who: New York Yankees vs. San Francisco Giants
Where: Oracle Park, San Francisco, California
When: Friday (7:15pm PT), Saturday (7:05pm PT), Sunday (1:05pm PT)
National broadcasts: MLB Network simulcast (Saturday)
Projected starters
Friday: Marcus Stroman vs. Jordan Hicks
Saturday: Cody Poteet vs. Logan Webb
Sunday: Nestor Cortes vs. Blake Snell
Where they stand
Yankees, 39-19 (1st in AL East), 279 RS / 182 RA | Last 10 games: 6-4
Giants, 29-28 (2nd in NL West), 247 RS / 266 RA | Last 10 games: 7-3
Yankees to watch
Trent Grisham: Forever an enemy of mine and to all right-thinking Giants fans, the former Padre included in the Juan Soto trade has played sparingly on account of him being a really bad hitter. Since the start of 2022, he’s hit .186/.297/.339 in 325 games (1,124 PA). He’s just 2-for-36 with the Yankees (20 games) and has made just four starts in the month of May, a month in which he’s gone 0-for-14 (17 PA) with 2 walks against 8 strikeouts and a HBP. But against the Giants? He’s a .270 hitter, with 5 career home runs against them in 55 games (208 PA). At Oracle, he’s a bit more modest: .226/.276/.443 but with 4 home runs. A reasonable person could make the unreasonable-sounding argument that if it were not for the Giants, he would not have a major league career.
Giancarlo Stanton: While the slugger wasn’t the first quasi-free agent to spurn the team, he was the one to popularize it after rejecting Bobby Evans’ overtures following the 2017 season (they would’ve needed to trade for him, but because he had a no-trade clause the setup was more like a free agent negotiation than a strict trade), and it’s one of those times when the team did perhaps dodge a bullet. From 2018-2022, he was a productive hitter (.839 OPS) but injured (448 games out of 708 possible). Last year, he was a .191 hitter in 101 games, though he did hit 24 home runs. In his age-34 season, he’s rebounded to a .225/.275/.471 hitter with 13 home runs already, but basically a 6:1 strikeouts (64) to walk (13). I barely paid attention to the recent Statcast addition of bat speed, but Stanton was a name that stodd out. As David Adler wrote for MLB.com earlier in the month:
Stanton stands alone when it comes to bat speed. He’s the only hitter with an average swing speed over 80 mph. His 80.6 mph bat speed is nearly 9 mph faster than the MLB average bat speed, 72 mph, and nearly 6 mph faster than Statcast’s “fast swing” threshold, 75 mph, which is the point where hitters really start to do damage if they square the ball up.
DJ LeMahieu: Just activated. An incredible career as a Giants killer, rivaling Grisham’s. In 111 career games (443 PA), he’s slashing .316/.373/.495 (.842) with 10 home runs, 20 doubles, a triple, and 25 walks against 50 strikeouts. He’s done better against four other teams: .868 OPS against the Blue Jays (75 games), .974 versus the Nats (44), 1.060 in 23 career PAs against the Yankees, and an 1.154 OPS in 28 PAs against his original team, the Rockies. Oracle Park has been a second homefield for him. In 52 career games (212 PA): .332/.400/.429. He has a career .836 OPS in his original home, Coors Field, and currently an .840 OPS at Yankee Stadium. I don’t loathe him the same way I do Grisham, but I should.
Giants to watch
Patrick Bailey: They’re not a big stolen base threat, but if the Giants’ pitching can frustrate the Yankees’ sluggers, you might see Aaron Boone run a bit, in which case he’ll be treated to Patrick Bailey’s arm. I also want to see how this player the Giants didn’t have in the team’s meeting last Opening Day does against this formidable opponent. He’s been great at surprising and embarrassing the Mets — is he just a thorn in the side of New York?
Camilo Doval: In the event of a late lead, it’ll be important to see if the Giants’ presumptive All-Star closer can shut down an All-Star lineup. We’ll deal with the issue of Bob Melvin overusing him later in the summer when it could be a bigger issue.
Thairo Estrada: His Yankees era was a long time ago now, and he’s put together a great career with the Giants in 3+ seasons. He’s even hitting in the middle of the lineup right now and has 8 home runs. Does he still have a taste for vengeance against his former team?
Jorge Soler: Andrew Baggarly posted this after Wednesday’s game:
Interesting suggestion from a comment under today’s story. It would make for a potentially powerful moment if Giants fans actually got together to pull this off. pic.twitter.com/wsxToaoWWE
— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) May 30, 2024
Nine days ago I wrote about my concerns regarding Soler, but concluded that he’ll eventually come around and be a productive bat. He had a .653 OPS before that post and has a .575 OPS since and is slugging just .354 on the season, so, uh… any day now, Soler. Annnnny day.