10 numbers that perfectly tell the story of Giants’ disappointing first month

SAN FRANCISCO — For all of the advancements in analytics in recent years, there are still not a lot of great ways to judge a Major League Baseball manager.There is no version of WAR for the way he puts together lineups, and no such thing as Bullpen Moves Above Average. If you pull up Tony Vitello’s page on Baseball-Reference, you’ll see challenges (not great so far) and ejections (just one, perhaps a mild surprise).But you’ll also see the most traditional number there is, and the most important one. Vitello’s Giants are 13-18 through his first full month as manager, and that’s wildly disappointing, especially to him.Vitello has talked often in recent weeks about how he has struggled to adjust to the concept of losing so often. That might end up being the biggest change from Tennessee to San Francisco. There are a lot more games in the MLB season, which means a lot more sleepless nights for a manager who prides himself on being as competitive as it gets.The Giants are currently on pace for about 95 losses, and there’s plenty of blame to go around. Here are 10 numbers that stick out from a disappointing April (and a few days of March):5.8 percentThere are 144 big leaguers with double-digit walks. Just one of them (Matt Chapman, 14) is a Giant.The Giants were the last team in the big leagues to reach 100 runs, and you could form a pretty long list of reasons for the ineptitude. But one that sticks out team-wide is the alarmingly low walk rate, and there have been no signs that it’s just a small sample size issue. They have just four games all season of at least four walks, and their walk rate isn’t even in the same neighborhood as the rest of baseball.At 5.8 percent, the Giants aren’t just the only team under six percent — they’re also the only team under seven percent.They’re on pace for just 345 total walks, which would be their lowest total since moving to California. You have to go back to 1933 to find the last time they walked fewer than 2.4 times per game, but they’re currently at 2.13.This is probably not what the front office imagined when it pushed for a lineup that makes more contact.19 homersWhat’s the opposite of embracing the three true outcomes?In addition to being last in walks, the Giants are also last in home runs, and they’re the only big league team without 20 on the year.On paper, at least, this is a lineup with four regulars with 30-homer potential, but there’s been virtually no pop from the heart of it. Chapman, Rafael Devers and Willy Adames have combined for just six homers after hitting 86 last year. The struggles of the other two have taken some of the attention off Chapman, who had 27 homers in his first year in San Francisco but currently has just one and a .364 slugging percentage.You could throw Bryce Eldridge into that 30-homer-potential mix, too, but he has spent the entire season in Triple-A, which brings us to …148 wRC+The real question with Eldridge right now is how the Giants would even get him daily at-bats if they did call him up. That’s because Casey Schmitt has emerged as one of the few positives early on.Schmitt has become the everyday DH, and he leads the Giants in homers, OPS and wRC+, with that 148 putting him into elite territory for an infielder. Eldridge’s primary position is first base and Devers has been one of the worst everyday players in baseball, but it’ll take months — or longer — before the Giants take any playing time away from the guy with the biggest contract on the team. Eldridge took some fly balls early in the spring but that’s not currently an option, and there’s been no talk of having Schmitt get reps out there.If Schmitt keeps this up, the answer is probably to mix him in more often at all four infield spots whenever Eldridge is deemed ready. It would be uncomfortable for the veterans, but they’re also the ones underperforming.Eldridge hasn’t forced the issue yet, but he’s starting to look like he’s ready to do it. After a big game Wednesday, he has a .922 OPS and five homers in 28 games for Triple-A Sacramento.8 steals Every October, Farhan Zaidi would talk about the desire to get more athletic. Buster Posey has done the same since taking over, and there obviously has been a lot of turnover in recent years with the manager and coaching staff.And yet here we are again.The Giants have eight stolen bases, which ranks dead last and puts them in familiar territory. They were 29th each of the previous two seasons and 30th in 2023.This is just who they are at this point. Eight big leaguers currently have more stolen bases than their entire team.It’s not a fast roster, but also one that shouldn’t be quite this stuck in the dirt. Luis Arraez (four steals) and Patrick Bailey (two) are the only players with multiple steals and they also haven’t been caught, a reminder that sometimes you can swipe a bag with a good read and creative timing. The entire starting outfield having zero is certainly not a good look.6 Outs Above AverageLet’s mix in a palate-cleanser, and perhaps the most shocking stat of the first month. Arraez has been worth negative Outs Above Average in every season of his career and was rated as one of the worst defenders in baseball the previous three seasons.But Arraez bet on himself and chose the Giants over multi-year offers because they would let him play second base. He has worked tirelessly with Ron Washington and Hector Borg, and here on the first day of May, he ranks fourth in all of baseball in OAA, behind only Gold Glove winners Pete Crow-Armstrong, Bobby Witt Jr. and Nico Hoerner. He’s also tied for third in Fielding Run Value and 15th in Defensive Runs Saved.On the defense, at least, Arraez and the front office have proven to be right. The three-time batting champ is also hitting .305, but he still might find that advanced stats are thrown back at him when he hits the market again next offseason. Because he rarely walks and brings absolutely no power to the conversation, he has been below league-average as a hitter, posting a wRC+ of 97.8.94 K/9There are a lot of different ways to get through the late innings, as Tyler Rogers showed season after season. (He’s doing it again, by the way, with a 0.59 ERA for the Blue Jays.)But life in the late innings is a lot easier when you’re not leaving things up to chance, and the rebuilt bullpen has done a better job of putting hitters away. With 8.94 strikeouts-per-nine, the group ranks 13th among MLB bullpens. From 2022-25, the Giants ranked 24th, and last season they were 27th at just 7.93 K/9.Caleb Kilian has been a revelation, posting a 0.64 ERA and striking out 16 batters in 14 innings. Keaton Winn is also striking out a batter per inning and has a 2.84 ERA in his first year as a full-time reliever. Erik Miller has 17 strikeouts in 11 1/3 innings and might be in line to close after Thursday’s disastrous doubleheader.Overall, the bullpen ranks second in baseball with a 3.19 ERA. There have been some notable late-game blowups, but the group is much better than anyone expected it to be at the end of camp.48 percentAside from one big swing against the Dodgers, the Giants haven’t gotten much offensively from Bailey, who carries a .411 OPS into May. Bailey does lead MLB in framing once again, but he hasn’t been as impactful as expected with ABS, and the whole team is struggling a bit to adjust.When watching, it’s clear the Giants haven’t quite figured out the best way to deploy their challenges (in Thursday’s second loss, they ran out by the bottom of the second), and the numbers back that up.They’ve won 43 percent of their challenges when at the plate, which ranks 22nd in the league. When pitching, they’re at 44 percent, which is 29th. By Baseball Savant’s all-encompassing metric, they rank worst overall in terms of overturns versus what is expected on similar pitches.Bailey has lost a few late in games while trying to use them up, and on a couple of occasions, he has tried to help a pitcher in a tough spot while knowing that he was likely to lose. But overall, he’s 12-for-25, ranking 16th among 17 catchers with at least 20 challenges. The Giants expected him to be leading the pack in this, too, making up for some of the missing production at the plate.80 strikeoutsHeliot Ramos is on pace for 193 strikeouts and somehow doesn’t even rank in the top two on his own team. That’s because Devers and Adames are both sitting at 40 strikeouts through 31 games, and the rest of their numbers aren’t any better.Adames was a doubles machine early on, but he’s 2-for-38 over his last nine games, and he hasn’t hit a ball over 105 mph in two weeks. He’s in the bottom 15 percent in batting, baserunning and fielding value, per Baseball Savant, but the Giants can at least take some comfort in the fact that he got off to a brutal start last year and turned it around.Devers had a rough April in 2025, too, but that was supposed to be about the drama in Boston. Given a fresh start in San Francisco, he’s been a disappointment, and if you took the contract and his history out of the equation, it would be hard to justify starting him right now with the way he looks at the plate.In the seventh inning Thursday afternoon, Devers swung through a middle-middle 92 mph fastball from Triple-A call-up Trevor Richards, and that has been the norm. Teams have been firing four-seamers at him for several weeks and he still looks behind. His walk rate is also one-third of what it was last year, and his range at first has cost his pitchers a few times.The Giants have a lot to fix in May, but none of it will matter if they don’t get Adames and Devers going. This lineup is built around those two for most of the rest of this decade.4.30 ERAThe first game on Thursday was vintage Logan Webb: 7 innings, 1 earned run, 6 strikeouts, 12 groundball outs … 2 runs of support.If you’re looking for a reason to believe May will be better, you can start with Webb, who finally seems to be back to his old self after a rough start. His strikeout rate is down, but there aren’t any real red flags in his other numbers, and his 3.45 FIP is much closer to his career averages than his 4.30 ERA.Webb has thrown at least six innings in each of his past six starts, and Vitello — who has pushed his starters hard so far — might need to try and get a bit more in some upcoming starts. If Webb is back, the Giants are going to have to lean into it to avoid some of their issues in close games.5 games back When the Giants lost seven of their first 10, Webb tried to calm the masses, pointing out that it was a 162-game season and if you looked up the standings, they were probably only a couple games out of a playoff spot.At the end of May, it’s officially five out of the final Wild Card spot in the NL, which is hardly an insurmountable deficit. But other than a few 48-hour windows, the Giants haven’t at all looked like a team that will contend, and it’s hard to figure out what exactly they do well, or what their identity is. They haven’t even dealt with any major injuries, and at some point, those will come.They’ll hope to right the ship in May, but it won’t be easy. The April schedule was supposed to be brutal, but looking back, there were a lot of games against the Mets and Phillies, and right now that’s supposed to be a good thing. In May, the Giants will face the fifth-toughest schedule in MLB based on the early standings.If they don’t figure it out in the next couple of weeks, they truly might be buried, which would lead to some very uncomfortable conversations at Oracle Park.Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast

10 numbers that perfectly tell the story of Giants’ disappointing first month

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