San Francisco Giants 2024 preview
The 2021 season becomes weirder and weirder for the San Francisco Giants when you look at what has transpired around that year. The Giants went 107-55 during that season, but they haven’t finished above .500 since 2016 otherwise. They finished 79-83 last season and finished 21 games out of first place, even though they only used 24 pitchers. That was the fewest number of pitchers they had employed in a full season since 2017.
There are a lot of factors that go into having a losing record. Being a bad team is obviously part of it, but I don’t think the Giants are a bad team. Usually you see a pretty talented team deal with a lot of injuries and fall short of expectations, but that wasn’t really San Francisco’s problem last season. To me, they’re just caught in-between.
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They’re caught in-between spending money and going for it, while also realizing that keeping up with the Dodgers is a really tall task. Now that the Diamondbacks seem to be trending in the right direction and the Padres still have a high payroll with a lot of talent, the Giants are just sort of stuck floating in purgatory.
The front office was active in free agency and put a bet down on Jung Hoo Lee from the KBO and also signed Jorge Soler and Matt Chapman after their free agent markets really seemed to soften. On paper, this team looks better and more dangerous offensively. Will the pitching staff hold up accordingly and give the Giants a chance at playoff contention?
2024 San Francisco Giants Odds
(odds from DraftKings as of Mar. 18)
World Series: +5500
NL Pennant: +2800
NL West: +1300
Win Total: 81.5 (-110/-110)
Make Playoffs: Yes +170 / No -205
San Francisco Giants Preview: Offense
The main problem with the Giants last season was that the offense simply wasn’t good enough. Oracle Park is definitely unkind when it comes to hitting for power, but the Giants only hit 174 home runs and ranked in the bottom half of the league. When you consider that they also had one of the league’s highest K% and didn’t create any surplus value on the bases, whether that meant taking extra bases or stealing bases, it was very hard to score runs.
The Giants had a 24.5% K% and only batted .235 as a team. Only the Yankees and Athletics had a lower batting average. The Giants did have an 8.9% BB%, so they finished 24th in OBP, but were one of 10 teams to have a SLG under .400. The Brewers were the only team out of that bunch to make the playoffs and the Yankees were the only other team to finish over .500.
As I’ve preached throughout these previews, wRC+ is my favorite stat for looking at a team’s offensive profile because it does grade on a curve thanks to the park factor. Even with a helping hand because of the Bay Area conditions, the Giants had a 93 wRC+, which ranked 21st. The main guys in the lineup were mostly solid, but the supporting cast was filled with below average bats.
That’s why the Giants went after Soler and Chapman, who combined for 53 home runs. No two-player combination for the Giants had more than 41 homers, so this should be a good infusion of power to the lineup. Soler hit 36 homers, which was more than double every Giants player except J.D. Davis (18) and Wilmer Flores (23). Davis just left very disgruntled after some contract negotiations fell through in ugly fashion with the team.
Chapman’s 17 dingers were his fewest in a full season since he played about half the games during his rookie year in 2017. He had a 56.1% Hard Hit% and a 17.1% Barrel% for the Blue Jays, so he deserved a much better fate at the plate last year. That was the highest Hard Hit% in baseball. Higher than Juan Soto. Higher than Matt Olson. Higher than Ronald Acuna Jr. Only Shohei Ohtani had a higher Barrel%. I’m really not sure why the free agent market was so thin for him.
He’s also still an excellent defensive third baseman. The Giants led baseball in Outs Above Average on defense from their infielders, so Chapman fits right in. So does Nick Ahmed, who was brought in as a non-roster invite, at SS. His defense is needed to replace longtime fixture Brandon Crawford, whose bat was non-existent last season.
Lee hit .340/.407/.491 in the KBO over seven seasons. He made his KBO debut at 18 and had 383 walks against 304 strikeouts when he came stateside. Soler and Chapman bring a power dynamic that was lacking, but Lee should bring the contact dynamic that was also lacking. Flores was the only guy to hit over .271 for the Giants last season. Lee’s projections are all between .285 and .291 with an above average bat on the whole, so that’s another upgrade.
Most of the holdovers for the Giants were either productive hitters or league average. Flores led the way with a 136 wRC+. LaMonte Wade Jr. hit 17 homers and had a 122 wRC+. He also walked 14.6% of the time, which was another skill of Mike Yastrzemski, who had a 112 wRC+ thanks in large part to an 11.8% BB%. Thairo Estrada and Michael Conforto were essentially league average.
I like this group a lot more with the additions and think they could make a nice leap this season, especially with some of the platoon concepts they are able to employ.
San Francisco Giants Preview: Pitching
This will be an interesting year for the pitching staff as a whole. The Giants put in a bet on Robbie Ray, who won’t be available until maybe August or September at the earliest, but they’re looking at 2025 for him. Sean Hjelle, the 6-foot-11 right-hander who looks to be a bulk reliever, was slowed by a sprained elbow in camp, but this is a big year for his evaluation. Tristan Beck needed vascular surgery for an “upper arm aneurysm”, which sounds rather awful.
So, the Giants head into the season relying heavily on Logan Webb and Kyle Harrison. Harrison, a top-40 prospect and the No. 1 prospect in the Giants system, made seven starts for the big league club in his age-21 season with a 4.15 ERA and a 5.53 FIP. He struck out over a batter per inning, but also allowed eight homers in just 34.2 innings. I don’t worry too much about Triple-A numbers in the PCL, but Harrison walked 48 batters in 65.2 innings. The stuff is electric, but the control and command are problems right now.
Webb is a bona fide No. 1 starter and I’m not sure he gets the respect he deserves. He’s accumulated 13.1 fWAR over the last three seasons. The list of pitchers with more? Zack Wheeler, Kevin Gausman, Corbin Burnes, Aaron Nola, and Gerrit Cole. When you consider those five guys have averaged over 10 strikeouts per nine innings and Webb has not, that makes it even more impressive.
He’s a ground ball machine who is extremely stingy with walks and garners enough strikeouts to get by. I will say that last season concerned me a bit, in that his Hard Hit% jumped to 45.5%. He had consistently been in the upper 30s throughout his career, but his average exit velocity jumped nearly 2 mph last season. Fortunately, the Giants are an excellent defensive team around the horn and should continue to be, but it’s something to watch. His SwStr% also dropped from 10.6% to 9.0%.
I won’t even pretend to know what the Giants can expect from Jordan Hicks back in a starting capacity. Hicks made eight starts in 2022 for the Cardinals, but 204 of his 212 appearances at the MLB level have come as a reliever. For a guy whose best attribute is running a fastball up there at 100+ mph, starting seems to cut into that a little bit.
That being said, the Giants are an extremely sharp front office led by Farhan Zaidi and I can’t help but give those types of organizations a lot of runway. Keaton Winn, Mason Black, Spencer Howard, and others are filler types of guys that may have a slightly higher ceiling by virtue of the ballpark and the front office, but I think we see a lot of opener and bulk situations once again, even after Alex Cobb comes back from injury in late May.
Like the rest of the pitching staff, the bullpen graded around the league average in ERA and FIP, but they did work a league-high 705.1 innings with all the bulk assignments. Camilo Doval is truly elite and the supporting cast is full of reliable arms, though bulkers like Jakob Junis and Alex Wood have moved on.
San Francisco Giants Player to Watch
C Patrick Bailey
One of the reasons why the Giants excelled so much defensively was because of the play of Bailey. He was +13 in Defensive Runs Saved and +17.4 in Framing Runs per FanGraphs. Statcast had him down for +16 Framing Runs to lead all of baseball, just ahead of Austin Hedges, who was given $4 million from the Guardians to not bat his weight, but excel behind the plate and mentor Bo Naylor.
But, Bailey is not just a one-trick pony. He only posted a 78 wRC+ and struggled during his first season as a Major Leaguer, but he had some good seasons with the bat in the low minors. I don’t know for sure if those will translate and the projection systems are low on him, but his 5.9% BB% at the MLB level was very unexpected after posting a 13.5% BB% in the minors. If Bailey makes any gains with the bat, his value will skyrocket.
Remember, he only had 120 combined PA at Triple-A and Double-A, but his defensive play was so advanced that the Giants fast-tracked him to the bigs.
San Francisco Giants Season Win Total Odds & Prediction
I really like the moves that the Giants made and I want to be excited about this team. There is one thing holding me back – what if Logan Webb gets hurt? I would argue that he might be the single most important player to his team from a health standpoint this season. Losing Webb’s 200 innings and stable presence in a pitching staff that will otherwise be in a major state of flux is enough to keep me from any preseason Giants action.
I’m not even talking about something severe. I’m talking about him taking a comebacker off the shin or rolling an ankle covering first base. I’m talking about an oblique or lat injury. Anything that takes him out of action for any prolonged period of time will make it very, very hard for the Giants to reach their goals.
Now, there’s still some time for the Giants to do something like sign Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery. Frankly, I genuinely don’t know why they haven’t yet. If they did, their win total would probably jump up a couple of wins, but I’d feel a lot better. I’ll sit and ponder this one for now, but I really do think this offense looks a lot better.
Author edit: As it turns out, the Giants did, in fact, sign Blake Snell the day I published this to a two-year, $62 million deal.
Strong Lean: Over 81.5
Get all of our preseason coverage in the 2024 MLB Betting Guide
