Giants baseball in July. It is not off to the greatest start. The team has lost a lot of baseball games lately, the offense is underwhelming, the pitching is struggling at times, the defense has been kicking the ball around the field more than usual, and on top of that, the Giants just lost a heartbreaking extra-innings game in walk-off fashion the team directly ahead of them in the NL West standings.
Yes, I am describing the current state of the 2022 Giants, but since you probably read the title of this piece before clicking on it, you can also tell that I am describing where things sat for the Giants on July 4, 2010. The Giants had just lost a brutal game in Coors Field to the Colorado Rockies in walk-off fashion in the 14th inning, falling to 41-40 on the season. The vibes were not good in Giants land that night as fireworks lit up the sky.
Fast forward to Friday, July 8 (Today!) and Giants fans are waking up the morning after a brutal loss to the Padres in San Diego that came in extra-innings, dropping the Giants record to, 41-40! Hey, that’s the same record that the 2010 Giants had through 81 games, and they won the freaking World Series. And just like in 2010, 2022 is an even year! These two teams are exactly the same thing!
If only it were so simple. Yes, at 41-40 halfway through the season, the Giants can still in theory go 51-32 the rest of the way, sneak into the playoffs on the last day of the season and make a run through October and snap what has now become the second longest championship drought in San Francisco Giants history. After all, that is exactly what the 2010 team did, and they looked then an awful lot like the 2022 Giants look like now. But to a degree. The fact is, no two baseball teams are ever alike, regardless of how similar the stats can look. And there are a great many differences between the 2010 Giants and this year's edition.
The Defense
You have probably heard at least twice this season that the Giants defense is not very good. If you have not, I am curious as to what rock you are living under, because it sounds like a wonderful rock in which to dwell beneath as it shields you from yucky bad news and world events. Nothing further separates the 2010 Giants vs. the 2022 Giants more than the defensive numbers. We all like a blind resume, so here is one that is guaranteed to stump you. Below are the defensive metrics and rankings for the 2010 and 2022 Giants teams. See if you can guess which is which.
Take a minute if you need… Oh what’s that, you already know the top line is the 2010 team without having to Google it on your phone? Very impressive.
As you can see, the 2010 and 2022 Giants exist on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to defense across the board. The stretch leading up to the Giants 41-40 record in 2010 did feature some below average defense. In those 9 games between game 73 and game 81, the Giants committed 5 errors (GASP!) or about .56 errors per game, which was a slight uptick from their season average of .45 errors per game. This year's Giants team is committing .58 errors per game, on pace for 94 on the season.
The 2010 Giants took care of the ball. The 2022 Giants do not. Health plays a role in that this year, but health is not the difference between wallowing in the defensive dumpster and relaxing in the defensive penthouse that dumps its trash in the defensive dumpster.
The Offense
The 2010 Giants were often jokingly (and just as often not jokingly) were referred to as the ground attack. A mix of base hits and moving of runners up, manufacturing runs and waiting for the other team to make a costly mistake to pounce on.
The Giants were not considered a high powered offense in 2010, averaging 4.3 runs per game, just under the league average of 4.4 runs per game. This year’s Giants offense is above average in scoring runs, scoring 4.6 times per game when the league average is 4.3 runs per game.
But one major difference between the 2010 Giants and the 2022 Giants has to do with their home runs, or more specifically, how these teams would score runs when the baseballs were not jumping off bats and into the stands.
In the last couple of seasons under Farhan Zaidi, the Giants have become very homerun dependent. This is not just a Farhan thing, but a Major League Baseball thing, as the shift to launch angles and juiced balls among other things has ratcheted up the rate at which balls find the bleachers. But even with the increase in home runs, the Giants have had a greater dependency on them to score runs than most teams. In 2020, the 44% of the Giants runs came off of a homerun, which was the most dependent the Giants had ever been off home runs in the Third and King St. era. That number jumped to 50% last season, and sits at 42% this season. Meanwhile, the MLB average for runs scored off of dingers the last three seasons has been 43%, 43% and 40% this season.
The 2010 Giants meanwhile were much better at scoring runs without big flies, with just 36% of their runs coming off dingers, just below the league average of 37%. Dingers are cool. They are a super efficient way of scoring runs too. But there are other ways to score runs in this game, and the Giants have shown that when the power is drier than California in the thick of summer, the offense will often follow suit. Even the big bad Dodgers are finding other ways to score, as only 37% of their runs have come off homers this season.
Outside of Joc Pederson, the Giants are showing a serious dearth of power. After 12 hitters connected for double-digit home runs last season, only nine are on pace to do so this season, and three of them are going to need some good luck in the health department just to make that happen. If the Giants are going to make a 2010 style run in the last 81 games of the season, they are going to eventually start getting run scoring hits that do not leave the yard.
The Pitching
Not much needs to be said about how dominant the Giants pitching was in 2010. Between Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and Madison Bumgarner, it is easy to forget that Jonathan Sanchez had the best ERA in the rotation at 3.07. That is how good that rotation was. The Giants rotation in 2010 also excelled in gobbling up innings like the Hungry Hungry Hippos, lightening the load on a bullpen that had a 2.99 ERA.
This year's Giants team does not have the same amount of dominance in the rotation, and thus is forced to rely on an increasingly unreliable bullpen. In 2010, the Giants needed the bullpen to cover 32% of their innings, while this year's team is asking the bullpen to get outs in 42% of innings. This year's Giants team has already gotten 317 innings from its bullpen, 12th most in the league and fast approaching the 461 innings the 2010 Giants got from their bullpen, which was the 4th fewest in the league that year.
Part of this is due to the league's increased emphasis on bullpen usage. Starters are pitching shorter and shorter outings and bullpens are being asked to cover more innings than ever. The problem for the Giants is they are asking a lot of a bullpen that is showing that it is not quite up to the task, with a 4.29 ERA that is tied with the Oakland A’s for the 9th highest bullpen ERA in the league, a far cry from the 2.99 ERA the 2010 bullpen had (that was the second best bullpen ERA that season behind the Padres for those that are wondering).
Any second half run is going to require the Giants to do one of two things: reduce the workload on the bullpen, or get better performances from the bullpen. That isn’t asking too much is it?
The Tone of the Season
Finally, the biggest difference between the Giants of 2010 and the Giants of now is the state of the franchise has changed dramatically. The 2010 Giants were not just a win-now team. They were a “WE NEED TO WIN THIS YEAR BECAUSE LOOK AT THIS PITCHING STAFF WE HAVE” kind of team. Winning and making a postseason run was expected, even though it was something the Giants had spent the previous 56 years bumbling over themselves trying to do.
The tone of this season is far different. After 107 wins last year, the belief was that this team was in a win now mode. That has proven to not be the case for a Giants team that, while competing overall, is still in the midst of a rebuild. Winning the World Series is still the goal. It is always the goal of every team when the season starts. Sometimes the goal is more realistic in some years than others. And the Giants front office is smart enough to know that while trying to win the World Series this year is a worthy endeavor to pursue, the real quest for the trophy will start to kick in in 2023, ‘24 and beyond. As such, any moves made before the Trade Deadline on Aug. 2 will most likely be done with the idea of winning a World Series in 2023, ’24 and beyond, and not the title focused moves that Giants made in 2010 to bring in Javier Lopez, Ramon Ramirez, Cody Ross and to a lesser extent Jose Guillen.
This is not meant to discourage you or be a Negative Nancy on the short-term future of the Giants. There is a reason the games are played. It is possible that the Giants could suddenly just click and start playing good baseball again. Maybe Joey Bart goes on a 21-game hitting streak in July, wins NL Rookie of the Month and bulldozes his way in the Rookie of the Year conversation and gives Camilo Doval a Joey Bart-hug on the last day of the season when the Giants clinch a second straight division title. It is not impossible. But is it not something to hold your breath over.
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