From historic droughts to offensive paradoxes, this SF Giants team has defied logic

This SF Giants team hasn’t come close to meeting the expectations that were set at the beginning of the season. For the ninth time over the last 10 seasons, the Giants won’t play playoff baseball. They might not have entertained fans by winning games and playing sound baseball, but rather by doing the exact opposite.

Their inconsistency and inability to build any kind of sustainable momentum will go down in the history books of this storied franchise. The way the offense has produced is as illogical as it gets. Still, this team has offered its fans hope at times — or perhaps just rubbed salt in the wound — by going toe-to-toe with championship-contending teams. They've continuously found ways to keep its fans sort of engaged, at least the most die-hard ones.

The latest oddity came in the form of one of their three rookie catchers — here is another anomaly. Daniel Susac got off to a red-hot start with the organization that selected him in the Rule 5 Draft last winter, batting .390 with a .956 OPS over his first 45 plate appearances. Then, over his next 86 trips to the plate, his batting average plummeted to .171 and his OPS took a deep dive to .425.

After 43 big-league games, Susac was still looking for his first home run. Then came Wednesday and Susac’s two-homer game against the Milwaukee Brewers, though one came off a position player. Susac didn’t want to wait another 44 games, so the next day in San Diego, he did it again, sending a ball over the left-field wall. No home runs through 44 games, then three in less than 48 hours. As Giants baseball as it gets.

Let’s go over some of the other oddities this unpredictable Giants team has put on display this season, starting with a bit of history.

The reachable milestones that remain out of reach for SF Giants

I’ve got a few feats for you that any team seriously competing for a playoff berth should have achieved long ago. The Giants haven’t. They still haven’t won four games in a row. They still haven’t swept a three-game series — though they did sweep the Atlanta Braves in a two-game series back in June. And they still haven’t posted a winning month.

Regarding the winning streak, the Giants had six opportunities to finally get over the hump and lost each of those six games. Over those outings, they scored more than two runs just twice and were shut out twice. They averaged just 1.67 runs per game and posted a .558 OPS as a team, with three of those six losses coming by just one run. Every time this team offered its fan base some hope that it might actually have figured things out, it disappointed again.

It took the Giants just seven days to complete a three-game sweep last season. By April 2, they had already done so. This year, 109 games and 128 days after opening their season against the New York Yankees at Oracle Park, they stand alone as the only major-league team that still hasn’t gotten it done.

When was the last time something like that happened, you might ask? Well, the team hadn’t even moved to San Francisco yet; it was still in New York. Back in 1956, the New York Giants went 118 games before finally sweeping the Cubs in a four-game series. Prior to 2026, the longest the San Francisco Giants had gone without completing a sweep was 81 games in 2017. That team finished the season with 98 losses, last in the NL West and 40 games behind the Dodgers.

It’s hard to imagine a team putting together a winning month if it can’t even rattle off four straight wins. If any team had the potential to pull it off, it would have been this Giants squad. Wait, they can still become that team. As of July 31, the Giants are 12-12 in July and still have one game left against the Padres before the calendar turns to August. A win would give them their first winning month since September of last year and just their third since the start of last season.

Giants have strangest offensive profile in baseball

A team that ranks in the top six in doubles, triples, batting average and slugging percentage should have an above-average offense, right? The Giants are living proof that this isn’t necessarily the case.

Despite profiling as an elite contact team that also hits for power — they’re tied for the sixth-most home runs in baseball since May — the Giants rank just 21st in runs scored. The main reason is that their entire offense revolves around making contact. Their traffic comes almost exclusively from their bat-to-ball skills. Despite being tied for fifth in batting average, they rank just 23rd in on-base percentage because they’ve drawn the fewest walks for basically the entire season.

And walks are important. Take the Chicago Cubs, for example. Their batting average isn’t as high as the Giants’, and they have fewer extra-base hits, but they have somehow scored 103 more runs than the Giants and rank in the top three in runs scored. Why? Because their ability to reach base more consistently — Chicago has drawn the most walks in the majors and ranks second in on-base percentage — has created more traffic and, therefore, more opportunities to bring runs home. It’s simple math.

This offense has taken strides, though. The numbers have looked much better since May. In July, the Giants have tried to incorporate a new element into their offense, and it has worked. From Opening Day through June 30, the Giants stole a league-low 27 bases. Since then, they’ve swiped 21 bags, tied for the eighth-most in the majors, and are one of just two teams to have been caught only once this month.

Their aggressiveness on the bases, along with greater patience at the plate and their ability to make contact at a high rate, has turned the Giants into a top-tier offense in July, as they’re tied with the Colorado Rockies for the eighth-most runs scored in the majors. This group of hitters has what it takes to be an above-average offense. They just need to put it all together at the same time. Easier said than done.

Giants have been better against contenders than bottom-feeders

When this team is at its best, it can beat the best teams in the league — literally. Unfortunately, it has also shown that it can lose to the worst ones — also literally.

The Dodgers, Cubs, Braves and Brewers are arguably four of the five best teams in MLB right now. The Giants have won a series against each of those four teams. They held the Dodgers to just four runs over three games back in April. They’ve scored double-digit runs twice against the Brewers, the team with the second-lowest ERA in baseball. They tagged the Cubs for 18 runs at Wrigley Field back in June and have won four of five against a Braves team that boasts the third-best record in the National League. They’ve been impressive at times, just as they’ve been painfully bad at others.

The Rockies and the Mets, the only two teams with worse records than the Giants in the National League, have gone 8-6 against San Francisco this season. The Kansas City Royals, who are by far the worst team in the AL Central, handed the Giants three straight losses last week. And while they’ve done the job against the best team in their division, the Arizona Diamondbacks have owned them, winning eight of the nine meetings between the two clubs and sweeping the Giants twice to open the season.

Here are a couple of records that best sum it up: The Giants are 31-40 (.437) against teams at or above .500 and just 16-22 (.421) against teams with losing records.

The oddities probably aren’t over yet. This squad still has time to find new ways to surprise us. It’s a form of entertainment, after all.

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