The first half of the season has concluded, and the San Francisco Giants have even more questions than they did entering the year. It’s almost impossible to judge them as a team, as the Giants have dealt with more injuries than most clubs around baseball.
However, they haven’t proven to be a bad or good team, which might be even worse than just being bad. If they weren’t a team with any chance of making the postseason, San Francisco would have a clear route to take heading into the trade deadline.
Instead, they have very tough decisions to make in the coming weeks.
Despite plenty of uncertainty, there are a few areas that show why they’ve struggled so far. According to Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic, the Giants entered their last series before the All-Star break with the most relief innings pitched in baseball.
“Entering their weekend series against the Minnesota Twins prior to the All-Star break, the Giants had thrown the most relief innings in the major leagues. Their starting pitchers were recording fewer than 14 outs per game, which was the lowest total in the majors.”
That’s a very telling stat of what’s gone wrong and something that clearly needs to be improved upon. However, just like some of their other issues, is it really fair to judge San Francisco for what’s happened?
Robbie Ray hasn’t thrown a pitch at the big league level, Blake Snell has had multiple IL stints and has thrown just 35 2/3 innings, and others in the starting rotation have dealt with injuries.
Getting Snell back should be the biggest addition this club can make. He returned and started two games, his first two starts since June 2. In those two starts, he pitched 12.0 innings without allowing an earned run and gave up just two hits. He struck out 11 and walked three in dominating fashion.
The Giants desperately needed starts like that, and while it’s not guaranteed that all of his outings will go as planned, as evident by his first six of the campaign, it was a promising sign to see him throw like that.
Perhaps this is all the front office needed to see to be buyers at the deadline. They know why they’re struggling due to this stat, so if they go out and add a few starters who, at the very least, could eat up innings, it should solve their biggest issue.
