One stat that has seemingly disappeared from the SF Giants in 2026

Rafael Devers and Willy Adames hold a commanding lead for the SF Giants with two home runs apiece. The Giants are last with seven home runs, so where have all the long balls gone?

One stat that has seemingly disappeared from the SF Giants in 2026

The Giants are rarely a team that has been associated with power. That said, they usually sit in the middle of the pack for that category. In 2025, they were 19th in baseball with 173 home runs.

You want to hear something interesting? This will highlight how much baseball has changed over the past 15 years. The 2012 Giants had the fewest home runs with 103. They did not have a particularly powerful lineup, but they hit with a decent average (.269) and reached base at a high rate (.327). That team moved the line better than most.

The game has changed, and hitters are now swinging more for the fences than ever before. This has also led to a higher strikeout rate. The blame is often put on the hitters for this, but that assumption undermines just how good the pitching has become, both in terms of stuff and control. Hitting is hard, and hitters are trying to take advantage of the few opportunities they have to do some damage.

The Giants have hitters who can hit with power. Last season, Willy Adames became the first Giants hitter since Barry Bonds in 2004 to reach 30 home runs in a season. Rafael Devers has routinely reached that mark in his career, including launching 35 home runs split between the Boston Red Sox and Giants last year.

Both Matt Chapman and Heliot Ramos have shown the ability to hit at least 20 home runs as well. In the case of Ramos, he is off to a brutal start, but his at-bats have looked better against the Baltimore Orioles.

At the end of the day, the Giants still have seven home runs. It is usually a pretty good indicator that can be tied to a team's win-loss record. Teams that hit more home runs tend to win more games. Using that logic, it is not too surprising that the Giants only have seven home runs and a 6-9 record.

On the bright side, the Giants have cut down on the strikeouts. They have a 21.6 percent strikeout rate, which is 12th in baseball. They also have a 6.1 percent walk rate, which is last among all 30 teams.

A couple of numbers stand out relating to the Giants' power outage. They have 5.4 percent barrel rate and a 37.0 percent hard-hit rate, both of which rank near the bottom in baseball. To put it differently, they are not hitting the ball hard, and not catching the barrel of the bat even when they do.

This is just one of those starts that is hard to believe. It is still early in the year to draw any hard conclusions about a team, but hitting without power (and also not reaching base) makes it hard to score runs.