Is situational hitting responsible for the SF Giants offensive woes?
The SF Giants are not, to put it lightly, a very good offensive team lately. That'll happen when you've scored fewer runs than any team since the start of July. But if you've been watching Giants' games intently, then you've likely noticed something lately. In particular, a plethora of hard-hit balls that go right to an outfielder's glove, and almost automatic outs when the bases are loaded. As hard as the team is slumping right now, it doesn't feel like they should be scoring only three runs per game.
So I went back over the last 10 days and recorded every "high-value" situation the Giants found themselves in. All told, I counted 15 situations where the Giants had the bases loaded or RISP with less than 2 outs. These were situations where any team expects to score runs, and can potentially open the door to a big inning. In May and June, there were stretches where the Giants recorded those "big innings" at least once a series. Let's find out what they've done over the past three.
As a note, I've excluded scoring opportunities where the game was all but locked up. This includes, for example, the 6th and 7th runs of the Giants' 8/15 win over the Rays, when they already had a 99% chance of winning. Ideally, I would use run expectancy totals to determine just how much or little the Giants have been living up to their potential, but win probability changes are more reliably available on a per-AB basis. Let's dive in.
8/13 - Giants defeat Rangers, 3-2
Bot 4th, runners at 1st and 2nd, 0 outs. Giants lead 1-0.
Result: Heliot Ramos, Blake Sabol, and J.D. Davis strike out. WP -15.9%
Bot 10th, runner on 2nd, 0 outs. Rangers lead 2-1.
Result: Thairo Estrada pop-up, Joc Pederson strikeout, Patrick Bailey 2-run home run. Giants win 3-2. WP +56.2%
Runners at first and second is no guarantee of a run, but with no outs, even a sacrifice could tilt the odds in favor of scoring that inning. Three straight strikeouts in what was the Giants' best scoring chance in regulation really hurt. Thankfully, Pat Bailey's 2-out, 2-run knock may go down as the highlight of the Giants' year.
8/14 - Rays defeat Giants, 10-2
Bot 5, bases loaded, 1 out. Rays lead 5-1.
Result: Johan Camargo strikeout, LaMonte Wade Jr. lineout. WP -13.6%
Bot 7, bases loaded, 2 outs. Rays lead 6-1.
Result: Wade Meckler strikes out swinging. WP -3.5%
The 5th inning bases loaded sequence was one of the most damaging of the entire exercise. Down 5-0, an extra base hit absolutely would have put the Giants back in a game they absolutely could have clawed back into. Instead, they had to settle for a Thairo Estrada single prior to loading the bases, and ended up failing to cash in on either of the two bases loaded situations in the game.
8/15 - Giants defeat Rays, 7-0
Bot 7, bases loaded, 0 outs. Giants lead 3-0.
Result: Brandon Crawford strikeout, Thairo Estrada fielder's choice (Michael Conforto out at home), LaMonte Wade Jr. flyout. Giants lead 5-0. WP +0.7%
The Giants had their best offensive game in weeks, spurred largely by the fact that they hit two home runs in the sixth inning. They recorded three straight outs in the seventh after loading the bases, but got bailed out by catcher Rene Pinto's throwing error on a pickoff attempt that scored two. Wade had his second unproductive out in as many days, despite expected batting averages of .460 and .560 on his flyouts.
8/16 - Rays defeat Giants, 6-1
Bot 1, runner at 2nd, 1 out. Rays lead 1-0.
Result: Wilmer Flores groundout, Michael Conforto strikeout. WP -6.9%
Bot 7, bases loaded, 1 out. Rays lead 6-1.
Result: LaMonte Wade Jr. walk, Austin Slater GIDP. Rays lead 6-2. WP -3.7%
The stats underplay it, but this was an absolutely brutal night for situational hitting. Opportunities in the early innings were there, even if they were far from given. It's hard to blame Wilmer Flores for having a couple of unproductive at-bats (including a flyout with two outs and a RISP in the third), given that he was the Giants' entire offense for most of July and August. LaMonte Wade Jr.'s approach finally paid off, only for Slater to follow it with one of the Giants' four, yes, four double plays of the afternoon.
8/18 - Atlanta defeats Giants, 4-0
Top 4, runners at 1st and 2nd, 1 out. Atlanta lead 3-0.
Result: Joc Pederson flyout, Michael Conforto strikeout. WP -8.5%
Top 8, runners at 1st and 2nd, no outs. Atlanta lead 4-0.
Result: Brandon Crawford strikeout, Thairo Estrada lineout, Austin Slater lineout. WP -8.7%
In a game where the Giants recorded only 2 hits, this felt like the most reasonable (or at least, excusable) game for the Giants to fail to cash in on any of their opportunities. Facing Spencer Strider, one of the league's best starters, an above-average offense would have struggled, which the Giants are certainly not at this point. In what seems to be a recurring theme in the Giants' two-out-and-RISP situations, Austin Slater had a well-struck ball (.520 xBA), but failed to get it down for an RBI.
8/19 - Atlanta defeats Giants, 6-5
Top 2, runners at 1st and 3rd, no outs. Giants lead 1-0.
Result: Johan Camargo RBI fielder's choice, Thairo Estrada GIDP. Giants lead 2-0. WP -5.3%
Top 4, runners at 1st and 3rd, no outs. Game tied 2-2.
Result: J.D. Davis sacrifice fly, Blake Sabol flyout, Johan Camargo walk, Thairo Estrada RBI single, LaMonte Wade Jr. lineout. Giants lead 4-2. WP +5.0%
Top 6, bases loaded, no outs. Game tied 4-4.
Result: Johan Camargo GIDP, Thairo Estrada strikeout. Giants lead 5-4. WP -11.6%
Despite consistently putting up runs for the first time in weeks (considering that all the scoring in the 7-0 win against the Rays came in innings 6-8), the Giants continued to bleed value in critical situations. Camargo twice hit into outs that luckily went for RBIs. SF lost a ton of value in the sixth by only scoring one run on a bases loaded, no outs situation. Wade's inning-ending lineout had an xBA of .730, because of course it did.
The Giants' three double plays on the afternoon contributed to them failing to reach their offensive potential against an excellent Atlanta team, even though it ended up being their pitching that surprisingly let them down. Considering it from afar, it's all Wade's fault, really. He should know that hitting a home run on the first pitch of the game is a terrible omen.
8/20 - Giants defeat Atlanta, 4-3
Top 1, bases loaded, 1 out. Game tied 0-0.
Result: J.D. Davis strikes out, Heliot Ramos grounds out. WP -14.5%
Top 3, runner on 2nd, no outs. Atlanta lead 2-1.
Result: Wilmer Flores 2-run home run. Giants lead 3-2. WP +16.3%
Top 9, bases loaded, no outs. Game tied 3-3.
Result: Patrick Bailey and J.D. Davis strike out swinging. Joc Pederson walks. Luis Matos lines out. Giants lead 4-3. WP -2.9%
The Giants may have lucked out, here. Six at-bats with the bases loaded resulting in one walk and five unproductive outs, and they still managed to get away with the win. Wilmer Flores provided the big boom in the third, though, and it speaks well to San Francisco's offense that they built another rally in the same inning. If it seems odd that the Giants' win probability went down after scoring in the top of the ninth, that's because taking the lead still gave them overwhelming odds (>80%) of winning, but only scoring the one run left Atlanta with a fighting shot in the bottom of the ninth.
Let's run through some totals from all of that. Of those 15 scoring opportunities, the Giants walked away from the inning more likely to win the game just 4 times. They scored 7 times, recording just 12 runs. With the bases loaded, the Giants have gone 0-14 with 2 walks in the last ten days. And it's that. That right there is why the Giants are doing so poorly, at least in the past three series.
On the year, the league has a triple slash line of .266/.309/.438 with the bases loaded. Doing some back-of-the-envelope math, imagine the Giants did perfectly average over the last 10 days instead. That'd give them four more at-bats, even if they don't add on any additional walks. The league averages roughly 85 runs per 100 AB with the bases loaded. That comes out to 15 extra runs for the Giants over that span.
Those are the 15 runs the Giants need to get back to being a winning ballclub. San Francisco produced 2.6 runs per game over this sample size, with a run differential of -16. Hit merely league-average with the bases loaded? Now we're over 4.0 runs/game, with a run differential of just -1. With this pitching staff, the Giants should go at least .500. Hit league-average the rest of the game, too? Oh, baby, now we're cooking.
The problem is, of course, that the Giants haven't been hitting close to league average for nearly two months now. And that's a problem you can't just slap an oversized "REGRESSION TO MEAN" sticker on and hope it goes away on its own. But as bad as things have been, the Giants are not an .000/.125/.000 team with the bases loaded. No team is. Opposing pitchers will eventually crumble in pressure situations. Flares fall in the outfield. A speedy rookie just beats the throw to first to avoid a double play. Inevitably, luck will return.
In any case, there's one solid, concrete reason to believe that the Giants can learn to love scoring again. FanGraphs' Ben Simmons writes on the topic of RISP in this article, concluding that driving in runners is more or less random over the course of a season. The biggest correlation, he finds, is in strikeout numbers, since you can't drive in a run on a strikeout.
The Giants, who struck out in 27.7% of their at-bats in the first half of the season, have struck out in 29.0% of their at-bats after the All-Star Break. That's still a lot of strikeouts, but they've actually dropped from 3rd to 7th in that metric post-break. They currently trail the Mariners and Twins in second-half strikeouts, and those teams combine for an overall .260/.460/.800 slash line. The strikeout totals didn't keep SF from having a torrid June (5th-most team strikeouts that month), and it won't keep the Giants from driving in their RISP for much longer.
So if you're looking for a morsel of hope, this is it. The Giants aren't cooked, at least not yet. And as streaky as this team has been, I wouldn't be surprised if they go 10-0 to start September. If they start surging offensively, this team can go from "completely and utterly hapless" to "genuinely scary playoff team" in a nauseatingly short amount of time. Maybe the Giants keep struggling until they're finally buried in a playoff race they can't get back into. But if they get hot and give you a taste of that sweet, terrible hope as October draws near, now you know why.
