SF Giants 2020 Statcast Review: Home Run Luck

Looking back at the SF Giants 2020 season, Marc Delucchi dives into Statcast data on expected home runs to see which players had the best and worst luck on big flies.

As we look ahead to the 2021 season, it’s still important to reflect on the SF Giants’ performance in 2020. Baseball Savant has a treasure trove of Statcast data that opens interesting pathways into analyzing individual players’ seasons. One of the lesser-known statistics available on their site estimates how many home runs each player would hit had every ball in play been played in an average MLB stadium. By diving in, it can illuminate trends in how Oracle Park played for certain players and which hitters played better (and possibly worse) than they performed.

Luckiest SF Giants Home Run Hitters

Austin Slater (+1.7), Wilmer Flores (+1.5), Brandon Crawford (+1.4)

While other players had career years in their own right, Austin Slater easily had the biggest breakout season of any Giant player. After flashing mediocre fourth outfielder play over part of the previous three seasons, Slater hit .282/.408/.506 and even led the league in stolen bases for much of the season. He lost substantial playing time while he dealt with an elbow injury though, and ultimately only played in 31 games.

Slater’s ability to maintain his breakout would be a massive development for the Giants. However, Statcast seems a bit skeptical of his jumps in power. If two of his home runs were caught on the warning track, his triple-slash falls all the way down to .259/.385/.412. Still a potentially productive outfielder, but not a game-changing piece.

Wilmer Flores is probably the least surprising player on this list. He’s hit double-digit home runs in the past, but the 12 he hit in 55 games this season was easily the most productive rate of his career. Previously, his best rate of home runs per game was in 2017 when he hit 18 in 110 games. Still, even if you adjust for the luck Statcast estimates he had, Flores was still expected to record 10.5 homers on the season.

The most concerning name on the list, Brandon Crawford is slated to be an everyday player next season without a viable alternative. As a left-handed hitter playing home games in Oracle Park, Crawford should be expected to underperform by metrics like these. Instead, his overperformance of expectations suggests he might have been one of the luckiest hitters on the team. If he’s slated to regress next season, it could create some difficult decisions for manager Gabe Kapler.

Unlucky SF Giants Home Run Hitters

Mike Yastrzemski (-1.9), Joey Bart (-1.6), Mauricio Dubón (-1.3), Brandon Belt (-1.2)

Given Oracle Park’s challenges for left-handed hitters, Mike Yastrzemski and Belt’s place on the list is easy to understand. While Crawford’s resurgent 2020 season seems like it might have been a bit of a mirage at least on the power side. Both Yaz and Belt’s career-years in 2020 seem in line with their expected home run outputs.

Even more exciting for fans, young prospects Mauricio Dubón and Joey Bart rank among the four most unlucky home run hitters on the team’s roster in 2020. Both right-handed hitters, Bart and Dubón would both be expected to perform more favorably going forward than players like Belt and Yaz.

Bart ranking this highly is especially notable since he only played in 33 games this season. Even in his limited sample of play, he blasted six different balls in play that would have been a home run in at least one other park. While he has yet to record his first career big-league homer, he put his power on display plenty and should achieve that milestone whenever he gets another extended big-league look.

Dubón has historically been considered a hitter with limited power potential. However, over his first two big-league seasons, he has produced roughly 15 home runs per 162 games. Seeing him rank as one of the unluckiest home run hitters on the team is a good sign that power output can remain a part of his game going forward. The Honduran native obviously provides most of his value defensively, but it makes it much easier to see him becoming an everyday player with sustainable double-digit home run power.

Unluckiest SF Giants Home Run Hitter: Evan Longoria (-2.2)

At this point, I am firmly on the Evan Longoria renaissance bandwagon. During the season, there was an argument that Longoria was playing like one of the best third basemen in the league. While he finished the season in a bit of a slump, Statcast still believed he was a far more productive player than his final numbers suggested.

Longoria’s 2020 season also made a strong anecdotal argument for using expected home runs as a predictive tool. In 2019, Longoria finished third on the team with 20 home runs. However, Statcast expected him to only have 17.8 homers based on his balls in play. His 2.2 home runs above expectation in 2019 was the exact inverse of the 2.2 home runs below expectation he produced in 2020.

There are other metrics that reaffirm the case for Longoria next season. But even just looking at home runs, if just two of the five flyouts that Statcast classified as possible home runs had traveled over the fence, his OPS would have jumped by 50 points this season. Crawford may seem in a position to see some offensive regression next season. Longoria, though, seems poised better than anyone to counteract those losses with a resurgent performance of his own.

The SF Giants offense showed plenty of positive growth in 2020. Looking at expected home runs, some players, like Brandon Crawford and Austin Slater seem to have an uphill battle to replicating their power output in 2021. However, there is reason to believe players like Brandon Belt could maintain their success and Evan Longoria could be prepared for a big bounceback next season.