⏩ Numbers Game: Can Giants sustain their success? Career stats show concerns.
The Giants were the surprise team of baseball’s first half, having gone into the AllStar break with the game’s best record.
It would be even more shocking if they find a way to sustain it in the second half.
Expected to be at least one big free agency haul and a year or two away from competing for their fourth World Series since 2010, the Giants, instead, got some of Major League Baseball’s best production at catcher, first base and shortstop to fastforward the process.
But the Giants’ marquee players at those positions are dealing with injuries and have a history of postAllStarbreak swoons that could allow the Dodgers, Padres or both to spoil the story.
Led by Buster Posey’s comeback season, the Giants’ catchers provided a preAllStar break OPS of .903 — .213 better than the majorleague average for the position. Nearly two years removed from hip surgery, Posey is having his most productive season since 2012 despite being on the injured list with a left thumb contusion.
During his National League
MVP season in 2012, Posey’s OPS leaped a remarkable 282 points (from .820 to 1.102) in the second half, but that was an anomaly for the now34yearold. Over the course of the seventime AllStar’s career, Posey has a firsthalf OPS of .842 and .818 after the Midsummer Classic.
Sidelined since June 23 with a knee injury, first baseman Brandon Belt still led the Giants’ first basemen in outperforming the league average OPS .905 to .760 before the AllStar break. Amid the secondbest OPS season of his career (.875), Belt says he hopes to return next month.
How much that will help may be even less certain than the status of his right knee, which required a microfracture procedure in 2018. Partly due to a series of injuries, including multiple concussions and an appendectomy, Belt’s secondhalf numbers have consistently dropped from those before the AllStar break.
Excluding the pandemicshortened 2020 season, when there wasn’t an AllStar break and Belt was fourth in the National League with a 1.015 OPS, the 34yearold has produced an .824 OPS in the first half and a .773 OPS in the second.
Shortstop Brandon Crawford, who had never posted a seasonending OPS better than .792, was at .915 before leaving
Friday’s game with a left hamstring tweak. No matter what he does in the second half, he might have already wrapped up the league’s Gold Glove award.
But his offense has historically plummeted in the second half, dropping from .739 in the first half to .687 after the AllStar break. During his last AllStar season in 2018, Crawford had an .825 OPS in the first half and posted just a .543 OPS after the break.
With Crawford, Belt and Posey aching and aging, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which they buck their careerlong trends and maintain their NL West lead in the second half of the season.
But that’s exactly what they plan to do.
“I’ve been on teams before that have had a really good first half, and the second half is a different story, so I think you try to learn from those seasons and understand there’s still a ton of work left to do,” Posey said. “I think we have the group of guys who can do that.”