Simply put: It’s not pretty.
ESPN is offering one of the most bearish outlooks on the Giants’ 2023 season, with their league-wide predictions released on Tuesday morning.
Most outlets have the Giants finishing with a better record than their 81-81, .500 finish in 2022. Fangraphs ZiPS projects the Giants to win 83.6 games, which would amount to an 84-78 record. It also gives San Francisco a 41.7% chance to reach the postseason even with the third best record in the NL West. Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA is more pessimistic. PECOTA predicts SF will finish 81-81 again, with 20.1% playoff odds. Betting markets agree with the latter model. Draftkings set SF’s win total over/under at 81.5.
Still, it’s hard to find an outlet thinking SF will be worse. But that’s what the World Wide Leader is projecting.
ESPN believes the Giants will finish with an 80-82 record. That will give them a 26% chance to make the playoffs in a highly competitive division and league. ESPN’s concern is that the Giants are a similar team, just with some different names, as they were last year. They failed to land any star players, making their margin for error small.
Here’s what ESPN says could lead to SF overcoming the paltry projection:
They win 90 games and make the playoffs. The Giants predictably fell off from their 107-win season in 2021, finishing .500. They lost Carlos Rodon and failed to land Judge or Correa. Mitch Haniger already has an oblique issue. Still, the Giants hope they can piece together a strong offense like they did in 2021 and Logan Webb leads a rotation that could be better than many expect (with rookie Kyle Harrison joining at some point).
ESPN is high on both Webb and David Villar. They believe Webb will be in the Cy Young discussion, and that Villar has a good chance to lead the team in home runs.
They’ll need those two to be excellent, and a few others, if they hope to have a winning record in 2023.
