The Giants are among the three teams off to a 6-11 start, tying them with the rebuilding Rockies and White Sox for the worst record in MLB through three weeks. It's much too early to write them off, but it has unquestionably been a rough start. They're riding a three-game losing skid into tonight's game in Cincinnati and have been outscored by 22 runs. Only the White Sox and an injury-riddled Blue Jays team have a worse run differential.
San Francisco has been mostly healthy. Their only rotation injury was losing projected sixth starter Hayden Birdsong to elbow surgery late in camp. Their position players had been fully healthy until this afternoon's injured list placements for center fielder Harrison Bader and pinch-runner/fifth outfielder Jared Oliva.
They do have a number of injured relievers, though most of those were known coming into the season. Randy Rodríguez went down to Tommy John surgery last September. They signed Sam Hentges and Jason Foley knowing neither player would be ready for Opening Day. They've lost a couple middle relievers (Reiver Sanmartin, Joel Peguero and José Buttó) since Spring Training, but that's about it. Their early-season struggles have been much more attributable to underperformance than injury.
That's especially true since the bullpen hasn't been the biggest culprit to the slow start. It hasn't been good, but they're 18th in ERA (4.39) and have blown two leads on the season. The pitching in general has been average, about what one would expect given the personnel. The offense has been the much bigger disappointment.
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Kind of sad seeing the Giants struggle. Would like to see the Giants vs Dodgers rivalry come back.
The rivalry will always be there regardless….
Devers looks like Pablo Sandavol. Wth
Devers was always going to balloon. He’s just that baby fat, body type. If he doesn’t yet look like Pablo Sandoval, he soon will.
They’re just not a very good team. I don’t know why so many expected them to be good. The rotation is weak, the bullpen is awful and they did very little to improve either in the offseason. Adames was a bad signing, Jung Hoo Lee was massively overpaid, Patrick Bailey can’t hit… they just aren’t that good.
Adames was a bad signing? He had a fine season in 2025. First hitter since Bonds to have 30 HRs at Oracle. He’s been good with the glove, 5 OAA since he became a Giant. And he’s perhaps the only bright spot on the team this season, with an .869 OPS, and leads MLB in 2Bs this season.
Adames is a good signing regardless of the uninformed critics. The coaching needs to saddle up and let loose. No more letting the players figure it out.
I think we can conclude that they are not good. They were not good last year, either, and they did basically nothing to address it: they signed Bader and a couple of back end stiffs for the rotation. I don’t believe that they’ll remain as impotent with the bat all all season, but this team’s ceiling is 4th place in the NL West.
Last in HR, last in SB, last in R, last in BB. Sheesh.
That’s what they get for sending down Aldridge.
Who’s Aldridge? Eldridge needed more AAA time and he’ll be back soon. Almost the Giants’ entire lineup is struggling at the same time. Not good by any means but it won’t continue much longer. And Webb will be fine. Arraez’s defense has been superb by the way. Hopefully the win today get’s them going as they head to Washington for the weekend. There are many other teams off to rough starts.
Eldridge might be forcing his way back. It’s a small sample, only 14 games, but he currently has an OPS of 1.059. That’s good even for the PCL.
Pitching needs to be better. Can’t throw Mahle out there and let him get knocked around.
Without doing the math, the SFG look like the epitome of mediocrity. The have 4 seasons of almost exactly .500 each year, and I’d guess that both their pitching AND hitting rank somewhere around #15.
The outfield has been a colossal disappointment with all 3 starters hitting terribly.
Bailey simply is a proven well below average hitter
Devers has been bad
That’s 2/3 of the every lineup epically bad so far
Arraez only value is ball in play with runners in scoring position of which there are usually none
SP was been okay, Webb should rebound.
RP has a few week links but not as bad as projected, ERA was blown up with a few bad appearances versus consistency poor
Only hope is hitters return to their mean and that means a three week hot streak is due.
SP hasn’t really been okay. They have a collective 91 ERA+, tying them for 5th worst with the W Sox. And they have a collective -1.0 bWAR, 3rd worst in MLB.
The SP only seems okay because the hitting has been worse in comparison.
Ray has been fine and Roupp has been decent. Webb is off to a rough start but I don’t think that’ll continue. If the lineup starts getting back to normal it would solve many problems and also helps the pitchers. Mahle’s start last night kind of took the Giants out of it early though but they had their chances late. Let’s hope.
Roupp has been better than decent, 22% better than league average. But both he and Ray are outliers. Taken as a whole the SPs have not been good. It should tell us something, that with both of them providing good performance, the overall numbers for the SPs is so bad.
I guess it depends on the reference source with SPs
ERA+ they are C- students
xERA Webb (1.0 lower) and Houser 0.5 lower) shows they had worse luck than normal making the SPs maybe C to C+ students or “okay” but not good
Yeah, I’d agree about being unlucky when it comes to Webb. But still the overall results haven’t been okay. I’m sure Webb will be fine, but if Mahle and Houser can’t turn things around, then 40% of the rotation not being good won’t get them very far.
I’m also not sure if Ray and Roupp can sustain their respective 160, and 163 OPS+s. So they need more from Mahle and Houser. If they don’t start pitching better, I could see one, or both, of the Carsons getting the call.
Depth the key for every team it seems if you’re lucky you only need 7 SPs
Jung Hoo has been hitting the ball well with not much to show for it though. I think Bailey has been horrible. Susac should start seeing more time until he proves otherwise.
Just one more team who’s built an offense ignoring foot speed , SB ability , and strikeouts.
It seems like all you gotta do to have the best offense in baseball is put the ball in play and run a little. The 80’s Cardinals would have a crazy competitive edge in today’s game lol.
Bader (as well as his potential replacements) Lee and Chapman all have foot speed. But that’s useless when they aren’t getting on base.
@Ryan
Oliva, Fitzgerald, Matos, Wisely, McCray all have plus to elite speed it’s multi tool players they lack
3 of those guys don’t play for the Giants anymore and Oliva is injured.
My point to @Ryan being speed alone means nothing
Have they ever had a offense with punch if you remove Bonds from the team and go back as far as 1980’s?
There have been flashes of it with Clark, Mitchell, Williams, Kent but without Bonds probably no Kent and Clark, Mitchell and Williams never really were considered power hitters for any length of time while on Giants.
Why am I paying for something I can read for free on a Giants fan blog? Stop trying to be what you’re not, MLBTR. Stick to transactions.