NL West Power Rankings After One Month of Baseball

Ok, the Giants have been pretty miserable in April. But, there are reasons to be relatively encouraged. Ok, so the Giants offense has been really bad. It’s just not going to continue to be this bad throughout the season. The Giants’ OPS was 20th in baseball last season with a .728. Not good, but nobody really complained about the offense being an issue last season. The Giants OPS in 2014 was a .699, good for 14th in baseball. In 2012, the Giants’ OPS was .724, good for 14th. In 2010, the Giants had a .729 OPS, good for 19th in baseball.

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Look the whole offensive power numbers and all of that is relatively subjective to the season they’re in. Right now, the San Francisco Giants OPS is a .634, good for second worse in baseball. That’s not good. But history tells us that this team will be roughly 80 points higher than that. The bats are going to come around, and they’ll straighten things out.

Buster Posey is still slugging .464 which is slightly under his career average. He came out of a funk where he wasn’t driving the ball, and responded to plenty of critics with a bomb off of Clayton Kershaw. Hunter Pence is slugging .367, Well below his career average. While it’s conceivable that Pence may begin to drop off around this season, your drop-off doesn’t come immediately 120 points below your career average, especially if you are as good as Pence has been throughout his career.

The starters were an issue, and Bruce Bochy called them out. Their ERA went from worst in baseball, up ten places. That’s pretty darn good. The bullpen still might have some kinks to work out, but the rotation as a whole has been getting the job done in recent weeks. Now it’s time for the offense to step up.

When it does, the Giants will be right back where they expect them to be. A bad month doesn’t doom an entire season. They’ve had these stretches before, just in the middle of the season, where fans have something else to base the reality of the situation off of. When you slump in April, your fans don’t have that reality. A slow start means they need to be good the rest of the year, but this is a team you can, and should expect that from.