4 causes the red-hot San Francisco Giants are off to their finest begin since 2003

Four weeks after the start of the 2021 season, it is not surprising that two NL West teams achieve the best record in the National League. Even after six defeats in the last eight games, World Series defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers is 15-8 with the best running differential in the sport (plus 30). Almost everyone expected to see her at the top of the leaderboard.

The other 15-8 NL West team isn’t the upstart from San Diego Padres, however. It’s the San Francisco Giants, a team that have won seven of their last nine games and have been 13-5 since their 2-3 start. The Giants blew up the Colorado Rockies on Monday (SF 12, COL 0) and already brought them six shutout wins this year. This is the best start in 23 games since the beginning of 2003 between 18 and 5.

“It was nice to have a really good game, a clear defensive game and then a few runs,” manager Gabe Kapler told reporters, including MLB.com’s Maria Guardado, after Monday’s win. “There’s not much to complain about tonight. I usually spend about an hour after the games taking things apart. I mean, what is there to take apart? The guys did a great job.”

Four weeks is out of season, although it does have a real impact on post-season odds. According to SportsLine, the Giants came into the season with a post-season rate of 8.7 percent. That is now up to 30.9 percent. FanGraphs says their postseason odds have increased from 5.7 percent to 20.3 percent. That’s a significant increase in just 23 games (14 percent of the season).

The Giants almost made it through the postseason last year, keep that in mind. They finished on the same record as the Milwaukee Brewers, but the Brewers held the tiebreaker, so they got the # 8 seed and San Francisco went home. The Giants responded with a very active off-season (nine free agents who had signed MLB contracts) and now they’re being rewarded with wins.

Here are four reasons the Giants are starting so hot this season.

1. Posey and Longoria look rejuvenated

The 2021 Giants are built similarly to the Giants teams of the Mini Dynasty era in the early 2010s. These clubs were designed to prevent running and were insulted just enough to win. This year the Giants achieved an average of 4.00 runs per game, which is below the average of 4.31 NL. Your team 97 OPS + is basically league average. They were good offensively, but not great.

Individually, Buster Posey and Evan Longoria were great. Both look rejuvenated – Posey quit last season and looks as physically fresh as he has in years – and they were the club’s two best players in the early days. The payment:

Buster Posey	58	.327 / .397 / .654	194	5	7th	0.6
Evan Longoria	66	.316 / .409 / .614	188	4th	12th	0.8

Posey recently had his first two-homer game since 2016 and has already hit his performance for the 2018 homerun (five of 488 record appearances). From 2018-19, Posey penned a .270 / .340 / .375 batting line with 12 home runs in just under 900 record appearances, and he looked like a catcher nearing the end of his line in his 30s. This year it looks like Vintage Posey.

“I think Buster’s bat speed and the way his lower half is working right now is what I have in mind,” Kapler told Guardado. “His bat speed is great, and his hips and lower half work well. His body moves well.”

Longoria’s offensive decline has not been subtle in recent years. From 2017 to 20, he hit .254 / .306 / .424 in almost 2,000 record appearances, which corresponds to an OPS + of 97. Even if you adjust to the spacious Oracle Park, Longoria has been a slightly below average batsman in recent years. Now he is producing like in his prime, even if he has a hamstring injury.

“He got in a good matchup (against Austin Gomber, the left of the Rockies) and took advantage of it, drove baseball for us a couple of times and didn’t endanger his health, which was the # 1 goal of the day.” “Kapler told Guardado after Monday’s game in which Longoria scored two hits and drove in three runs before being pulled out of the blowout to rest his Achilles tendon.

Beyond Posey and Longoria, the Giants get good work from Mike Yastrzemski (117 OPS +) and Brandon Belt (112 OPS +), and Darin Ruf annihilates left-handers (148 OPS +), and that’s it for the offense. Nobody else on the roster has a WOW season on their plate. Posey and Longoria turned back the clock early and are aggressively carrying the Giants.

“We don’t have the feeling that we probably clicked all cylinders offensively,” Posey told Guardado. “Our pitching and defense have been really good. In my experience, playing on some really good teams is number 1 to pitch well and play defense. It’s a good start. It’s early, but it definitely is a good start. ” . ”

2. The rotation has been switched off

The San Francisco mini dynasty in the early 2010s was made possible by a rotation anchored by three round one picks: Matt Cain (# 25 in 2002), Tim Lincecum (# 10 in 2006), and Madison Bumgarner (No. 10 in 2006). 10 in 2007). This year’s rotation is headed by former Cincinnati Reds: Johnny Cueto, Anthony DeSclafani, Kevin Gausman, and Alex Wood.

This foursome, along with native Righty Logan Webb and free agent reclamation project Aaron Sanchez, helped give the Giants the most dominant rotation in baseball to begin with. Seriously. Their 2.11 ERA is by a considerable margin the lowest in baseball (the Padres follow with a 2.42 ERA), and they do it a bit unconventionally. Namely:

• Strike rate: 24.2 percent (14th highest in MLB)
• Base ball rate: 51.5 percent (highest in MLB)
• Hard contact rate: 28.9 percent (fifth lowest in MLB)

The Giants don’t do it with loud strikeout sums like the Dodgers or Padres. They have a lot of weak contact, especially on the ground. DeSclafani hit nine in his three-hit shutout Monday and he also allowed nine balls in play with an exit speed below 90 mph. Weak contact with the ground is a great way to suppress offense.

“I think a lot of this gives the Giants credit for overall pitch design,” DeSclafani Guardado said of his success this year (1.50 ERA in five starts). “I got my fastball back to 2019 levels and helped myself get my slider shape back to 2019 levels. I think credit goes to you for maybe realizing what went wrong last year , and helping me fix these issues. ” “”

As good as the rotation was – and it was very good – it is not without risk. Cueto is currently out with a lat injury, DeSclafani and Wood are no strangers to the injured list, and Sanchez rarely breaks 90 mph on his fastball after major shoulder surgery last year. There are some depth issues, but this is the most effective rotation in baseball right now.

3. The defense is much improved

Preventing runs doesn’t just affect the man on the hill. Defense also plays an important role, especially when the pitching stick creates as many weak ground balls as it does in San Francisco. Earlier this year, the Giants were the best defensive team in baseball according to Defensive Efficiency, and they have improved significantly over the past few years.

• 2017: .679 DE (28th in MLB)
• 2018: 692 DE (14.)
• 2019: .699 EN (7.)
• 2020: .699 EN (12.)
• 2021: .739 DE (1.)

In short, Defensive Efficiency tells us that this season the Giants turned 73.9 percent of the balls in play into outs, the top grade in the game. They had a terrible defense in 2017 and were closer to the middle of the field by 2018-20.

This year, despite an older squad (defense is typically a young player skill and San Francisco’s positional players averaging 31.2 years old, the oldest in baseball) and many injuries, the Giants play like an elite defensive team. You had to move people in the meantime and get guys out of position.

“It’s a testament to the work Kai (Correa) has done with all of our infielders to prepare them all to move around the diamond,” Kapler recently told reporters, including Jacob Rudner of Mercury News. “… We have to prepare these guys for anything.”

Thanks to the ability of their pitching staff to create weak contact and the power of the defense to turn that weak contact into outs, the Giants have the opponent’s second lowest hit average (.205) and third lowest opponent’s hit percentage (.330) in MLB. San Francisco allowed 3.04 runs per game to start, nearly four-tenths of a run better than any other team.

“Overall, our defense looked really solid,” Brandon Crawford told Rudner. “We do the pieces we’re supposed to do and occasionally do some really good pieces. We looked really good, really solid, all around … luckily we have depth and can fill some guys in. We can still go out and…” win a baseball game. ”

4. The schedule was favorable

You can only play the schedule you were given, and so far the Giants have only played three games against teams that FanGraphs predicts to top over 500 points this year. They took two out of three of the Padres at home in the second series of the season, otherwise they saw a lot of Mariners, Marlins and Rockies early on. The schedule was sure to be good.

And give credit to the Giants for making this affordable schedule the best record in the league. You did a good job, bank profits. However, it will soon be a little more difficult. The Giants will play the Padres six times in their next eleven games, and they have seven games with the Dodgers coming up in May. These 13 games against NL West’s other two powerhouses give us a good idea of ​​whether San Francisco is real.