Look, the Giants didn’t have the kind of start we’d hoped for and the numbers from the first month of the season don’t tell us anything different from what we saw/psychically absorbed. The Giants were not a good baseball team, which doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be a bad baseball team going forward. Nobody wants to root for a bad team anyway. But it’s hard not to think about that label after all that unpleasantness.
Hitting
Of course, the season began with the New York Yankees John Wicking the Giants
in Oracle Park for three games. Every facet of the Giants’ game received multiple headshots. While the Giants are 1 of 16 teams in MLB history to be shutout in the first 2 games of the season (only the 2016 Padres have been shutout in the first 3 games of a season), their place on the list stands out because they had the fewest hits (4) and total bases (5) of the bunch.
I tracked their 3-7 and 8-12 starts and compared to team history, finding mostly unfavorable comparisons with a couple of positive ones just to sustain a residue of hope. But this 13-18 start is the 12th occurrence in franchise history. Only in 3 of the 11 previous occurrences did a Giants team recover from a 13-18 start to have a winning record: 1920 (86-68), 1939 (77-74), and 2004 (91-71). It’s hard to compare pre-1960s baseball to what most of us understand about the sport today and it’s very difficult to compare Giants teams of the post-Barry Bonds era to teams that had Barry Bonds on them. But 13-18 was also the situation the 100-loss 1985 team found itself in and after a brief reprieve from the comp when the Giants were at 8-12, it’s sad to see them lined up once again.
As NBC Sports Bay Area highlighted last night, the Giants are last in runs per game (3.34), home runs (19), walk rate (5.6%), on base percentage (.289), slugging (.365), and OPS (.654). The offense has also been shutout a league-leading six times. If you’re a savvy reader, then you see the obvious stat that’s missing.
The one that caused me to gnash my teeth the other day in this post about the Giants simply giving up on working counts in order to make more contact. That team scored 91 runs through its first 31 games and slashed .217/.275/.309, so, it could be much, much worse.
That’s right. Batting average.
The Giants hit .247 in their first 31 games and, guess what, that’s 11th in MLB. So, take that, NBC Sports Bay Area! And just to really thumb our noses at those bozos (kidding!), that .247 average is the result of 259 hits, which are THE MOST hits in the first month of the season IN THE ORACLE PARK ERA! And it’s #1 by a lot. #2 on the list is the 2013 squad which had 240 hits to generate a line of .261/.318/.374.
You know, when I compare this result to the rest of the list, I think the esteemed Grant Brisbee had it right in his post yesterday: the Giants are simply not getting the hits when the count is in their favor. That’s a lot of hits with very few runs to show for it. Speaking of runs… the Giants’ league-worst 104 runs scored is 15th out of 26 seasons in the Oracle park era. The 2021 squad scored 106 in the first month of that season. The 2010 and 2012 teams scored 101 and 90, respectively, in their opening months.
A less obvious stat missing? Stolen bases. The Giants have 8. That is also last in MLB. According to FanGraphs, the team’s -3.7 Baserunning runs makes them the worst overall baserunning team in the sport through the first month of the season. After Drew Gilbert got held up yesterday, Heliot Ramos might agree.
The Giants were the third-worst team in the sport against right handed pitching (82 wRC+) behind just the Mets (80) and Red Sox (79). That’s remarkable because all three basically feature 5 prominent left-handed hitters each.
Individual highlights & lowlights
Rafael Devers: .207/.248/.289, 2 home runs, 5.4 BB%, 31 K%. Definitely the worst start to a season he’s ever had, but was it the worst month he’s ever had in his career? According to Stathead… no! That .537 OPS just barely edges out July 2020 (.536) and is comfortably ahead of August 2022 (.515) and September 2024 (.496). The only other time he’s had 40 strikeouts in a month, though? Ahem. Last April, when he struck out 40 times (27.2%) but walked 24 times (16.3%). He also had 5 home runs and 10 doubles (plus 19 RBI). A .787 OPS. Is Devers toast, though? April was not encouraging.
Willy Adames: .197/.240/.352, a .593 OPS, which is how his 2025 season started (.208/.292/.300 — .592 OPS). He also struck out 40 times, though, and that’s only the second time he’s hit that number in a month. The first time was in September 2022, but like Devers’ other 40-K example, Adames hit .263/.319/.451 with 5 homers and 21 RBI. He also walked 11 times compared to just 6 this past month.
Luis Arraez & Jung Hoo Lee: They lead the team in hits (36 & 33, respectively) and they’re having surprisingly great seasons so far. Arraez iws basically hitting as advertised, but it’s his defense that’s elevated him from a nice player to a borderline great one. Jung Hoo Lee has hit the ground running to the point that I think he’s one of the most important Giants going forward.
Patrick Bailey: He hit .288/.321/.493 (.814 OPS) in 78 plate appearances last September, but remove that month and he’s hitting .198/.259/.271 over his last 455 plate appearances.
Pitching
I don’t think the Giants expected to have a less valuable pitching staff than the Colorado Rockies, but that’s the situation right now (1.9 fWAR to Colorado’s 2.3). They have 3 of the 20 worst starters in the sport right now, including the 3rd and 4th worst:
- Matthew Liberatore (STL): -0.4 fWAR in 30.1 IP
2. Jameson Taillon (CHC): -0.2 fWAR in 34.2 IP
3. Adrian Houser (SF): -0.2 fWAR in 30.1 IP
4. Tyler Mahle (SF): -0.2 fWAR In 30.2 IP
20. Robbie Ray (SF): +0.3 fWAR in 33.1 IP
Meanwhile, only Ryan Borucki (-0.2 fWAR), Matt Gage (-0.1) and Jose Butto (-0.2) have been drags on the relief corps. Erik Miller (+0.3 fWAR, 1.72 FIP) and Keaton Winn (+0.3 fWAR, 2.26 FIP) are the standouts, but neither cracks the top 30 in the sport — yet. Ryan Walker’s performance yesterday dropped him down to a replacement-level player still in positive value. Speaking of…
Individual highlights & lowlights
Ryan Walker: He threw 9 consecutive sinkers to Bryson Stott in the Game 1 loss of yesterday’s doubleheader and wound up throwing 20 sinkers overall out of 21 pitches in the appearance. 68.3% of Walker’s pitches this season have been sinkers and all of that work has amounted to +1 Run Value, according to Statcast. Run Value is derived from outcomes so it’s a situational stat unlike, say, velocity and spin. In those cases, although his sinker spin rate is the same, its velocity is down a half mile per hour compared to last season and his slider has lost about 100 rpm.
Logan Webb: He’s 4th in innings pitched with 44 which is good to see, but his 3.45 FIP is a significant incrase over the last several years. From 2021-2025 it was 2.90. It’s 3.45 in 7 starts. That’s not a terrible figure, but when combined with the precipitous drop in strikeouts (7.77 K/9) — remember, last year was a standout strikeout year for him with a 9.74 K/9 and an NL-leading 224 punchouts — and big leap in walks allowed (3.07 BB/9, up from 2.0 last year and 2.2 the year prior) it’s not cause for alarm, but certainly some concern and worth monitoring.
Landen Roupp: He might be having the same age-27 breakout as Casey Schmitt. His K/9 of 9.42 is up from 8.61 last season. Walks are holding steady (3.57 vs. 3.8 last year), and he’s allowed just 1 home run in 6 starts (35.1 IP). Oh, and his groundball rate is up nearly 10%. He is a top-25 pitcher right now and has the same value (+0.9 fWAR) as big ticket free agent Framber Valdez, the rudely dismissed Kevin Gausman, and the veteran Jacob deGrom. Great company!
Fielding
Perfectly balanced with 0 Outs Above Average as a team. On the other hand, Luis Arraez’s +6 Outs Above Average is tied with Bryson Stott for 4th place in fielding, trailing only Pete Crow-Armstrong (+8 in CF), Bobby Witt Jr. (+8 as a SS), and Nico Hoerner at 2B (+7). That’s… astonishing? Yeah, that’s the right word for it.
The rest of the Giants aren’t doing so hot. Matt Chapman is just +1 at third base and that’s either contributing to or caused by Willy Adames’s horrendous -4 Outs Above Average. He’s the 14th-worst outfielder in the entire sport and the second-worst shortstop behind only CJ Abrams (-5 OAA).
According to FanGraphs, they’re middle of the pack overall (-0.8 Defensive Runs Above Average — 16th in MLB), and even the catching position isn’t all that great when compared to teh field. Patrick Bailey and Daniel Susac and Eric Haase are a +3.6 Def, good enough for just 10th in MLB. For reference: the Mariners lead with +6.8.
Still, catcher, second base, and third base (+2.3) have been above average. It’s first base (-3.6), shortstop (-1.4), left field (-2.0), center (-1.1), and right (-2.3) where the team is in the bottom third of the league. That’s, uh, a lot of mediocre-to-bad defense.
So, it was a bad month. The question is, will it be the month that defines the team?
