The San Francisco Giants Are Defying Expectations, Again

Every time you think you have this team figured out, it adds a new twist.

Last April, I wrote about how the San Francisco Giants were staring down the specter of huge regression after the out-of-nowhere 107-win campaign they’d produced in 2021. The history of teams that made such massive year-over-year improvements — particularly ones not powered by up-and-coming young cores — suggested San Francisco would struggle to follow up with anything close to the same performance in 2022. And sure enough, the Giants fell off by 26 wins last season, one of the largest year-over-year declines in baseball history.

But that was hardly case-closed — a development that shouldn’t have been surprising when it comes to this franchise. Despite projections that unanimously called for San Francisco to fall between 76 and 83 wins again, the Giants are currently 9 games over .500 with the winning percentage of a 91-win team. They also sit in the NL’s second wild-card slot at the moment, and have a 77% chance to make the playoffs according to an average of the forecast models at FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference.

So how have the Giants been able to make rumors of their demise look greatly exaggerated? Here are five factors driving the team’s surprising first-half success.

The defense is vastly improved.

After finishing 12th in fielding runs above average¹ in 2021, last year’s Giants were dead last on defense, allowing the league’s third-highest BABIP and suffering the second-largest gap between team ERA and FIP. Among the Giants’ 12 regulars (those with at least 200 PAs), OF Mike Yastrzemski was the only one with an above-average FRAA. All of that has changed this season, however — S.F. is back up to No. 7 on defense, with six of eight primary defensive starters putting up a better FRAA mark this year than the person holding the spot last year:

It’s hard to say exactly why someone like Thairo Estrada has improved so dramatically at second base, for instance, but the Giants — who were a mediocre shifting team at best last season — seem to be benefiting from the tighter distribution of pre-pitch positioning caused by MLB banning the shift. (Which checks out; we predicted San Francisco would be one of the winners from baseball’s new rule changes.)

The offense is back on track.

Last year’s Giants were not a horrible hitting team, ranking 11th in runs per game and 14th in wRC+. But that was a step down from their form in 2021, when they had been top-six in both categories and scored 0.52 more RPG than the average team after accounting for Oracle Park’s slightly suppressive offensive environment. After that number dropped to +0.18 last season, it’s now back up to +0.54, with 8 of 12 lineup regulars posting a wRC+ above 100.

Leading the way in that department have been LaMonte Wade Jr. (147 wRC+), Joc Pederson (145), J.D. Davis (133) and Estrada (120) — none of whom were major offensive factors on the 107-win team from 2021. (Wade and Estrada each had a wRC+ above 115 that year, but neither was a primary starter, while Pederson and Davis were acquired after that season.) That, as much as anything, is a testament to the Giants’ eye for talent acquisition under the brain trust of Baseball Ops president Farhan Zaidi.

The bullpen is solid again.

One of the key weapons for that 2021 Giants team was a dominant bullpen; all eight primary relievers² with at least 24 innings had a FIP at least 5% better than league average, with six of eight posting a FIP at least 15% better than average. As a result, San Francisco’s bullpen ranked second in MLB in Win Probability Added, trailing only the hated rival Dodgers. Last year, though, the Giants’ pen dropped to 24th in WPA when much of that same relief corps struggled to replicate the same lights-out performance.

Similar to San Francisco’s defense and hitting, the bullpen weakness of 2022 has mostly corrected itself in 2023. The Giants currently rank seventh in WPA, and all but two (Jakob Junis; Sean Hjelle) of the team’s nine primary relievers have a better FIP than the league average once again. In another triumph for this front office, more than half of those above-average relief arms were brought in since the end of the 2021 season.

Logan Webb keeps the rotation anchored.

Webb’s 2021 breakout — he had 4.0 pitching Wins Above Replacement as a 24-year-old in his second full MLB season — was one of the keys to San Francisco’s abrupt improvement. That year, he ranked second on the Giants’ staff in WAR behind Kevin Gausman, who ended up leaving for the Toronto Blue Jays via free agency after the season. Then Webb’s 4.4 WAR last season ranked second on the team behind newcomer Carlos Rodón, who spent just 1 year as a Giant before also leaving via free agency for the New York Yankees.

Webb remains the constant for this staff. So far this season, he’s pitching to a very consistent 5.2-WAR pace per 162 team games, this time leading the team over Alex Cobb and his 4.4 WAR per 162. Through it all, the Giants’ rotation-wide WAR ranking has fluctuated — from fifth in 2021 to seventh in 2022 and 12th in 2023 — but it would be an outright weakness now without Webb, especially since Cobb was sent to the injured list on Sunday. Instead, Webb has helped keep the Giants’ starting pitching from undermining the team’s improvements elsewhere.

They’ve weathered injuries better.

For all of their stunning success, the 2021 Giants were not immune to the injury bug. They had the oldest roster in baseball and sent 37 different players to the I.L., tied for the second-most of any team according to Spotrac’s data. But the team’s superior depth — 10 different players produced at least 2.0 total WAR for the club — allowed San Francisco to weather key absences without really missing much of a beat.

The 2022 version of the Giants didn’t fare anywhere near as well in that regard. Once again, San Francisco sent 31 players to the I.L. — tied for fifth-most in MLB — but the replacements up and down the roster failed to make the same contributions. Only four members of the ‘22 Giants had at least 2.0 WAR, tied for the fourth-fewest in baseball. Some surprising fill-ins could be found — such as Estrada, who had 2.2 WAR while seizing on his first season playing more than 52 games at the major-league level — but Darin Ruf/Steven Duggar types were harder to come by overall.

This year’s Giants are tied for second with 20 players having spent time on the I.L., but the roster is populated with many more of the same kinds of overachievers San Francisco had in 2021, including Wade Jr., Estrada (who has continued his ascent), Davis, catcher Patrick Bailey and others. And sure enough, 10 different Giants are on pace for 2.0 or more WAR per 162 team games this season, tied for the sixth-most in baseball — depth that San Francisco knows will come in handy as its surprising push for a playoff return rolls on throughout the summer.

Filed under: Baseball

1. Averaging together the defensive values found at Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs.

2. Pitchers who had at least 50% of their innings in relief.