2018 San Francisco Giants End of Season Grades: Outfield

Our Supporting Cast is those who spent more than 50% of their time in the outfield, and had more than 50 Plate Appearances at the big league level.

Slater actually ended up being disappointing in the big leagues. After a promising few months at the big league level last year, Slater looked like he should’ve been able to break out. Instead his average was down in the .250’s and 8 XBH in barely 200 AB’s is pretty ugly. He has hitting talent, but man it has to be better than what he showed this year. The hope was that he would break out. Now it’s a question of if he’s good enough to stick in the bigs.

We didn’t expect much from Blanco, and if you did, you’re delusional. Blanco wasn’t good and had the worst OPS of anyone who played in the outfield. What’s even worse is that he was signed to a $1 million dollar deal. No. More. Re-treads.

Yeah, Austin Jackson was an even worse signing. He turned out to have a nice ending to his season with the Met’s, but it didn’t matter for the Giants. They expected him to come out and be a fourth outfielder and he proved he was not even the 8th best option for them. He struck out in nearly a third of his plate appearances and had a -15 DRS. That’s ridiculous and well below expectations.

Duggar was one of the lone bright spots in the outfield this year. His defense was fantastic when he got up, and his bat began to come around just as he got hurt. Duggar definitely has a future in the big leagues, and should hopefully be a fixture in the outfield in 2019. What will be interesting to see him improve upon is his plate approach. If he wants to be a leadoff man, he’ll need to draw a lot more walks. But what matters most is that glove, which yielded a DRS of 4, which was best in the outfield. He was able to do that in just under 400 innings in the outfield. A good start for Duggar, and hopefully a big step forward in 2019.

The first time Williamson was called up, his injection of power into the lineup was infectious and helped spur their one large winning streak in 2018. But once he ended up on the DL with the concussion, he was just never the same. It’s a sad story in 2018 for Mac, who hit the DL for a significant amount of time. Hopefully he comes back strong in 2019, because if he can get going and stay healthy, his power is very much needed.

Chris Shaw

Shaw was an interesting one, as they said he’d get the majority of at bats, and then continued to back track every time they were asked about it after the fact. Shaw struggled, like most would expect. A September call-up for a top prospect in a lost season is always hard to work with. But Shaw showed glimpses of his ability and potential. He still has plenty to work on though, so hopefully we see his development continue in 2019, and especially in the big leagues.