It’s not just you. It might be a glitch in the already malfunctioning 2020 simulation, but you’re not imagining it. The Giants are scoring runs. They’re scoring them at home. Do one of those theatrically comical bits where you rub both of your eyes with balled-up fists. It’s happening. Even though by writing this, I’m clearly jinxing it.
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Since the Giants moved to San Francisco, only four times has the team scored six-plus runs more often during their first 27 games. There were the 1958 Giants, who were playing in Seals Stadium, a ballpark with generous power alleys. There were the 1962 Giants, who would ride Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda and Felipe Alou to a pennant. There were the 2000 Giants, whose middle of the lineup included the 1-2 finishers in the MVP race, followed by Ellis Burks.
And there were the 1996 Giants, a team with Barry Bonds and Matt Williams that kinda stunk.
We can probably guess that this team isn’t the ’62 Giants. And while I’m tempted to slap a 2000 Bonds comparison on Mike Yastrzemski, that doesn’t seem entirely fair, so maybe they’re not the 2000 Giants, either. They’re not introducing Orlando Cepeda to the world while playing in a new stadium, so the ’58 comparisons don’t work, either.
Which leaves those ’96 Giants as a possible comp, and that’s not very fun. That team started hot and finished with one of the worst offenses in the National League. This team isn’t like that, is it?
We’ll need to suss out the statistical blips and see what’s left. Which players should we continue to expect good things from, sample size be damned? I have some guesses.
Wilmer Flores
Maybe he won’t hit quite like this, with a .322 average and a .900 OPS, but I’m convinced that he’ll be a positive contributor to a surprising lineup.
Here is a list of all the players that the current front office has signed to a multi-year deal:
- Wilmer Flores
The lack of multi-year deals is by design. It’s important for organizational flexibility. Sure, it would have been nice to have Drew Pomeranz in this year’s bullpen, but he wanted flexibility, and so did the Giants. It would be nice to know that Kevin Gausman is coming back next year, but he wanted flexibility, and so did the Giants.
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With Flores, though, the team saw a player who could mash lefties. That’s it, that’s the job. Getting him on the field can be cumbersome (and costly), but he’s done this one thing so reliably that the Giants were comfortable giving him a two-year guaranteed contract.
Here are his OPS splits against lefties:
2015: .955 (107 PA)
2016: 1.093 (107 PA)
2017: .862 (110 PA)
2018: .610 (148 PA)
2019: .982 (109 PA)
I don’t know what happened in 2018, and he probably doesn’t, either. But when it comes to hitting southpaws, it’s not that he’s pretty OK at it. He’s a legitimate star. When he comes up against a left-hander, he turns into Aaron Judge. That’s not anything the Giants have had for a long, long time, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that he’s doing it again, now that he’s healthy.
I’m not going to pretend a two-year deal is an all-caps BIG DEAL. It’s exactly one year longer than a one-year deal, if my math is correct. But it shows that the Giants most definitely believe in this one valuable and important skill. So far, it looks really, really smart. Flores isn’t abysmal versus righties, but if he’s kept away from the tougher ones, and stuck at first base or DH as much as possible, he’ll become a fan favorite.
Austin Slater
Maybe he won’t hit quite like this, with a .448 OBP and a 1.101 OPS, but I’m convinced that he’ll be a positive contributor to a surprising lineup.
When Slater was called up last year, I wrote about why it was appropriate to be a little excited about him. He’d been making adjustments for years, trying to shed the Quadruple-A label, and he was hitting the ball much harder in Triple-A Sacramento after those tweaks. Then he came up and started raking in the majors. And he kept raking, for a while. He was called up on July 1, and his line was .281/.396/.529 on Aug. 31. He’d arrived. Nothing was going to change our minds after two months like that.
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I mean, nothing except one of the worst slumps a hitter has ever had. But what are the odds of that?
Technically it was the 156th-worst month by OPS of all-time, but it was the 20th-worst month of the decade, and Slater’s company on that list are players who shuffled right out of baseball shortly afterward. In 48 plate appearances, he was 6-for-47, with a walk and 19 strikeouts. His overall numbers tanked, and he moved from a future outfield cornerstone to someone who might have to spend a fifth season in Sacramento.
Now he’s raking again. He’s a player with a career .312/.387/.471 line in 1,799 minor-league plate appearances. He looked like he had arrived last year at this time. Are we really going to allow ourselves to be convinced by one lousy month?
To be clear, it was really, really lousy.
I’m back in. It’s silly to get too excited about 18 games, but he’s a homer away from his career-high in those games, and he’s leading the league in stolen bases. He doesn’t have to keep hitting .347 to be valuable if he keeps walking and slugging, and he’s a delight to watch right now.
Donovan Solano
Maybe he won’t hit quite like this, with a .386 batting average and reliable doubles power, but I’m convinced that he’ll be a positive contributor to a surprising lineup.
Last season, Solano had the seventh-highest batting average on balls in play (min. 200 PA) since 1960. Rod Carew had a season with a higher BABIP. Frank Thomas had one. Chris Colabello had one. Tyler Naquin had one. Other players with a .400-or-better mark in that many at-bats include Roberto Clemente and Drew Stubbs. So the lesson is that either you’re an inner-circle Hall of Famer, or you should expect regression.
I expected regression. But maybe that was premature.
No, we shouldn’t expect Solano to hit .400, and he’s already dipped comfortably under that. He’s in a mini-slump (five hits in his last 24 at-bats), and we shouldn’t even expect him to hit .330 again. The average will come down. He is not Rod Carew. Probably.
But he is tough to pitch to. Here are his exit velocities in each quadrant of the strike zone, from Baseball Savant:
Pitch him up, I guess? But don’t miss. He’s aggressive enough to get himself out, but he’s not exactly a hacker. He can spin on pitches inside, and he can drive balls the other way. He’s fine with the top of the strike zone, and he’s fine with the bottom of the strike zone. Also, the middle. You can walk him, but he has just 14 career homers, and as some politics guy found out years ago, the players with limited power get challenged.
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Solano can be pitched to, but only in a way that risks a walk. You don’t just want to hand a base to him, though, because he’s not as likely to punish a strike as the typical batter, so he gets strikes. He loves strikes. Pummels them all over the place. He doesn’t have to hit .330 to be valuable. Even with a 50-point drop in batting average, he’s still keeping the line moving and a net positive for a lineup.
We still might be in sample-size territory; Solano’s Giants career is just 103 games old, and you’ve probably seen a whole lot of wacky Giants performances over a 100-game stretch. The BABIP thing is not nothing. But Solano’s Expected Batting Average — based on how hard he’s hitting the ball, and the angle at which it’s coming off the bat — is in the 92nd percentile. These should be hits. Because he’s barreling the ball up.
He’s Donnie Barrels, after all, a nickname that was given to him by his teammates.
Mike Yastrzemski
Maybe he won’t hit quite like this, but waaaait a second. I’m starting every capsule with this. If all four of these hitters are likely to give back a little bit of their production, isn’t that a problem?
Sure, but they’re also the only players who are hitting. Brandon Crawford’s recent hot stretch has him in the black when it comes to overall production this season, and Brandon Belt is getting close. But the rest of the team is disappointing. Mauricio Dubón is scuffling. Alex Dickerson is scuffling. Evan Longoria is running hot and cold, and the veteran-ringholder combo of Hunter Pence and Pablo Sandoval has been absolutely brutal.
None of those players have to start hitting just because they haven’t yet. But a couple of them will do better. Or other players will take their at-bats, and they’ll do better. We’ve already seen a likely upgrade from Tyler Heineman and Chadwick Tromp to Joey Bart. There won’t be another one that dramatic, but upgrades are still possible.
As for Yastrzemski, yes, there are reasons to believe that he’ll keep hitting. Not at a pre-BALCO Bonds level, perhaps, but enough to be the centerpiece of a productive lineup. There are scientific reasons to believe this. Quantifiable reasons. So many that they deserve their own feature. Which is coming. Not to be a tease, but I ain’t wasting my Yaz bullets at the bottom of this article.
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The Giants are scoring runs with the help of these players, and we’ve been fooled in short bursts before. If this isn’t pyrite, though, if this is actual offensive gold, the Giants are in far better offensive shape than we were led to believe. They might not be this good, but they’re certainly good enough to win. As long as the pitching holds up.
Which … look, just appreciate the runs for now. They don’t have to keep coming, but it doesn’t have to disappear, either. The Giants might be on to something.
(Photo: Tim Warner / Getty Images)