Despite yesterday’s encouraging win, the Giants aren’t off to a good start this season. Through 13 games, they’re 5-8, they’ve been outscored by more than one run per game, and multiple key players seem to have forgotten what baseball is and why one would play it.
But! 13 games is not that many games, and they don’t have to determine the entire course of a season. But but! Sometimes you can tell something from the first bit of it, and it could be that the Giants have exactly the record they’ve earned. So which is it? Is this just a slow start for a good team, or is it a harbinger of things to come? Let’s see if we can figure it out.
We’ll start with the offense. Through 13 games, the Giants have scored 53 runs, just over 4 per game. This is by no means the worst mark in the NL — most of the NL East is worse, as are the Rockies and the Cardinals — but it’s also not good. While the Giants have had a few overperformers like Michael Conforto, LaMonte Wade Jr, and Patrick Bailey, the rest of the lineup has largely fallen flat. Is this how they’ve performed this year or are they getting unlucky?
Unfortunately, it seems like in most cases, the players’ numbers reflect how they’ve actually hit. Sure, Matt Chapman is underperforming his xwOBA by a fair amount, and Jung Hoo Lee should have a wOBA in the low .300 range, but those are nitpicks. The reason Thairo Estrada and Mike Yastrzemski have bad numbers is that they deserve them. Austin Slater and Tom Murphy haven’t gotten a ton of playing time, but when they’ve gotten in there they’ve made the least of it.
So what’s the team doing wrong? It’s an interesting question, because as a whole, they’re doing fine on everything. The only highlight on their team batting Statcast page is on average exit velocity, which is higher than most teams in the league. Otherwise, they’re in the normal range everywhere. Sure, they’re below average in wOBA, the Everything Stat, but their xwOBA is middle of the pack, showing that just in terms of what they can control, they’re as okay as it gets.
But that means there is still room for improvement. Lee is hitting way too many ground balls, and while speed is his game, it doesn’t really help if he’s thrown out before he even gets to first base. Yastrzemski simply isn’t hitting the ball hard enough — he doesn’t even have a barrel yet this year — and that’s no way to succeed in the majors. Estrada isn’t walking and is striking out almost a third of the time, and then combining those two factors with his own problems hitting the ball hard, and you get an extremely poor offensive player.
Can they fix it? I mean, I don’t know. Maybe? For all the improvement that we could hope for out of those three guys, we should remember that the players who have already impressed this year will come down to Earth a bit. Wade isn’t going to sustain a .550 BABIP all season, nor is Bailey likely to maintain his .389 BABIP. When those return to normal, one presumes that Matt Chapman’s .194 BABIP is due for some regression as well, and hopefully he (along with the other currently scuffling Giants) will soften that blow, but nothing is guaranteed.
As for the pitching, which had been a strength of the Giants over the last few years, it’s been even uglier than the offense. The Giants are allowing 5.2 runs per game, with only the Rockies and Marlins being worse in the NL. They have had one bright spot: Jordan Hicks, who threw a great game yesterday, has been a fantastic addition to the rotation. Ryan Walker has been excellent, and Landon Roupp and Taylor Rogers have both been solid out of the bullpen.
Otherwise, though, it’s been real ugly. I’m not worried about Logan Webb in the long term, because he’s running into a lot of bad batted ball luck, and Blake Snell’s single start doesn’t really give us too much information about him. Camilo Doval will also likely settle down. But that’s it for the players I think I shouldn’t be negative about. All of the rest of them — and that’s half the pitching staff — are just chucking red flag after red flag at your face to get you to believe that they are not that good.
Keaton Winn? Not striking anyone out. Nick Avila? Giving up tons of hard contact. Kyle Harrison? Dinger prone. Kai-Wei Teng? Way too many walks. Tyler Rogers? Clearly gonna be a Bad Tyler Rogers Year. Erik Miller? You’ve watched Erik Miller pitch, right? That. All of that is the red flag.
You just can’t build a pitching staff like that and expect to win. This could be a roster construction issue or it could be a coaching issue, but either way, it’s an issue. And that’s without even touching on the guys I put in the They’ll Be Fine bucket earlier, many of whom are also not throwing the ball that well. Like, yes, I believe that Logan Webb will have a good season, but his xwOBA numbers (.372, and .440 on contact, which isn’t ideal for a groundball pitcher who doesn’t try to strike everyone out) are scary.
So the good news and the bad news is that there is both good news and bad news. The offense should get better, I think, and be fine. I mean, you can’t go 1 for 11 with runners in scoring position every game. The pitching, though, is another story. They might be waiting on Alex Cobb and Robbie Ray to really improve, which means they’ll be waiting for a while.
There must be something in that dugout, like the sewer gas in the Coliseum, that seeps into the bats.
Guys show up, and lose their juju. A drab cloud, dragging down their energy, like warm-up weights around their ankles.
I'm about as big a Yaz fan as you'll find easy of the Rockies that doesn't share some DNA with him but yikes his at-bats look wrong. Where is the dude that was pulling 425-footers to right field and what can we do to get him back?
Estrada meanwhile is an even bigger mystery to me. I have to believe he will get his mojo back but right now he looks like he's pressing way too hard. That strike-out rate is giving "panicky doofus" in a way that's not befitting this guys ability.
In short, Take Bob Melvin to a farm ( Sacramento?) upstate