The Giants have returned from a 1-5 road trip looking like a team on the upswing. Sustainable?
The San Francisco Giants have played 50% of their season, and while the All-Star break is typically thought of as the halfway point, the completion of half the schedule seems like as good a time as any to review where they are to understand what kind of team this might be.
The positives
The record
Personally, I believe their 39-42 mark is bad and that the last time the team had that record as of the halfway mark was 2013, a bad season. But! I am old, and I need to understand that in the new Wild Card era, we’re not even rooting for mediocrity, we’re rooting for blind stupid luck. More fans prefer that every team gets into the postseason and the long season converted into a punchline.
That the Giants are 1 of 9 teams locked in an absurd slap fight is entertaining enough for most people. A lot of people love the Cybertruck, too.
The lineup
This is wild to type out, but the Giants’ lineup is… fine. It’s just about average. A 103 wRC+ is not inspiring, either, but it’s a better mark than Atlanta (101) and Tampa Bay (99)! This holds even in the runs scored measure. Their 355 runs scored is also not inspiring as it’s just 14th in MLB; but again, more runs scored than Atlanta (344), Texas & Cincinnati (338), and Tampa Bay (328). It’s a top 10 lineup in terms of walk rate (8.7% – 8th in MLB) and they don’t strike out worse than league average (21.5% – 15th).
The downsides are that they don’t slug very much (.140 ISO – 21st) and they refuse to take advantage of a new baserunning rules (25 stolen bases – dead last in MLB) despite a group of players who run just fine in terms of sprint speed.
The prospects
Brady spent a nice bit of time in his recap of last night’s game discussing the success of the Giants’ promotions and while I’m with him in that it’s very easy to look bad praising them after a good performance, it probably makes the most sense to look at these call-ups as the team does: if they help the team win a game, who cares what happens after?
On the one hand, we look at every prospect as a figment of the future. The Giants’ front office and coaching staff is just trying to survive the season. If the player works out, great; if not, onto the next one. There’s also the fuzziness of the term “prospect,” but when it comes to the Giants I feel I’m standing on solid ground to label any player — of any age — they call up from their farm system as a prospect.
Sure, they didn’t draft Brett Wisely (they got him from the Rays), but he played in their system a whole season after that trade and he’s looked great this season. Heliot Ramos had lost all of his prospect luster, but he definitely counts. Marco Luciano and Luis Matos have shown a lot of positives in their time(s) up — I’m not sure you could argue that those positives outnumber the negatives, but still, you see the flashes. I’ll even be generous and keep Patrick Bailey in this group. He has been a major leaguer for over a calendar year now, it’s true, but he’s the third-best hitter on the team right now, after LaMonte Wade Jr. and Heliot Ramos. Tyler Fitzgerald, Sean Hjelle, Kyle Harrison, and Hayden Birdsong have contributed, too.
The negatives
The road record
As the beloved Roger Munter pointed out earlier this week:
Giants are 22-53 over their last 75 road games, an unbelieveable .293 winning percentage covering close to a full year!
What can possibly explain such an inability to be merely competent on road over such a long stretch. Over the same time they have a .557 winning pct at home
— Roger Munter (@rog61) June 24, 2024
In absolute fairness, this year’s team has a .390 winning percentage on the road (16-25), but the point remains that the Giants are predictably losers away from Oracle Park. They’ve played about half their road games at this halfway point of the season and if the .390 pace continues they’ll wind up with 31-32 wins. Figure that Wild Card #3 probably gets in with 83-84 total wins, and that means the Giants would have to win 52-53 games at Oracle Park.
No problem! The Giants are always way better at home! You might say. Well, the Giants have won 50+ games at Oracle Park just five times in its history: 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009, 2021. They’re presently 23-17, meaning they’d need to go 29-12 or 30-11 the rest of the way. I don’t think that’s going to happen, so they’ll have to figure out a way to do better on the road.
The pitching
Well, we know why this group is in the condition that it’s in: decisions were made. And, on top of that, development isn’t linear. Their team ERA of 4.46 is 25th in MLB. In terms of pure runs allowed, their 8th-worst (383). They’re middle of the pack in strikeouts (682 – 15th) and a bit better than league average at allowing walks (251 – tied for 11th).
This was all part of the plan, though. Some version of coasting or hoping to get really lucky in the first half with a mix of Logan Webb, Kyle Harrison, Jordan Hicks, and crafty bullpenning until the reinforcements arrive in the second half. The team has exhausted every option just to get to 39-42, and so unless Robbie Ray, Alex Cobb, Blake Snell, and Kyle Harrison all return and perform at or near expectations, the second half figures to be like a lot of other seasons: a big ol’ stinky flop.
That makes it tough to evaluate the bullpen. It has looked fine to bad so far, mostly because it has been worked a lot. You’ve got your Tyler Rogers standout numbers. Taylor Rogers has been solid. Hjelle has been a nice surprise. Ryan Walker has been sturdy. I’m not alone in thinking that Spencer Howard could be a dude at the back of the rotation. But there’s also Luke Jackson, Camilo Doval’s concentration, and the unbearable weight of innings — the Giants are just 2 innings behind the Brewers for most bullpen innings pitched this season (335.2 vs. 333.2). The next three teams in the top 5: MIA (318), TB (316), OAK (314.1).
The veterans
With Matt Chapman somewhat of an exception — and I’ll even grant you that Jorge Soler might be turning things around (.804 OPS in June) — the experience the team will need as the younger players start to run out of youthful energy doesn’t seem poised to show up.
I’ll count LaMonte Wade Jr. as one of these veterans and the fact is injury is a part of his game. He might come back before the All-Star break or maybe even soon after, but there’s absolutely zero guarantee that he’ll play the rest of the season without another IL stint and it seems wholly unlikely he’ll even play totally healthy whenever he’s on the field. He’s Brandon Belt 2.0, for good or ill.
But he’s not really the issue in this section. What’s left of Mike Yastrzemski’s bat? He seemed to be heating up before getting hurt. Michael Conforto’s home run last night was very cool to see and it seems like he’s been pretty ticked off with his own performance — I think his swings have looked great in this Cubs series, so maybe he’s primed to go on another hot streak. Austin Slater (90 wRC+), Wilmer Flores (78), Thairo Estrada (85), Nick Ahmed (78) — this is all a below leaguve average soup of hitters, whose values are approaching questionable. Estrada’s defense will help him stick, but the rest? Good luck!
And that’s just in the hitting group, which is one of the team’s general positives. I don’t know what Blake Snell’s up to this season, but it doesn’t seem like it’ll involve pitching any meaningful innings for the Giants. Robbie Ray seems like he might come back on schedule, but it’s not worth assuming he’s going to do more than 4-5 innings at a time; and, his career is a bit like Snell’s in that he’s been very, every average when he hasn’t been great. Alex Cobb might come back but could get hurt again because injury is a part of his profile, too.
It’s entirely possible that the Giants could power through the rest of the summer led by Logan Webb, Jordan Hicks, Kyle Harrison, and a lineup of Ramos, Wisely, Chapman, Bailey, Matos, and Soler doing most of the damage; but, that’d be lucky. We’re already rooting for them to have luck getting into the postseason (where they would then need to have the luck of playoff randomness in order to advance).
The Giants planned their whole season around these late-season pitching returns. If those guys don’t come back and perform as expected, a Giants collapse should be expected. We can’t root for them to have luck in fielding the team that was planned so that they can get lucky with a well-timed winning streak that pushes them into the postseason so that they can get lucky in the postseason. Too much rooting for luck! The Giants simply have to be good. Enough has happened in the first half to suggest that “good” is possible.