© Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports
With a quarter of the 2018 season in the books, it seems the Giants’ campaign has had enough storylines, mainly revolving around their constant stream of injuries, to fill a 162-game season. One can only wonder what the ensuing 120 games will bring.
At 21-21, the Giants are in third place in the National League West and 3.5 games back from the first-place Arizona Diamondbacks. San Francisco’s season has been highlighted with drastic highs and lows, and a general bout of bad luck as a massive injury bug has swept through the starting pitching staff and into the lineup.
How have the Giants done? Let’s grade their offense, starting pitching, bullpen, and defense after 42 games.
Offense
The pressure was shifted to the Giants lineup when each of San Francisco’s top three pitchers were stuck on the disabled list in mid-April.
The Giants lineup has struggled to find a real groove. They have scored 171 runs, which ranks 18th in the MLB. San Francisco’s 42 homers are the ninth-fewest, and its .717 OPS ranks 17th out of all 30 teams.
The Giants opened the season by scoring one run or fewer in 10 of their first 18 games. In the following 16 games, they averaged better than five runs per contest. Then came a six-game losing streak, which produced only 15 combined runs, before the Giants strung together 5-0 and 10-7 victories on Sunday and Monday.
One underlying deficiency: failing to knock in runners in scoring position. The Giants strand an average of 3.7 runners in scoring position per game, ranking 22th in the MLB.
The additions of Evan Longoria and Andrew McCutchen figured to infuse power into a Giants lineup that finished with 23 fewer home runs than any other team in 2017. Longoria has done that, leading the Giants with eight homers and 22 RBI. But his slash line through 43 games would be the worst of his 11-year career: .243/.268/.487. The .268 on-base percentage is what stands out. In 152 at-bats, Longoria has only four walks. If he is not producing hits, he likely is not producing quality at-bats.
He started the season on a mammoth struggle, hitting .114 with a .139 on-base percentage and one homer in his first nine games. In the next 22 games, he hit .305 with six homers and 17 RBI. And in the past 10 games, his struggles have returned, hitting .225 with one homer and .244 OBP.
Which Longoria will we continue to see?
Meanwhile, McCutchen has steadily overcome a brutal start to the season by producing a hot May. This month, he is hitting .364, raising his average .47 points already, and compiled a .453 on-base percentage. The 2013 National League MVP is starting to look like himself again.
Buster Posey leads the team with a .312 average and .379 on-base percentage. But he is slugging .440, largely a result of his loss of power. Posey has hit only two homers this season. His home run outputs have steadily decreased in each of the past four years, and he has not hit at least 20 since 2013, a startling trend to keep an eye on as the season continues.
Brandon Belt has put together the best offensive season of any Giants player. He leads the Giants with a .402 OBP, 73 total bases, and 1.03 Wins Above Replacement.
Most frustrating for Giants fans is the short-lived success of the team’s budding youngsters: Mac Williamson and Alen Hanson. We see them for a second, they blossom, and then disappear to the disabled list.
Williamson hit three homers in only 19 at-bats after being promoted from Triple-A Sacramento. But he was sent to the seven-day concussion list, then the 10-day disabled list, after colliding into the left field wall at AT&T Park. He is expected to return sometime in the next week.
Hanson was promoted to the big league club last month and produced a .298/.346/.638 line with four homers in 14 games. He was sent to the disabled list Monday with a hamstring injury.
Joe Panik will be sidelined about another four weeks with a broken thumb. Hunter Pence has not played since he suffered a sprained right thumb in mid-April.
All of these players are expected to rejoin the Giants in the not-so-distant future. Until then, the Giants lineup, riddled with inconsistency through 42 games, will need to pick up the slack.
GRADE: C
Starting pitching
How much can you expect out of a unit without two of its top three starters beginning the season on the disabled list?
Madison Bumgarner fractured a fifth metacarpal in his pitching hand during his final Spring Training start, putting him on the 60-day disabled list. Jeff Samardzija missed the start of the season with a strained pectoral. And fewer than two weeks into the season, Johnny Cueto rolled his ankle, sending him to the 10-day disabled list.
At one point in mid-April, San Francisco’s top three starting pitchers were unavailable.
The Giants had to overcome one hurdle upon the next before the season really picked up. Cueto eventually returned and produced like one of the best pitchers in the majors, compiling a 3-0 record with a 0.84 ERA and 0.69 WHIP in five starts. He strained his right elbow and was sent to the 60-day to the disabled list last week.
Samardzija has struggled mightily since he returned to the rotation. He is 1-2 with a 6.94 ERA and 1.71 WHIP overall. In his past three starts, he has produced a 8.84 ERA, allowed five homers, and walked 11 batters.
The three Giants pitchers with the most starts are: Ty Blach (4.20 ERA), Chris Stratton (4.88 ERA), and Derek Holland (4.79). Bruce Bochy has been forced to cycle rookies Andrew Suarez (4.57 ERA) and Tyler Beede (8.22 ERA) into the mix.
Collectively, the Giants pitching staff has produced a 4.39 ERA, ranked 13th out of 15 National League teams.
Can you really expect much else?
GRADE: C
Bullpen:
The Giants bullpen struggled in 2017, collectively producing a 4.34 ERA and one of the lowest strikeout rates in the majors. They added a couple new arms to the mix this year, and the results have been slightly better.
The San Francisco bullpen ranks 18th in the MLB with a 4.33 ERA. Opposing hitters have compiled a .263 average against Giants relievers, the seventh-worst mark in the league. They also have four blown saves, two from Hunter Strickland and two from Cory Gearrin.
Overall, though, Strickland has put together a solid first season as San Francisco’s full-time closer, compiling a 2.55 ERA and 1.02 WHIP. Strickland is striking out nearly four batters for every one he walks. He has only given up earned runs in four of his 18 appearances. He has eight saves.
Conversely, Gearrin has regressed from 2017, when he produced a 1.99 ERA and 1.25 WHIP. This season, he has a 3.78 ERA and 1.50 WHIP in 16.2 innings pitched. He has blown two out of his three save opportunities.
Right-hander Reyes Moronta has impressed in his first full MLB season. In 18 appearances, Moronta has a 1.42 ERA, yielding better than one strikeout per inning. The biggest concern with the hard-throwing Moronta, who tops out at 100 MPH, is his lack of command. He has walked 13 batters in 19 appearances.
The Giants acquired former Dodgers left-hander Tony Watson this offseason. The 32-year-old has produced a 2.65 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, and a team-best 10 strikeouts per nine innings in 18 appearances.
Right-hander Sam Dyson has improved from a 2017 season in which he had a 6.09 ERA and 1.77 WHIP with the Rangers and Giants. This year, Dyson has a 3.12 ERA and 1.15 WHIP through 18 appearances.
Bottomline: the Giants bullpen has been… fine. They don’t have many relievers consistently yielding strikeouts like the top bullpens in the league, but they have been serviceable.
GRADE: C+
DEFENSE:
When fully healthy, the Giants start five players with at least one Gold Glove Award, including Brandon Crawford (three Gold Gloves), Longoria (three Gold Gloves), Posey, Panik, and McCutchen. Every one of them besides McCutchen won a Gold Glove as recently as 2016. Crawford won his third straight Gold Glove in 2017, while Longoria won his third overall last season with the Tampa Bay Rays.
On paper, the Giants boast one of the most stacked defensive teams. They have not resembled that through 42 games.
The Giants have 31 errors, the third-most in the MLB. So, it should not be surprising they have the third-worst fielding percentage at .979.
Longoria already has seven errors, producing a .920 fielding percentage, which would be the worst output in his 11-year career. Longoria has botched some routine plays, via fielding miscues and errant throws to first base.
Belt has committed the team’s second-most errors with four.
While Hanson has provided hitting, he has struggled in the field. Panik committed just one error in 23 games before injuring his thumb more than two weeks ago, keeping him out a projected six weeks. Hanson replaced him and committed three errors in 15 games.
Two positives: Crawford leads all shortstops with five turned double plays. Posey has not committed an error this season.
That’s about it. As far as team statistics, it gets a bit trickier to synthesize with the complex and growing world of analytics. There are several factors that are difficult to account for, including individual factors such as range and arm strength, and team factors such as shifts and positioning. There are some useful metrics that evaluate defense with more things considered than just errors and runs allowed.
Most defensive metrics have the Giants near the bottom.
The Giants rank 20th in the MLB in defensive efficiency rating, which accounts for the percentage of balls put into play that a defense converts into outs. The Giants have actually improved in this category after finishing third-worst last year. From 2014-16, the Giants finished as a top-6 team in defensive efficiency rating.
The Giants are the seventh-worst team in Inside Edge fielding, which categorizes defensive plays based on difficulty. For example, there are six echelons (from ‘impossible’ to ‘almost certain/certain’) to encapsulate a player’s defensive productivity. (For a full breakdown of this metric, check out Fangraphs.com.)
No matter how you look at San Francisco’s defense, it has failed to live up to expectations through the first quarter of the season.
GRADE: D+
OVERALL:
A middling team deserves middling grades.
What is odd is that the Giants haven’t excelled in any category, whether offensively, defensively, or pitching. They are below average in most metrics across the board. But they have excelled in close games, winning 12 by fewer than two runs.
Ultimately, with the team’s best starting pitchers absent due to injury, young pitchers summoned to both start and relieve, inconsistent offense, and subpar defense, a 21-21 record is acceptable, if not favorable, to most.
OVERALL GRADE: C+
