Scientists, it is said in any number of attention-grabbing headlines, still don’t understand why humans sleep. They don’t know how bicycles stay upright, why cats purr, or how Tylenol works (wait, really?). They only recently figured out how bees fly.
I choose to believe that the purpose of these seemingly defamatory claims is not, in fact, to impugn the reputation of the scientific community, but rather to remind us of the infinite complexity of our universe—to awaken our sense of wonderment for the superficially mundane.1 These things that we take for granted, that we understand intuitively through experience, are actually beyond our collective knowledge and perhaps even beyond our capacity to understand.
So, too, are certain matters relating to the game of baseball. Questions whose answers seem self-evident continue to vex the greater as well as the lesser baseball knowers among us. And so we arrive at the inquiry that has defied me for the five or six days it has taken me to develop this contrived lede and ultimately write this blog. Scientists remain stumped: do the Giants suck?
This question, as much as the matter of why we sleep, challenges the notion that phenomena, just because they can be observed, can be understood. But let’s give it a try anyway. Observed: at the time of this writing, our favored franchise owns a 19-25 record. Understood: yep, they suck. Thanks for coming, don’t forget to subscribe.
But wait! The advanced metrics beckon. Baseball is never so simple. Perhaps the Giants are getting particularly unlucky, or perhaps there are a few weak spots on the roster that just need shoring up. Let’s start by looking at performance by position.
By Wins Above Average, the Giants rank 23rd, 2.5 wins below a theoretical team constructed of league-average players. So far, not so good. Broken down by position, five spots grade out above average (C, 1B, 3B, LF, RF), while six are below (SP, RP, 2B, SS, CF, DH). The biggest chunk of the deficit comes from relievers (-1.8 WAA). There’s more opportunity to shuffle things around in the bullpen than in the lineup, so there’s reason to believe that can get sorted out over time. And my eye says that the bad results have been inflated a bit by poor performances in games that are already out of reach. At the same time, nothing jumps off the page in the positive direction; the lineup as a whole is worth -0.4 WAA.
We could cherrypick some more encouraging stats, but there are no signals strong enough to make me think that the Giants have secretly been good all along. LaMonte Wade Jr leads the league in OBP though, so that’s nice.
Is there any evidence that this team might be less bad than unlucky, or that it might be due for some positive regression going forward? Alas, Pythagorean winning percentage suggests the Giants ought to be two games worse than their actual performance based on their ratio of runs scored to runs allowed. They’re 5-6 in one-run games, so they’re not losing more coin flips than would be expected. The most telling figure is perhaps the simplest: the Giants are 1-11 against teams with winning records. Good teams beat good teams, and the Giants do not.
What about bounceback candidates? A big part of what’s been harshing the vibes around this team is the underwhelming performance of their priciest offseason additions. And yes, Jorge Soler, Matt Chapman, and Blake Snell are all netting out below (in some cases, far below) their typical levels. But all of those guys are in their 30s, as are fellow underperformers Mike Yastrzemski and Wilmer Flores. In the unforgiving arena of baseball where 30 is so often the beginning of the end, it’s fair to wonder if these guys are just off to the slowest starts of their lives…or the slowest starts of their lives so far.
The regression game is a tricky one. Maybe Logan Webb finds a little more efficiency than he’s exhibited to date. But then, maybe Jordan Hicks isn’t suddenly a top-five true talent starter and is due to fall back. Maybe Sean Hjelle has figured something out. Maybe Taylor Rogers is broken. Maybe…
Science, as ever, has failed to deliver us a firm conclusion. I’m willing to rule out the possibility that the Giants are good, actually at this juncture, but the line between decent enough to hang around and dogshit (Webb’s assessment, over the weekend) remains blurry. So what do the vibes tell us?
A week ago, I would have told you it was all over. On the Giants’ 3-7 East Coast swing, it seemed that every game was over by the fifth inning, with the opposing team up four runs and the Giants helpless to retaliate. Then the injuries began to pile up: Tom Murphy, Nick Ahmed, Patrick Bailey, Austin Slater, Michael Conforto, Jorge Soler, Patrick Bailey (again), and finally Jung Hoo Lee, whose prognosis remains unclear after smashing shoulder-first into the outfield fence.
Incomprehensibly, the zombie-Giants took series from the Rockies and Reds, and it seemed that they might be able to build some momentum if they could just get healthy. This was an inopportune time for the Dodgers to bring their Super Saiyan lineup to Oracle Park. It’s hard to know how much meaning to make of your second string failing to hold serve with the NL All-Star team through two games. At the 27 percent mark of the season, so many questions remain unanswered.
In this world—the wide world of sports, that is—that rarely reveals itself to us in full, we are left to make meaning based on the incomplete information we have. We sleep because we are tired. Cats purr because they love belly scratches. Tylenol works because tiny guys pop out and punch the headache molecules in your brain. And the Giants? Well, the legend Bill Parcells said “you are what your record says you are.” For all the losing and the bad vibes and the post-concussion symptoms, they entered the day 2.5 games out of a playoff spot. That’s a deficit that could be wiped away by the weekend. So for now, all we can do is keep hoping. It’d sure be nice to baet LA, too.
Just kidding, their purpose is to generate clicks.
So that’s how Tylenol works!