The first full week of our 2021 San Francisco Giants coverage is in the books and I want to thank everyone who took the time to write to me via email kcrowley@bayareanewsgroup.com or on Twitter @KO_Crowley with feedback on our Giants HQ newsletter.
So many of you are excited about the upcoming Giants’ season, which provides an interesting contrast against the computer models that aren’t very bullish on the team’s chances of competing this year.
That’s why I wanted to open Friday’s Giants HQ writing about “projections,” vs. “expectations.”
Whether you’ve seen Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA projections, FanGraphs’ 2021 season projections or another model, the computers aren’t forecasting a season full of sunshine for the Giants.
The Giants are most often pegged to finish third or fourth in the National League West and end up with somewhere between 74-78 wins.
Quite frankly, I think that would be a huge disappointment to a fan base that’s anticipating signs of progress.
Contending in a division featuring two of the most loaded teams in baseball, the Dodgers and Padres, is practically unrealistic, but I don’t think it’s out of the question that fans should expect the Giants to hover around .500 and post a winning record.
As I wrote earlier this week, the Giants have never had five straight losing seasons, and that dates all the way back to 1883.
Projections are a nice tool and they should provide us with a baseline for forming expectations, but it’s okay for fans to believe more is possible for the franchise. The Giants have a proud tradition, a large budget, a sharp president of baseball operations and a motivated manager and coaching staff eager to get the franchise back on the right track.
The Giants appear to be on the right trajectory. The 2021 season will give them their best chance yet to prove it.
Down on the farm
The Giants announced their 2021 affiliate staffs this week and longtime fans will recognize many of the names of the coaches responsible for grooming the organization’s minor league talent.
Starting at the top, well-respected Triple-A manager Dave Brundage is back leading the Sacramento River Cats and he’ll likely be tasked with overseeing a lot of Joey Bart and Heliot Ramos’ development this year. Brundage has an excellent rapport with players on the doorstep of the major leagues and he proved a lot to the organization’s newer decision-makers by winning a Triple-A national championship back in 2019.
One of the highlights of seeing this year’s list is seeing José Alguacil as the Double-A Richmond manager. Alguacil spent the winter managing the Estrellas Orientales in the Dominican Republic and oversaw a team that included several major leaguers ranging from Fernando Tatis, Jr. to Robinson Cano.
Alguacil could easily be a major league bench coach and should probably be mentioned when managerial vacancies are open given his extensive minor league and winter ball experience and his relationship-building skills. Alguacil was partially responsible for grooming the Giants’ homegrown infield back in the early 2010s and players have always appreciated his positivity.
It might be a stretch to expect top infield prospects such as Marco Luciano, Luis Toribio and Will Wilson to reach Double-A this year, but they’ll be in good hands if they make it to the Eastern League.
With a significant number of the Giants’ top prospects expected to open the season at the lower levels of the minors, a lot of eyes will be on High-A manager Dennis Pelfrey, a former Independent League manager who was initially slated to lead the San Jose Giants last year before the COVID-19 shutdown.
San Jose’s all-time leader in managerial wins, Lenn Sakata, is back at the helm of that club for the first time since 2014. It’s been more than two decades since Sakata first managed in San Jose and his return is a sign the Giants still believe he has the right demeanor to lead a club that will certainly feature some promising but raw young players.
A few other notes on the minor league staffs: Pat Burrell, who was originally expected to be San Jose’s hitting coach in 2020, will be a roving minor league hitting instructor. Shawon Dunston and Dave Righetti, who were cut from the Giants’ payroll last year, are returning as spring training instructors. Garvin Alston, a longtime coach in the A’s farm system and former Minnesota Twins pitching coach, will assist Brundage as the Triple-A pitching coach.
Statcast study
Over the course of the offseason, the Giants have quietly added a few interesting pitchers to the bullpen mix that makes their relief corps more…predictable.
Yes, in a game in which keeping hitters off balance is a primary objective, the Giants have agreed to deals with a pair of free agents who almost exclusively throw one pitch.
If you plan to watch the Giants late in games this season, you’ll probably wonder why right-hander Matt Wisler rarely throws anything but his slider and lefty Jake McGee works almost solely with his fastball. Statcast data helps tell part of the story.
Wisler, who signed a one-year deal with the Giants in December, struggled to be a league-average pitcher until 2020, when he began throwing his slider on more than 80% of his pitches. The results were staggering as opponents posted a .141 batting average and .221 slugging percentage against the pitch.
Relying so heavily on his slider made Wisler’s fastball even more effective when he threw it, so the right-hander finished his season with a 1.15 ERA and 35 strikeouts while allowing just 15 hits.
In McGee’s case, the veteran lefty was even more extreme. No pitcher in the majors relied on an individual pitch more than McGee, who threw 320 fastballs in a season in which he only threw 332 pitches.
Opponents actually made solid contact against McGee’s mid-90s four-seamer, but they didn’t make enough contact to do a lot of damage. He ranked in the bottom 1% in exit velocity allowed, but posted a 2.66 ERA because he struck out 33 batters and walked only three in 20 1/3 innings.
Can the Giants expect either Wisler or McGee to be as dominant in 2021 as they were a season ago? The answer is probably no for both pitchers. Can the Giants expect them to be above average? That’s the gamble they took by bringing each reliever into the fold.
