The San Francisco Giants won’t make the postseason in 2025 and if you doubt my assertion, consider that there has been just one team in the last 50 years to go on a 10-game winning streak to end the regular season: the 2013 Cleveland squad. That run brought them to 92-70, and secured a Wild Card berth. 86 wins is the maximum number of wins available to the Giants the rest of the way, and with three teams in front of them (the Mets, the Dbacks, and the Reds), it stands to reason that they’ll all 10,
especially when you consider that those three teams all hold the tiebreaker over the Giants — for the moment, anyway. The Reds’ final 10 games are all intradivision.
While it’s true that the Mets have collapsed (16-27 since August 1st), Arizona has been ascendant (26-18 over that same span). 23 teams in the last 50 years have gone 9-1 in their final 10 games, 88 have gone 8-2, and 162 managed 7-3. Arizona does have a tough schedule to end the season. Their 9-game homestand that began with the Giants continues this weekend hosting the Phillies before the Dodgers come into town for 3. They close the season in San Diego. The host the Padres this afternoon and then the Nationals this weekend before ending the season on the road, with 3 in Wrigley Field against a Cubs team that’s already clinched and then the final 3 in Miami to take on the Marlins. The Mets really only need to
The Giants, of course, play the Dodgers for the next four games, and I think that’s sufficient evidence that the Giants will not run the table. Even if they managed a split, they’d have to win out to wind up with 84 wins, which seems like it’d only really help them pass the Mets if the Mets go 5-5 to end the season. But it’s still counting on three teams to play sub-.500 ball on top of the Giants winning 80+% of their games. It’s certainly plausible, but at the same time highly improbable.
So, on the one hand, the math and the schedule are working against the Giants, but on the other hand, they were consigned to this fate all the way back in March. Most prognosticators (including most of us here) figured this team would hover around .500, and that’s what they’ve done. There was a thought that because of their hot start (40-28 through June 11), it was actually the Matt Chapman injury that turned the season from good to bad. Indeed, after he hit the IL, the Giants went 8-14 with a team ERA of 4.72. The team might’ve rushed him back, though, because upon his return the Giants were still just 12-20 (team ERA: 4.37). So, that’s a 20-34 run while Matt Chapman dealt with a critical hand/finger injury. He hit the IL again in August, but since his return, he’s got a .903 OPS and the Giants are 15-8. So, that’s it, right? It was Chapman all along?
Not exactly.
A couple of days ago, Dan Szymborski looked at the impact IL stints have had on teams this season for FanGraphs.
which team has lost the most production to the injured list? If you ask the fans of an underperforming team, the near-unanimous answer will be “us,” but I think we can do better than that!
To get an answer for that, I took every IL stint in 2025 to estimate how much potential WAR loss there was due to the missed playing time for each injured player. It’s hard to give a precise answer in term of “injuries cost X team Y wins” because it requires a lot of alternate history, but we can at least get a general idea of how much baseball value disappeared into the aether. So please don’t quote these as actual wins lost or I will [A LEGALLY ALLOWED ACTIVITY UNDER STATE AND FEDERAL LAW].
Would it surprise you to learn that the Giants came in dead last?
According to Dan’s ZiPS, the Giants lost potentially 4.3 fWAR. In reference to the quote above, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Giants lost 4 wins overall, but when you look at it, it doesn’t not mean that, either. The top three “losers,” according to ZiPS have been Houston (17.6), Baltimore (17.0), and the Dodgers (15.2). Houston and LA become 100-win teams in that case and Baltimore jumps to 90 wins and the top of the AL East, too; but, you know what? That seems about right. It might not be the actual case when you dig in deeper (certainly, Baltimore’s pitching has been far worse than simply “too many injuries”), but it doesn’t look ridiculous. And if the Giants had 4 more wins right now… well… 80-72 makes them the third Wild Card.
It’s nice to think that that’s all the problem is, but it really isn’t that simple. Dan’s article strives to highlight his conclusion of the potential wins lost to injury.
Some of baseball’s worst teams land at the bottom here (White Sox, Nationals, Rockies), in large part because they weren’t projected to have many wins to lose in the first place.
The Giants didn’t have many projected wins to lose to injury. Simple as that. The roster didn’t have a huge gap between the floor and the ceiling. Chapman’s lost value during the time he was down didn’t help matters, but the Giants have had a three-man rotation since basically the end of July, and they traded away their two best relievers. So, the Giants maxxed out their talent. They had a slim margin for error and stayed within it, keeping a pretty healthy roster. They’ve had just 14 IL trips this season (if this list is accurate), which isn’t the fewest in the sport, but in the top third. They had good luck on the injury front. Unfortunately, their depth wasn’t deep enough, and when it comes down to a few games at the end of the season, depth means the difference.
