The San Francisco Giants have scored 4.79 runs per game through Monday night. This is down slightly from last year and 2020, and you can feel the difference. It’s not a huge drop, but it’s enough to get the brain whirring. Is it the dead ball? Is it that the Giants’ hitters are more susceptible to the dead ball than other hitters? Is it age? Is it an inability to manufacture runs? An over-reliance on home runs? These questions aren’t unreasonable.
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Before you burden yourself with them, however, there’s context to explore. More than almost every other sport, baseball is about following a single team and not an entire league, so while you’re up on everything that’s happening in Giants Land, you might not be as caught up on what’s happening throughout the entire league. You’ve heard about the dead ball, and you might be aware that offensive numbers are down everywhere, you might not know just how bad it is.
It’s bad. Only three teams in baseball have scored more runs per game than the Giants. The average National League team is hitting .235, with a .312 on-base percentage and a .376 slugging percentage. In 1968, a season that was so friendly to pitchers that they lowered the mound the next year, NL position players hit .251/.310/.355.
It’s 1968 again, just with a handful of extra home runs. Unless something changes — and you know Major League Baseball likes tinkering with the baseball — this will be the kind of season that baseball fans remember indefinitely.
This kind of sudden dip in numbers makes it hard to keep the proper perspective when it comes to individual players and performances. When you see numbers pop up on the telecast, you’re probably comparing them to the same numbers you’ve been using to evaluate players for the last decade. A .300 batting average means something very specific, as does a .300 on-base percentage. It’s more confusing than that now, though.
Here’s an attempt to give the Giants’ hitters a fairer shake, then. If they’re fourth in baseball in runs per game, they must be doing something right. Once you adjust for the league-wide numbers, it becomes easier to spot.
I’ll use adjusted OPS (OPS+) throughout the rest of the article because it’s easy to search for on Baseball-Reference, and it takes the era and offensive context of the league into account. A 100 OPS+ is a league-average hitter, and once you start getting into the 120s and 140s, you’ll find All-Stars, if not MVP candidates.
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Here are some current Giants hitters and their numbers, and here are how those numbers compare to seasons you might remember throughout recent history.
Brandon Crawford
What he’s doing: .221/.327/.337, 2 HR
What you’re thinking: It was a good ride, but his slump is awfully concerning for a player this old.
What his season actually compares to: Crawford’s 94 OPS+ is almost a dead ringer to Rich Aurilia’s 92 OPS+ in 2002. It’s not really a slump.
There are similarities to these two seasons on the surface, too. Both of them had seasons the year before that were so incredible and unexpected, it wasn’t cynical or pessimistic to expect a little regression. They weren’t going to have those seasons again, most likely, because almost nobody was going to have those seasons.
Yet when Aurilia followed up his career-best 2001 season with a .257/.305/.413 line and 15 home runs, nobody thought that he was a drag on the lineup. It was clear that he wasn’t going to finish near the top of the MVP vote again, but he was still better than the average shortstop and a net positive for the lineup.
This applies to Crawford and his .664 OPS this season, too. He’s been a league-average shortstop offensively, trading a lower SLG for a higher OBP, and his strong defense helps his overall value.
It’s OK to hope or expect these numbers to improve, but they don’t have to because it’s not necessarily a slump. His career OPS+ before the start of the 2020 season was … 94. It’s the same Crawford as the one that’s been around for years, just harder to spot in the current offensive context.
Mike Yastrzemski
What he’s doing: .288/.360/.394, 2 HR
What you’re thinking: A nice little season, considering. Nothing like his 2019 breakout season, but he’s coming around.
What his season actually compares to: Yastrzemski’s 2019 breakout season.
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In 2019, Yastrzemski hit .272/.334/.518, with 21 HR and a 122 OPS+.
In 2022, he’s hitting .288/.360/.394, with 2 HR and a 120 OPS+.
These seasons are the same, at least from a league-wide perspective. He’s hitting fewer extra-base hits this year, but so is everyone else. The gains in OBP aren’t across the board, though, so they’re helping him be a wildly valuable and productive hitter. It’s hard to think of a .754 OPS hitter as being “wildly valuable and productive,” but that’s the point of this entire exercise. It’s time to start thinking like that.
Other Giants outfielders with an OPS+ in this range throughout history:
• Andres Torres, 2010 (122 OPS+)
• Ángel Pagán, 2012 (120 OPS+)
• Hunter Pence, 2014 (121 OPS+)
One from each championship season to really help you process the idea. When you think of any of these outfielders and that season, you are filled with respect and admiration for what they did to further the Giants’ chances. Torres was an absolute gift, a key cog in the lineup. Pagán was his successor and just as good. Pence didn’t make you ho-hum when he came to the plate in ’14; he was one of the hitters who made you feel like good things were about to happen.
Yastrzemski, through Monday, has been just as good. He’s not just a player doing a few things right, but a spark that’s helping the Giants outscore most teams, on the level of those three outfielders’ seasons up there. It’s nearly impossible to see, though, when his raw OPS is closer to Aaron Rowand in 2008 than any of those other hitters. Just keep reminding yourself that it’s 1968 again.
At least in baseball. San Francisco is sure a little different these days.
Brandon Belt
What he’s doing: .239/.386/.463, with 4 HR
What you’re thinking: Pretty danged typical Brandon Belt season, alright. He’s regressed from last year, which is to be expected.
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What his season actually compares to: A good Willie McCovey season
Not a great Willie McCovey season, mind you. Not the MVP-winning season from 1969, and not his underrated dominance from the aforementioned 1968 season. But the season he had in 1962 that helped propel the Giants to the pennant, or the 1971 season that helped them to the NLCS and got him MVP votes.
Belt’s OPS+ this season is 147.
McCovey’s career OPS+ was 147.
This isn’t to suggest that Belt will continue doing this when he’s in the lineup, or that he’s just as good as McCovey. It’s just a way to put his .848 OPS into perspective. It’s a monster number in 2022, and it compares to seasons like this:
• Orlando Cepeda, 1964 (148 OPS+)
• Will Clark, 1992 (148 OPS+)
• Aubrey Huff, 2010 (142 OPS+)
• Pablo Sandoval, 2009 (144 OPS+)
That last one is a perfect example of what we’re looking for. That’s the year in which Sandoval hit .330/.387/.556, with 25 home runs. He was the lodestar of the lineup, the player you wanted to watch every time he came to the plate. When he helped the Giants create runs, it was almost expected.
Belt has been just as effective, when healthy. And when he gets hurt — whether with a neck tweak or a COVID-19 diagnosis — you should react with the same doom and gloom that you would have if Sandoval went down in 2009 or Cepeda got hurt in 1964.
Let’s do a lightning round to hammer the point home.
Austin Slater isn’t just off to a pretty good start. He’s not too far off from Ellis Burks, although the best comparison might be Bobby Bonds in 1973 (Slater’s OPS+ is just a little higher).
Wilmer Flores isn’t just a beloved platoon buddy. His 121 OPS+ is almost identical to the OPS+ Matt Williams had as a Giant (122).
Joey Bart still might be in the middle of a rotten slump, but his 86 OPS+ is a perfect match for what Bengie Molina did in his career (86 OPS+), and it’s a pretty good match for his time as a Giant (89 OPS+).
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And for just one more little twist, one more detail that makes it even harder to trust your eyes and brain, don’t forget that OPS+ is adjusted for park. The Giants play at Oracle Park, and that’s factored into these numbers.
Except for the small sample size of a month, Oracle Park has been playing like a hitter’s park. This sort of noise is to be expected in a month, but if the ballpark is still a pitcher’s park, as you would believe, a Giants hitter’s adjusted OPS+ would actually undersell him this season. Perhaps Belt is truly having one of the best McCovey seasons after all.
OK, fine, probably not. We’ll see if the numbers get more reasonable as the weather warms up, but just remember that it’s 1968 again. The 2021 Giants had a 106 OPS+ and led the league. The 2022 Giants have a 104 OPS+ and aren’t far off from last season’s pace. Every number you see, from the batting average to the home run total, needs a lot more context to make sense in the same way you’re used to.
(Photo of Austin Slater: Kelley L Cox / USA Today)