ESPN Chalk's Joe Peta is sharing his season win total projections for every MLB team, including a reason for optimism and pessimism.
Plus, he recommends an over/under play, or a pass. This is the entry for the San Francisco Giants.
San Francisco Giants
Reason for optimism: Injuries forced the Giants to bat the equivalent of two Zack Cozarts and a pitcher every game last season and they still sported an above-average offense.
Reason for pessimism: The pitching staff is sneaky old, "clutch" defense played a hidden role in 2014's wild-card berth and every school kid in San Francisco knows 2015 is an odd year.
Picking up on a theme in the Dodgers write-up, the Giants haven't been nearly as offensively challenged as their underdog status in nearly every postseason series since 2010 would have you believe. Thanks to the offensive-suppression features of AT&T Park, the Giants' league rankings will always make them appear to possess a pedestrian offense, at best. But, what if, during the years they won the World Series, you look through the lens of away games, a much more level playing field for comparisons? In 2010, 2012, and 2014, their road runs scored rankings (sixth, first and third respectively) were considerably better than their overall runs scored rankings (ninth, sixth and fifth).
While that provides a pretty stark illustration of how much better the Giants offense was than it appeared, their ability to rank fifth overall last year is all the more remarkable when you consider who they sent up to the plate during the regular season. For full-time players (more than 500 plate appearances) Zack Cozart, the Cincinnati Reds starting shortstop, was the worst hitter in the majors posting .221/.268/.300 results over the course of 544 plate appearances. Due to injuries, and a very weak bench, the Giants got sub-replacement level offensive production from nine different players that Bruce Bochy penciled into the starting lineup during parts of last season. Their combined production? .200/.258/.311 in 1,094 plate appearances.
Once the playoffs came around, the starters were healthy and the offending players had either been released or where buried on the bench, which is why the Giants were much better than oddsmakers priced them at the time.
It also means that they are probably better than they are priced this year as well, although losing Hunter Pence for the first month of the season may be starting the cycle anew. The Giants lineup is among the most stable in baseball.
Nori Aoki, who possesses a high-contact, low-strikeout rate approach, should thrive in AT&T Park taking over in left field for Michael Morse. Less excitingly for Giants fans, Casey McGehee will man the hot corner after six straight Opening Day starts from Pablo Sandoval. Not only does McGhee have very tough shoes to fill offensively, his defense points to the one area of regression San Francisco fans should be concerned with.
The Giants overcame two huge holes in their lineup in part because of outstanding defense. They ranked third in baseball in adjusted defensive efficiency, which measures not just batted balls turned into outs, but the erasure of existing baserunners as well. The problem is that even if all eight fielders returned, the Giants would be unlikely to repeat that efficiency, because they beneftted from a very rare form of sequencing luck: The Giants turned 154 double plays last year, which represented an astoundingly high 11.3 percent of singles, walks, HBP and runners on error allowed.
You might be able to explain that if the staff had extreme groundball tendencies, but they just ranked 10th in groundball rate. The Giants may give up an extra 30-35 runs this year and while some of the cause may be visible to the eye thanks to the plodding McGhee, there's a good chance some of that regression will come from a much-harder-to-detect, reduced double play pace. (And perhaps McGhee will contribute to that as well.)
Even without Pence for a month, the offense is better than most think and is still quite young. The pitching staff though (and you might not suspect this given the heroic exploits of 25-year old Madison Bumgarner in October), is really old. Like Yankees-old. Baseball-Reference calculates pitching age using a formula relying on weighted average innings pitched and they had the Giants with, by far, the oldest staff in the league in 2014 at 31.7 years old (the only other staff older than 30 was the Phillies at 30.1).
That red flag aside, since the Giants only got half-seasons from both Matt Cain (due to injury) and trading deadline-pickup Jake Peavy, the rotation may very well be better than it was in 2014. The bullpen, with a variety of matchup skill sets expertly used by Bochy, continues to be a huge asset and thanks to advanced pitch framing studies, we now know Buster Posey can lay claim to being both the best hitting and best defensive catcher in the league.
Odd year nonsense aside, San Francisco is poised to follow its well-established formula. Get into the playoffs as an under-appreciated team and win short series with dominant pitching. At a current market of 82.5 wins, 1.5 lower than the Padres, there is value in again backing the Giants.
2015 projection: 85-77 (second, NL West)
Bet recommendation: Over