SF Giants season in review: Ranking the team's starting pitchers
Last week, we started our review of the SF Giants 2022 season by looking at their frustrating offense. Today, we'll go from the bitter failures at the plate to the sweet success of the starting rotation that tried its best to carry the Giants back to the postseason. In light of recent NLDS results, we'll examine the Giants' starters through the lens of power rankings, the most objective and predictive measurement system known to man. After all, it's unthinkable that a weaker entrant could simply defeat a stronger entrant.
The strength of the Giants' rotation is evident in the brevity of the list - with one notable exception, the Giants rolled with just five starting pitchers all season. Giants starters were reliable enough that they didn't need to constantly cycle through minor league call-ups and waiver wire fill-ins. So let's take a look at how a pitching corps that did its best to carry the team stacked up:
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Ranking the SF Giants 2022 starting pitchers:
NR. Anthony DeSclafani - 19.0 IP, 6.63 ERA
First, let's throw a perhaps less-than-honorable mention to 'Disco', whom the Giants re-signed to a three-year, $36 million dollar contract last offseason. He only appeared in five games this past season, getting knocked around before suffering a season-ending ankle injury.
Anthony DeSclafani's season represents somewhat of a Rorschach test for Giants fans going into the 2023 season. If you believe that the Giants are a penny-scraping franchise with ownership and management philosophically opposed to going all-in, then Disco's season is justification for Farhan Zaidi to never spend money on elite free-agent pitching as long as he's in charge.
If you're confident about the Giants' slow but natural growth towards perennial contention, then DeSclafani's injury is an unfortunate setback that will nonetheless give the Giants a shot in the arm when he returns without blocking the Giants from making a splashy, short-term signing this offseason.
Regardless of how you feel, DeSclafani will still be on the team next year barring a trade or freak injury and looks to be an important figure in the starting rotation. For 2022, though, his grade is a big, fat INCOMPLETE.
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Ranking the SF Giants 2022 starting pitchers:
5. Alex Wood - 5.10 ERA, 3.76 FIP, 130.2 IP, 131 K
Alex Wood, like DeSclafani, ended his season with a trip to the injured list, getting shut down at the end of August with a left shoulder impingement that flared up over his last few starts. For those of you unfamiliar with shoulder impingements, they're serious injuries involving the joint, rotator cuff, pins, telescoping arms, dynamite, leaves hastily arranged over an open pit, and a pie to the face.
Levity aside, though, any shoulder injury is both a short and long-term worry for major league pitchers. And Wood's 2022 wasn't very funny at all, as he was victimized by one of the worst defenses in baseball - his 5.10 ERA (albeit pushed up a full run by his last three starts) belied a 3.76 FIP, or Fielding-Independent Pitching, which attempts to adjust ERA by stripping out the volatility in defensive randomness.
By this measure, the Giants' defense (and just bad luck) inflated Wood's ERA by nearly a run and a half this year. In 2021, there were only two pitchers with bigger gaps between those two numbers, which is a shame, considering he filled up the strike zone (posting the lowest walk rate of his career) and kept his expected stats right in line with league averages, per Baseball Savant.
The Giants will have to be careful to monitor his status and decide whether to work him back into the rotation in 2023, or to try to find better value in a different role. Wood stands to make about $12 million next season, in what's slated to be the final year of his contract. Unlike Disco, Wood pitched 130 innings before bowing out this season, which would make him a slightly better bet to provide triple-digit innings for San Francisco in 2023. However, his arm injury seems like a bigger threat to his future.
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Ranking the SF Giants 2022 starting pitchers:
4. Jakob Junis - 4.42 ERA, 3.65 FIP, 112.0 IP, 98 K
For all the talk of big-name free agents, the Giants do a commendable job of producing one or two major-league caliber players essentially for free. This year, that breakout performance came courtesy of Jakob Junis, who signed a $1.75 million dollar contract with the Giants this offseason (about double the league minimum) and ended up anchoring the fifth rotation slot after DeSclafani's injury.
Junis came in and did what the Giants generally ask of their pitchers: he threw strikes (2.0 BB/9), suppressed home runs (1.0 HR/9), and gave them versatility at the back end of the rotation, appearing six times in long relief over the season. A rocky final month nudged his ERA above the 4.00 mark, but it's fair to wonder whether or not that has to do with fatigue, as Junis hadn't pitched 100+ innings in the majors since 2019.
That's certainly a consideration, as there are other pitchers on the roster who dealt with similar durability concerns in a more successful way, and as of right now, four of the Giants' six 2022 starters have questions about their ability to throw another 150+ innings next year.
Still given that Junis was faced with an unexpectedly heavy burden for the Giants this year and answered the call of duty, it's enough to give him a well-earned #4 spot in the 2022 Giants starting pitcher power rankings as he looks to build on this success next season.
Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
Ranking the SF Giants 2022 starting pitchers:
3. Logan Webb - 2.90 ERA, 3.04 FIP, 192.1 IP, 163 K
Listen.
I know how it looks.
Logan Webb was one of the 10 most valuable pitchers in the National League last year by bWAR (4.8). He was the second most valuable player on the Giants in *any* capacity. And yet, I have the gall to place him third in his own rotation's power rankings.
Yeah. And we'll get to that. But for now, I want to appreciate what Logan Webb did for the Giants in 2022. He set a career-high with 192.1 IP, with 163 strikeouts to 49 walks. His sinker continues to be an elite pitch that's kept his ERA under 3.00, and he's likely going to be the first repeat Opening Day starter since Madison Bumgarner (2014-2017) when the 2023 season rolls around. Webb might not have elite stats in certain places compared to the league's best - he struck out only 20% of batters faced last year, which places him substantially below average, in part due to a middling fastball velocity. But Webb is, by all accounts, the Giants' best young bulk pitcher since Matt Cain.
He's hard to barrel, the vertical movement on his sinker keeps the ball on the ground, and he's proven that he can handle the rigors of a full season - an increasingly valuable skill in today's pitching landscape. Had Webb and the Giants desired, he could have been the first Giant pitcher to notch 200 innings since Bumgarner did it in 2019, but Webb was understandably shut down for the last week once the Giants were knocked out of playoff contention.
Long story short, Webb's impressive 2022 campaign showed that he should be the Giants' most valuable pitcher over the course of the 2020 decade. He has the stuff, he has the youth, and now he's shown he has the experience to anchor a rotation season-in and season-out. If anyone tells you the Giants should trade him and start over, tell them you have a wonderfully quaint bridge you could interest them in.
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Ranking the SF Giants 2022 starting pitchers:
2. Alex Cobb - 3.73 ERA, 2.80 FIP, 149.2 IP, 151 K
Right. Cobb. Excoriate me if you want, but I have to believe that if the Giants had to play two playoff games right now (against the *checks notes* Phillies?), Cobb would give them the second-best chance to win.
It's not conventional thinking, but in 2022, all Alex Cobb did was deal. Joining the Giants on a 2-year, $20 million contract last winter, Cobb did exactly what the Giants asked of him. He kept his ERA in the respectable 3.7 range, struck out more than a batter per inning, and started 28 games.
Yet, while the counting stats were good, Cobb turbocharged his under-the-hood numbers and made them elite. I'd like to turn the clock back to May 23. The Giants lost a depressing snoozefest at home to the Mets 13-3, and it was emblematic of the struggles that would plague San Francisco for most of the season.
I went back and watched the highlights, not just because I'm a glutton for punishment, but because that game was absolutely telling of the season that Cobb had. In the first inning, he faced only three batters. He struck all of them out. He faced three batters again in a scoreless second.
Then, in the third inning, Cobb struck out the first batter he faced. Here's how the next 7 batters went:
1. Line drive single (.780 xBA)
2. Popout (.300 xBA)
3. Ground-ball single (.240 xBA)
4. Infield hit (.260 xBA)
5. Darin Ruf throws himself into stands, leading to a double (.010 xBA)
6. Pete Alonso home run (.660 xBA)
7. Groundout (.130 xBA)
Total expected hits: 2.47
Actual hits: 5
Really, it's the story of the 2022 season. Sometimes you give up line drive singles. Sometimes your fielders aren't in the right position or fast enough to convert every out. Sometimes, you get an infield hit thrown in there just because the baseball gods think it's funny. Every once in a blue moon, your DH-turned-outfielder considers fielding a pop-up and decides to yeet himself into the crowd instead.
In 2022, all of them happened at once. Keep going long enough, and the eventual home run makes it impossible to tell if you're awful at this or if someone out there just has a cruel sense of irony. And Cobb got the brunt of it. It seemed like every time the Giants showcased a circus act of defensive foibles, an incredible "how did they do it?" of fielding nincompoopery, Cobb was on the receiving end. After that late May flop, Cobb's ERA hit a high-water mark of 6.25. His FIP? *2.73*.
It wasn't until a mediocre 4-inning start in late June coming off a groin strain that Cobb's ERA even came within the same ballpark as his FIP. But for the rest of the season, Cobb just kept cutting those numbers down. In his final 18 starts, he allowed 36 earned runs or just two per game.
When Carlos Rodón was shut down for what would have been his final start, it was Alex Cobb on three days rest who stepped up to deliver 5 innings of one-run ball after the Giants had been eliminated from postseason contention. All told, that's the kind of grit that screams "I can put the team on my back in a short series," and it's why Cobb gets my number two spot in the 2022 Giants rotation power rankings.
Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports
Ranking the SF Giants 2022 starting pitchers:
1. Carlos Rodón - 2.88 ERA, 2.25 FIP, 178.0 IP, 237 K
There's no understating it - Carlos Rodón was a beast this year. In fact, beast might be underselling it. He was more like a dragon, a fireballing, bull-charging force of nature who grew stronger as the game and the season progressed. He leaned on his fastball more than ever, and it didn't particularly matter when he threw it - Rodón's fastball was the fifth-deadliest pitch in baseball this year, per Baseball Savant.
He used it to fan 12 Marlins in his Giants debut, he used it to set down the 27th out of a mid-July game against the Padres, and he rode it to 10 strikeouts in his final game of the year against Colorado. From start to finish, Rodón was a grunting, snorting flamethrower with the most electric stuff Giants fans have seen since Tim Lincecum graced the mound.
If there was one weakness to Rodón's game, a scale pried free from his armored breast, it was his tendency to drag out plate appearances. Despite his dominance, hitters could slow him down with relative consistency, drawing an additional six or seven pitches before Rodón could finally secure the out.
Curiously, this didn't seem to have much correlation to the quality of the opposition, as far as I could tell; his outings of 5.0 or fewer innings and 95+ pitches came against the Mets, Phillies, Rockies, Diamondbacks, and Brewers. You can also include outings against the Reds, A's, and Cubs if you bump that inning count up to 5.1. But most importantly, Rodón went a full season strong, a huge question mark considering his history.
Before signing with the Giants, Rodón had only pitched more than 100 innings twice in the past five years, the high-water mark coming in 2021 with an All-Star campaign despite only 132.2 innings pitched. But with his 178 innings in 2022, Rodón more than validated his $22 million contract, leading the league with a 2.25 FIP and a 12.0 K/9 rate.
Despite having a player option for another $22 million year, Rodón will surely seek a long-term contract this offseason that could cost more than $100 million. Of all the Giants' success stories with reclamation projects and polishing up pitchers, Rodón now stands as San Francisco's best after becoming undoubtedly their most valuable player in 2022.
According to SF Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, there is "mutual interest" between Rodón and the team in signing an extension. So hopefully the Giants find a way to get a deal done and keep the southpaw in San Francisco for years to come.
SF Giants season in review Part 1: Offense
