The Giants won their first 5 games of the second half and I'm not sure how
I mean, I know how, but not, like, how it makes sense
The Giants lost to the Reds 3-2 yesterday, snapping their 7-game winning streak and ending the dream of an unbeaten second half. They just had 58 games to go! They were so close!
But I don’t want to focus on that loss. Sometimes teams lose games and that’s normal, I guess. What I want to look at is how they won. Because in those first five games after the All-Star Break, the offense was, on the whole, pretty awful. And yet, they were 5-0. Which, okay, let’s talk about it.
Per Fangraphs, the Giants had five players with positive offensive production during those five games. Five players! That’s it! Those players were Wilmer Flores (obviously), Michael Conforto, Austin Slater, Mike Yastrzemski, and LaMonte Wade Jr. Everyone else had a negative offensive value. The two guys closest to being good were Brett Wisely and Luis Matos; Wisely had a perfectly respectable .273/.385/.364 batting line (though don’t get too excited, since that came with a 46% strikeout rate and a .600 BABIP), but his poor baserunning caught up to him. Matos hit .294/.333/.294, so as long as the extra base hits start coming, he should be fine, but an OPS in the low .600s isn’t going to get it done.
Everyone else was abysmal. Joc Pederson hit .143 and walked a lot but didn’t hit for any power, Casey Schmitt hit .167 and walked less, JD Davis hit .118 and walked a ton but only hit singles, Blake Sabol (before yesterday’s homer) had one single and seven strikeouts in 10 plate appearances, Patrick Bailey struck out 41% of the time and had a wRC+ of a cool zero, and Brandon Crawford was even worse than that.
None of that is the recipe for a winning streak, and that’s even before you consider that Slater had fewer plate appearances than any other hitter, and Wade only had more than Slater and Sabol. The final tally is 81 PAs for players who were net positives and 127 PAs for players who were net negatives. That’s just no way to win.
But they did win. On the offensive side, they did it by clustering just enough hits (especially in the late innings) to get Camilo Doval into the game and eke out a close win. They did it by having a shutdown bullpen, except for a couple innings against the Pirates and most of the game on Tuesday. They did it with astonishing cluster luck and unsustainable pitching, honestly. If they’re going to keep doing it, then they have to get more contributions from most of the team.
You could very well look at the team’s post-Break record and think that everything seems fine. But the Giants have drastically overperformed their actual performance. They simply cannot keep playing the way they have been and expect to win. When you’re getting nothing from half of your lineup, it drastically ups the difficulty level on winning consistently.
The Giants are in a tough spot right now, with all the injuries to Thairo Estrada and Mitch Haniger and now Crawford and Wade and, let’s be honest here, Slater too, even if he can still technically play. They took a step back before the Break, then came back roaring and made us forget about it. But if they can’t coax more out of JD Davis, or Schmitt, or Pederson, they’re going to take another step back. Maybe a huge one. Maybe two.
Despite all the wins, the way the Giants have been playing will not lead to success in the long run. Someone will have to carry the team, because as much as Wilmer Flores will do his best to be there for you, he can’t do it alone forever.
Wow. No wonder I haven't much enjoyed that win streak.
Also: it would be nice if the giants (small 'g' right now) could hit a baseball.