If the Giants improve this one ability will they radically transform their offense?

Statcast is by no means the be-all end-all when it comes to analysis and there’s probably no way to rescue the Giants’ offense, but let’s take a look anyway.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put the San Francisco Giants’ lineup together again. Maybe it’s Oracle Park, maybe it’s the City of San Francisco itself, but for whatever reason, the team simply cannot muster much power. But what if they could? How much more would make a difference? Let’s use Statcast to examine the possibilities.

I’m focusing on their barrels per plate appearance stat rather than per batted ball events (BBE) or average exit velocity or even something as simple as Hard Hit rate because a plate appearance can round up to cumulative offensive value a la weighted runs created plus (wRC+), which I’m also using for this exercise. Here’s a look at the top 51 qualified players last year in barrels per plate appearance with their corresponding wRC+:

On this list you’ll find just 6 out of 51 below league average of 100, and 5 of those 6 were either injury guys (Stanton, Buxton, and Seth Brown) or catchers (Alvarez, Langeliers) while Michael Taylor was basically league average (96 wRC+). I’m really very bad at math but I did put the barrel/PA rate and wRC+ into a correlation coefficient calculator and got r=0.6127 which between that and the backgrounds of the six players below 100 wRC+ makes me feel confident enough to say that you can pretty easily see the connection between hitting the ball hard and being a generally positive contributor to an offense.

Now, I’m not saying this is the list of the best players or even that players who dip below what looks to be about 8% barrels per PA are bad hitters — indeed, the list of sub-8% includes the likes of Kyle Tucker, Bryan Reynolds, Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., Paul Goldschmidt, J.T. Realmuto, Brandon Belt, Francisco Lindor, Eloy Jimenez, Chas McCormick, Carlos Correa, Christian Yelich, and more — but when you see that the only Giant in the top 50 was Joc Pederson — at 51 — then you can see why their offense stunk last year.

I had to make sure a Giant even appeared on the list and, thankfully, Joc Pederson was 51st; but, the full Giants list is as depressing as that fact. If I set the limit to the second-lowest filter on Statcast (25 BBE), then here’s what we get for Brls/PA%:

1. Heliot Ramos (36 BBE), 8.3%
2. David Villar (80 BBE), 7.9%
3. Joc Pederson (272 BBE), 7.8%
4. Austin Slater (127 BBE), 7.2%
5. Mitch Haniger (147 BBE), 7.0%

According to the color coding of Statcast, 6% was considered the league average. Just seven more Giants met or stayed above that line:

Brandon Crawford, 6.6%
Patrick Bailey, 6.5%
Blake Sabol, 6.4%
LaMonte Wade Jr., 6%
Mike Yastrzemski, 6%
Wilmer Flores, 5.9%
J.D. Davis, 5.9%

And for the completionists out there, here’s the rest of the list:

Michael Conforto, 5.1%
AJ Pollock, 4.9%
Casey Schmitt, 4.7%
Brett Wisely, 4.6%
Paul DeJong, 4.3%
Joey Bart, 4.2%
Bryce Johnson, 4.2%
Thairo Estrada, 3.4%
Luis Matos, 1.6%
Mark Mathias, 0.0%
Wade Meckler, 0.0%

Now, the Giants could, in theory, simply hit the ball harder this year. Luis Matos bulked up, after all —

— and with Pat the Bat and the rest of the Humm Baby coaching staff, a return to the ways of yore might be just what the doctor ordered! But given the history of Baseball, I think we’d all agree that it’s simpler to bring in better hitters.

You’ll note that Jorge Soler is already on that big board from last season. Matt Chapman, too. If you filter the list from Barrels per PA to simple Hard Hit % then Matt Chapman jumps to #2 on the list behind Aaron Judge. This is the same situation as last season when J.D. Davis wound up being #3 in that stat in MLB (and #1 in the NL). You add him with Soler and you’ve basically improved upon Pederson and Haniger from last season.

Now I will crudely average out last year’s rate to simplify this down to one number. The top 23 Giants (with at least 25 batted ball events) averaged 5.2% barrels per plate appearance. Have they improved upon that with their offseason moves? Here’s the current lineup:

C – Bailey (6.5%), Tom Murphy (9.4%)
1B – Wade Jr./Flores (6%)
2B – Estrada (3.4%)
3B – Davis (6%)
SS – Luciano (TBD)
LF – Conforto (5%), Matos (1.6%)
CF – Lee (TBD)
RF – Yastrzemski (6%)
DH – Soler (9.5%)

Bench – Ramos (8.3%), Villar (7.9%), Slater (7.2%), Sabol (6.4%), Schmitt (4.7%), Wisely (4.6%), Bart (4.2%), Fitzgerald (2.9%)

For the purposes of this exercise, let’s imagine Luis Matos jumping from 1.6% to 5%. Sure you might want to give him a bigger jump because of that home run video, but let’s be modest with the projection. Even if we all assume Jung Hoo Lee hits like Luis Arraez right away, Luis Arraez’s barrels per plate appearance was still just 3.1% last season. So we’ll go with that as a projected rate for Lee. As for Marco Luciano? Well, he had no barreled balls last season in his brief time up, but he did have an average exit velocity of 93 mph in 22 batted ball events. In that cluster of players from the list of 51, Royals catcher MJ Melendez had a 7% Brls/PA% attached to a 93.2 mph average exit velocity, so, let’s use that for Marco.

Assuming the rest stays about the same (I’m even keeping Joey Bart in the group for the time being), this group averages out to 5.95%. Wow!

Remember up above where I showed that 6% was the league average last year? Well, the Giants have gamed out that with their pitching, all they really need to do to have a competitive team is field a league average lineup. At one point last year, based on their acquisitions, it looked like they were even willing to go as low as 10% worse than the league average (90 wRC+) — but on paper, they’ve already managed to add some players whose general ability to hit the ball harder should make the lineup better, even when it’s not firing on all cylinders, which will be most of the time, since this is the Giants.

Of course, Luciano might not hit that projection and Nick Ahmed or Tyler Fitzgerald or whoever winds up filling that role could fall down, too; Luis Matos might not build on that one video and Soler plus Murphy could simply stink — but once, again, the Giants have assembled talent that clearly improves the lineup in a specific way. At least on paper.

Now imagine if they add Matt Chapman…