RISP
The game in which you try to conquer Pamchatpa. Yes, I know this is the worst joke I have ever made.
As you may have noticed, the Giants had some trouble scoring runs last month. As you also may have noticed, they were abysmal at hitting with runners in scoring position. Let’s explore these possibly related events!
In June, the Giants, as a team, hit .349/.414/.538 with runners in scoring position, good for a 156 wRC+, by far the best mark in baseball (the Dodgers came in second, with a 135 wRC+). They did this with a 2:1 strikeout to walk ratio: they struck out 20.8% of the time and walked 9.9% of the time. They also did this with a .413 BABIP. Consequently, they had the most RBIs with RISP of any team in June with 116, 9 ahead of the second place Reds. They scored 5.3 runs per game overall.
Then July started, and folks, things went differently. With runners in scoring position, the Giants hit .180/.280/.337, good for a 63 wRC+, the third worst mark in baseball. They had a 2.5:1 strikeout to walk ratio, striking out 25% of the time and still walking 9.9%, and had a .202 BABIP. They consequently had the second fewest RBIs in those situations, ahead of only the Rays, though the Giants had 18 more plate appearances with RISP than the Rays, and only got two more runs out of the situation. Overall, they scored 3.3 runs per game.
And in case you’re wondering how June and July compared in terms of getting guys on base in the first place, they really weren’t that different. In June, the Giants had a .600 OPS with the bases empty, and in July it was .615. That’s an essentially negligible difference, though it’s a little worrying that they were so bad in both months.
If it seems like they were even worse after the All-Star Break, well, they weren’t. Post-Break, the team hit .197/.293/.318, for a wRC+ of…63! Sure, they were awful over the last four days of the month, after getting lucky enough to face the A’s. In those four days, three against the Red Sox and one against the Diamondbacks, they hit .133/.245/.133, which is notably awful, but again, just four games. They may have an outsized impact in our minds, because good lord was that frustrating — 6 for 45! They were 6 for 45! — but it was an abnormally poor showing even for a team in the middle of an abnormally poor showing.
So who was to blame? Which individual players were so bad that they dragged down the whole squad? Well, most of them, as you know since you presumably pay some attention to this. The players who performed well in July with runners in scoring position were Austin Slater (9 PAs, 290 wRC+), Blake Sabol (13 PAs, 231 wRC+), Mike Yastrzemski (21 PAs, 137 wRC+), Michael Conforto (20 PAs, 127 wRC+), and sweet, beautiful, Wilmer Flores (18 PAs, 120 wRC+).
Every other offensive player on the Giants was awful. Patrick Bailey (21 PAs, 64 wRC+) was the best of them, and you’ll notice that those numbers are actually very bad. Brett Wisely, Luis Matos, Joc Pederson, JD Davis, and Brandon Crawford were all hitting in the .100s, and no one else on the team — Thairo Estrada, Isan Diaz, Casey Schmitt, LaMonte Wade Jr, David Villar, Marco Luciano — got a single hit with runners in scoring position in July, despite those six players combining for 40 plate appearances.
The guys hitting in the .100s, by the way, a group that includes Bailey, combined for 91 plate appearances. Put all those numbers together, and every last player mentioned in the previous paragraph combined to hit .122 over 98 at bats (131 plate appearances) with runners in scoring position in July.
In his worst offensive season with the Giants, Kirk Rueter hit .138. As a Giant, he hit .165 overall. With runners in scoring position in July, the vast majority of the offense was less likely to get a hit than Kirk Rueter.
What’s the answer? The answer is, and always was, wait for it to get better. Those kinds of number simply can’t last forever. It’s a fluky sample size thing, and it always had to be; just like no one is as good as the Giants were with RISP in June, no one is as bad as they were in July. Yes, I’m sure that the coaching staff helped them make adjustments and figure out how opposing pitchers were attacking them, but anyone good enough to get to the major leagues cannot possibly be that bad as a hitter, much less that many players.
It had to turn around. So far in August, it has a little bit, with the team going 1-for-4 on Tuesday and 3-for-11 last night with runners in scoring position. When the team gets healthier, one would assume that those numbers will improve, as they give high leverage plate appearances to Thairo Estrada instead of Casey Schmitt. They’ve already improved simply by virtue of JD Davis not actually being that bad. All they have to do is hit to their talent level, and the team will be fine going forward.
Oh, and do some damage with the bases empty, you weirdos.