Thairo Estrada, 27, is among the most valuable second basemen in baseball and on pace for the Giants’ first 20-20 season since Hunter Pence in 2013.
Logan Webb, 26, earned his five-year extension by inducing ground balls at elite rates while elevating his performance in the biggest moments. Over the past two seasons before 2023 — years in which he claims to not have been able to properly spin his slider — he registered a 2.96 ERA and racked up the 11th most WAR of any pitcher.
Camilo Doval, 25, has 39 saves in 54 career opportunities, with a strikeout rate comfortably floating in the double digits.
The Giants have an ace, an All-Star caliber player at a premium infield position and a nasty young closer, plus a rising star in Casey Schmitt and another breakout-rookie-in-waiting with Kyle Harrison tearing up the Pacific Coast League.
Estrada. Webb. Doval. Schmitt. J.D. Davis, who’s had a tremendous two-way season so far, is only 30. Joey Bart, one of MLB’s top strike-stealers, is 26.
Building a young, productive core is the most valuable — and trickiest — feat in baseball. Through 41 games, a quarter of the season, the Giants might have found one. Yet they are 18-23, half a game better than Colorado and tied with the rebuilding Nationals. How?
The Giants, despite their emerging young core, have thus far experienced an identity crisis.
“It’s been tough,” veteran center fielder Mike Yastrzemski, 32, told KNBR.com. “It’s been a tough stretch. I think we’ve been very inconsistent. We’ve had good weeks, we’ve had bad weeks, we’ve had really good weeks and really bad weeks. I don’t think we’ve really found who we truly are yet as a group or as a unit. I think there’s a lot more that has to go through the process for us to figure that out. But I think we’re at least heading in the right direction.”
Their most recent, impressive 6-3 win over the Phillies halted a three-game losing streak. It was SF’s second three-game drought and it also dropped five in a row at one point.
The Giants have also gone on winning spurts of five and four. They’ve taken series from expected contenders Houston, St. Louis and Milwaukee. They’ve fallen to perpetual bottom-feeders in Washington, Miami, Kansas City and Detroit.
They struggle in both tight games (2-4 in one-run contests) and in blowouts (3-10 in five-run differentials).
All that is as Estrada ranks second among second basemen in WAR, Webb leads all of baseball in innings and Doval has a career-best 2.04 ERA. That’s as Schmitt has collected five multi-hit games in his first seven chances. And as mid-career players like Yastrzemski, Davis, Alex Cobb, Anthony DeSclafani, and LaMonte Wade Jr. have punched above their weight.
Those are the types of players teams sell off their assets for and rebuild for. They’re the type of players scouts, analysts and front office executives pat themselves on the back for.
But problems persist. Offensively, the Giants have struck out too much and relied too heavily on the home run. They’re third in total strikeouts and fourth in home runs while ranking 13th overall in OPS. There hasn’t been enough timely hitting to take advantage of scoring opportunities, especially when much of the lineup is plodding on the bases.
The bullpen, mostly due to abysmal results from its long relievers, has posted a 5.84 ERA — third-worst in MLB. When the Giants fall behind, even by a couple runs, the relievers let small deficits balloon.
The roster has never been whole, with Yastrzesmki, Joc Pederson, Brandon Crawford, Alex Wood, Austin Slater, Joey Bart and Mitch Haniger already spending time on the injured list.
Those micro issues all stem, one way or another, from the way the roster has been constructed.
In some ways, this club has materialized as the inverse of the 2021 club that won 107 games. That year, wily veterans had career years to prop up an overachieving cluster of young pups.
This year, at least a quarter through the season, most of the veterans have let down the plucky young’uns.
The free agent acquisition quintet of Conforto, Haniger, Taylor Rogers, Sean Manaea and Ross Stripling has combined to produce -1.7 WAR. That’s five of 26 roster spots dropping the rope instead of pulling. Conforto and Rogers have been the most valuable, scratching their way up to 0.0 WAR apiece after abysmal starts.
Games in which Manaea (7.96 ERA) and Stripling (7.14 ERA) appear in have been mostly uncompetitive. Their presence in the rotation alone has practically raised a white flag in 40% of SF’s games. SF is 12-13 in games started by Webb, Cobb and DeSclafani and 6-10 otherwise.
Then there’s Brandon Crawford, who has missed 17 games and is hitting .167 when he does play. In SF’s second game of the season, Crawford went 3-for-5 with a home run, steal, three RBI and two runs scored.
“Without Craw, we’re not going to get to where we want to be,” Cobb said after that vintage game.
Since then, Crawford, 36, has one multi-hit game and should be in danger of losing his everyday shortstop role given Schmitt’s immediate ascension.
The best teams build around their core of young, productive players by either supplanting them with veterans or continuing to build and backfill behind them so they have more help when they hit their primes. The Giants, clearly interested in winning now given their one postseason appearance in the past six years, are on the former path.
It hasn’t worked out so far. It is difficult to build through free agency. Most players who hit the market are inflated assets. Players eligible for free agency are older and therefore usually more brittle.
But then again, those players have the longest track records to evaluate, the most data attached to them to consider, and generally more talent than players still in their arbitration years.
And the current Giants’ front office has recently had success in that fashion. They added Joc Pederson and Carlos Rodón for All-Star seasons last year, plucked Kevin Gausman out of nowhere and Cobb’s three-year deal has been a steal. They’ve found diamonds in the rough while the farm system was rebooting.
The free agency-complementing flavor of roster-building isn’t defective in theory, but picking the right free agents is crucial. Now more than ever, the ones SF signed — and spent $174 million on — need to come through. Because their mid-20s players are ready to lift the roster up.
“I really think that we have the pieces,” Wood said. “We’re a good team. We’ve just got to go out there and show it.”
When friends, family or Giants fans ask me what I think about the team, the conversation usually ends with a shrug. “Not too hot, but I think they’ll be alright,” I’ll say. Or “I think they have enough talent to compete.”
Webb, Estrada, Doval and Schmitt are why I can say that. Players like Bart, Wade, Davis, Cobb and have backed that claim, too.
But Haniger, Conforto, Manaea, Stripling and Rogers have, so far, prevented anything more than they might be alright.
Yet, that group should eventually come around. Conforto, and his four home runs in the past six games, already has. The free agent signings have 75% of the season to make the front office look brighter.
The bones of a good club are there. The Giants just have to hope they’re not broken.
