San Francisco Giants: Projecting the 2018 Outfield Group

The San Francisco Giants’ season is pretty much done. The only thing we get right now is simply talk of 2018. So here we are.

The San Francisco Giants outfield grouping has been one of the worst offensively in franchise history. Only the 1992 Giants’ outfield had a worse OPS. In terms of home-run totals, they’re not last, but only have six homers more than the 1988 outfield which hit a meager 25 home-runs. Batting average is the second worst in franchise history. And that’s just to mention the offense.

Only two Giants outfielders have a positive dRS, or defensive runs saved and that’s Austin Slater and Jarrett Parker, two players who haven’t been in the outfield for a majority of the season. We can go on and on about how bad the Giants outfield is, and it would all be right.

The big thing though, is what on earth are they going to do there for 2018? Under contract for next year are: Literally all of them are. OK! So, not looking good. Things are going to have to change. And that means someone will likely have to get cut. Who? Hunter Pence? Denard Span? It will likely be one of them. You could likely assume Gorkys is gone, and Moncreif as well. Slater and Parker are likely to be in the picture, whether Parker is going to be in the picture as a bench player or a starter is the interesting thing.

We’re going to take a look and project who we think will end up in the outfield in 2018. They need some changes, and they need a slugger out there. It depends on how they want to go about it though. So we have prepared two contingency plans.