It doesn't take much to be a good team. If you go 10-8 over 18 games instead of 8-10 you will be a good team. Alas, the Giants are not a good team. They showed that with tonight's 6-2 loss. At 22-32 they are not in last place (that's Colorado's domain) but they are hardly making any noise at all with a .407 win clip. That's 4th-worst in MLB.
It is one-third of the way through the season. This first game of this home Arizona series (Giants are 0-4 vs. Snakes so far) is Game 54 and that's three seasonal innings. 54 games is 1/3 of 162. If you figure the baseball season is six months long then we've burned through two already.
I've decided that the most exciting thing about 2026 is the upcoming draft (July 11-13). The Giants have the #4 pick, which is a big deal. They also have a supplemental pick, #29. That's not a big deal, but it's not nothin'. They have a chance to get another top talent.
I have a few thoughts on the draft and will post about it in the next few days.
--M.C.
p.s. FanGraphs now projects the Giants to finish 76-86, which would mean playing .500 the rest of the way. Hmmm, whaddya think?
5 comments:
even if a few hitters start getting hot, and a few pitchers actually lower their ERA's, the team is not going to make it to 76 wins at their current walk rate. You cannot sustain wins if you do not take your reasonable amount of free passes. I am not sure I believe a walk is as good as a hit, but sometimes it is, and sometimes perhaps better, but a walk is certainly better than an out, or a strike out on a swing on a pitch over a foot off the K zone. With the umps tightening up the strike zone this year, other teams seem to have adapted much better than the giants. If the umps, with the treat of the challenge this year can call pitches so much better, one has to wonder about all those horrible ball and strike calls in previous years. I would think that this system would benefit Brandon Belt, and Wade a lot, but it seems as if Wade is gone from the picture. And Belt is old and retired, but after a good season it seems as if nobody wanted him. That was last year.
ABS has certainly improved umpiring. That was happening before the challenge system--the umps were "graded" on their calls. Overall they've gotten better.
.500 never sounded so good….
I keep thinking that the ‘slow starters’ will heat up and we can play at least .500 here on out, but this team has more problems than just slow starters.
I find myself looking more and more to the trade deadline, a position I did not expect to be in when this season started! I’m curious to see how willing Buster is to blow up a team that increasingly has his finger prints on it.
Interesting piece on FanGraphs on the Giants contact-oriented hitting approach.
If it feels like the Giants are swinging more, they are, and that means more whiffs and fewer walks. The idea is to create more balls-in-play, but unless those are well-struck balls that just means more outs. The upside is that the Giants have a lot of power hitters and we are starting to see some of those effects--the batted balls are going for extra bases.
I think we have a case where the boss (Buster) wants a contact-oriented team (with power) but the guys on the team maybe aren't the best players to do that with. Making guys like Ramos and Adames swing more is probably a bad idea. Someone like Devers can rely on his power to still do damage, but the rest of the guys don't have his talent.
Schmitt is the obvious beneficiary--he's swinging more and hitting the ball harder than ever before in his career.
This is going to be a long season. But I do think the hitting will improve.
As a team, the giants are not striking out a lot, but in strategic situations, if the opposition needs a K, we seem to have the hitters that will oblige. Hard to make contact when guys swing at pitches, a foot off the plate. It is also difficult when so many hitters on this team have no clue of the strike zone, and do not know when to challenge. Teams that successfully challenge at times seem to swing the momentum of the game. I can take a bunch of mistakes as almost every team makes plenty of them, of course except against the giants. But I cannot take full counts when guys like Bader, and Adames, and even Gilbert swing at pitches either in the dirt, a foot outside, or high and inside. Same guys will take strike 3 right over the plate. It becomes maddening. No walks, low steal rate. and poor hitting with runners in scoring position. Giants can get 3 leadoff doubles or triples, and not advance the runner. Often the runner on third will be caught in a rundown, and we will end up with a runner on first instead. Ever notice when I giant hitter hits a liner right at the pitcher the ball always bounces off the pitcher in a way they still get the giants hitter out, but when the opposition hits our pitcher, the ball always bounces away from everyone. Well, almost always. The team combines very bad luck, poor situational hitting, poor base running, no walks and dropped balls in left field by a guy who should not be playing left field, with any other creative method they can use to lose a game. Teams like Tampa, The white sox, and Arizona, seem to do a good job of scoring runs with very few hits.
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