The Giants offense...average?

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The Giants just wrapped up a 10 game homestand in which they went 6-4, a refreshing change after their 8-11 start. Hooray for the Giants! Hooray for winning! Accolades all around.

Well, maybe not all around.

On that homestand, the team scored 37 runs, which for you non-math people out there averages out to just 3.7 runs per game. 3.7 is not a good number of runs per game. Last year, the worst scoring offense in baseball, the A’s, scored 3.6 runs per game. The second worst scoring offense in baseball, the White Sox, scored a hair under 4 runs per game. Even the 2023 Giants, mediocre as they were, scored 4.2 runs per game. So 3.7 runs per game is bad. The question, then, is this: Is the Giants offense bad?

The answer: Eh.

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A month into the season, by nearly every statistical measure, the Giants are a slightly below average team. They are 20th in runs scored, 20th in home runs, 18th in BB%, 12th in K% (above average! Way to go!), 21st in ISO, 14th in AVG but 18th in OBP and 17th in SLG, 17th in wOBA, tied for 16th in wRC+, 16th in baserunning, and 18th in total offensive rating.

That’s a lot of numbers and whatnot to say that the Giants aren’t particularly good or egregiously bad at anything. Everything about their offense is just in the Blah Zone. As long as your pitching holds up, you can win that way, but it’s tough. And not very interesting when you’re batting, honestly.

But how are the Giants getting even as high of a wRC+ as they have? Who’s doing the heavy lifting? If you’ve been watching the games, you know: It’s mostly Patrick Bailey and LaMonte Wade Jr, with Tyler Fitzgerald doing a solid job in his comparatively few games and Michael Conforto, who’s admittedly slowed down a bit after his strong start, also notably contributing. Jorge Soler and Jung Hoo Lee have also been fine at the plate, with Lee being the more outwardly exciting player, and Soler, knowing his job, hitting some cool dingers.

Everyone else on the team has been a net minus on offense. Yes, Thairo Estrada and Nick Ahmed have been worth their spots in the starting lineup just because of their good work defensively, but each has been subpar at the plate. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be starting, but when you try to find data points telling the story that this team doesn’t score too many runs, well, they’re right there.

They’re not the only ones who have disappointed, of course. Tom Murphy and Austin Slater have both been godawful so far, and as much as he is a sweet, wonderful, prince, I should point out that Wilmer Flores hasn’t been anywhere close to what he was last year. Matt Chapman hasn’t quite found his swing yet, and Mike Yastrzemski has, but he’s going to need a lot more time to wipe out the damage he did during the first couple weeks of the season.

So that’s a lot of words to suggest that the offense is nothing special. But is that really the whole story? Will no one rid me of this troublesome array of facts that prove the Giants offense is uninteresting?

There is one thing. There is exactly one thing. The Giants are sixth in the majors in hard hit rate. 41% of the time, they hit the ball hella hard. Consequently, they’re seventh in the majors in average exit velocity. Hitting the ball hard usually leads to good results, so it’s a plus that the Giants are doing that. Now, the thing you’re supposed to do with that is have a high launch angle, which the Giants don’t, and then hopefully the stats will show that you should be getting more hits than most teams, which the stats do not show.

Overall, the Giants offense is the definition of nothing special. When you’re watching them, they feel uniquely frustrating, but it turns out that a lot of teams around baseball have offenses that are exactly as frustrating, or maybe, like, 5% less frustrating. So far, the big free agent signings to shore up the lineup haven’t been spectacular, but they also haven’t really fallen on their faces. There are a lot of players on this team who we’ve seen be good. But then, we’ve also seen the whole team be good, and so far, that’s not happening either.