San Francisco Giants: Looking at the Stats from 2018

We compare stats from the 2017 season to this year for the San Francisco Giants. Look away, some fans might not want to look.

It certainly was not a pretty 2018 season for the San Francisco Giants, but let’s take a look at the stats to see how bad — or maybe good — it was.

All of the rankings used in this article will be National League rankings unless otherwise specified.

Let’s start on offense where the Giants were next to last scoring 603 runs. They also ranked 14th in runs scored in 2017, but scored 639 runs.

Somehow the Giants ranked 10th in average this year despite hitting just .239 as a team — that should tell you the direction this game is heading. Last year they finished 13th in the league with a .249 team average.

So despite the Giants dropping 10 points in average this year, they actually ranked three spots higher.

The one area where the Giants did improve on offense was in home runs. Last year they finished last in the league with 128. This year they were able to move up a spot with 133 home runs.

That’s not exactly the uptick we were hoping for, but at least it was an improvement.

The Giants were ninth in doubles and triples this year, which is probably as a result of the ballpark they play in.

They also ranked 14th in on-base percentage this year at .300 and in OPS at .667.

Switching to the pitching staff, the San Francisco Giants finished seventh with an ERA of 3.95 as a team. They did that without a lot of strikeouts, finishing 13th in punchouts with 1,269.

In 2017 the Giants ranked eighth with a 4.50 ERA, and 14th with 1,234 strikeouts. That tells you a lot about the improved defensive play for the Giants in 2018.

Giants starters were 10th in the league with a 4.06 ERA, while the bullpen ranked sixth with a 3.79 ERA. I don’t think many people would have seen that coming entering the 2018 season.

The Giants bullpen ranked eighth with an 8.91 K/9 rating. That was one area I wanted to see the Giants improve on this year, and they did exactly that after finishing with an 8.36 K/9 rate in 2017.

Looking back, I think the San Francisco Giants made some great strides in the pitching staff, which is surprising considering the injuries. Also, when you consider the fact that the front office made moves last offseason to boost the offense, which was worse for the most part in 2018.

We’ll see how the San Francisco Giants approach this offseason knowing the improvements that must be made on offense, while hoping the pitching staff continues to get better with experience.