ZiPS projections has SF Giants, Padres, Dodgers in close race atop NL West

The SF Giants arguably had the most tumultuous offseason in MLB. Between falling short of an agreement with Aaron Judge and the derailed signing of Carlos Correa, the Giants settled for several solid, but unexceptional additions. However, according to ZiPS projected 2023 National League standings, Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi has built a team that has a legitimate chance to win the National League West.

ZiPS expects three teams in the NL West to finish with more wins than losses this season, the San Diego Padres (91-71), Los Angeles Dodgers (91-71), and Giants (88-74). After the Dodgers won 111 games last season, it is jarring to see the Giants, who finished 81-81 in 2022, expected to be so close to them. While the Dodgers lost several key contributors off last year's team without making any major acquisitions, the Padres (who were 89-73) will now have a full season with elite acquisitions Juan Soto and Xander Bogaerts. However, as Dan Szymborski of FanGraphs explained in his writeup, ZiPS believes the Giants have the depth to stay in a competitive NL West race.

ZiPS surprised me a bit with the NL West. Not so much in terms of the order of the standings, but with the relatively small gap between the Dodgers and the Padres, and then the Giants. The first two are both terrific teams, but there are real downside concerns. The Padres have serious questions at DH and the quality of the rotation drops off quickly, and the Dodgers’ issues aren’t all that dissimilar. The Giants seem to have a lower ceiling than their rivals, but like the Braves and Cards, ZiPS sees them eking out a few extra wins simply by having enough depth to reduce the number of downside scenarios in the mystery bucket.

In ZiPS models, the Giants won the NL West 21.3% of the time, earned a Wild-Card spot 38.0% of the time, meaning San Francisco makes the playoffs in more than half of their simulations. Moreover, the Giants won the World Series 4.3% of the time.

As with any model, ZiPS is obviously an imperfect metric. Teams will deal with varying degrees of injuries and in-season transactions will also impact the final standings. However, it is considered one of the best publicly available systems in MLB.

Surprisingly, ZiPS is higher on the Giants heading into 2023 than it has in recent history. ZiPS expected the Giants to go 75-87 when they went 107-55 in 2021 and was too high on the Giants last year, expecting them to go 85-77 when they finished 81-81. Nevertheless, ZiPS preseason projected standings has never been this high on the SF Giants chances of making the postseason since 2017.