Reason for optimism: Fans are blessed with a core quintet of consistently excellent 4.0+ WAR players.
Reason for pessimism: That consistency leads to an uncomfortable query: Where's the upside?
They certainly took one of the strangest paths possible to get where they wanted, but on Oct. 11, 2016, shortly before midnight ET, the San Francisco Giants were as well-positioned as possible to extend their curious even-year success.
Down 2-1 in the series but with a three-run lead at home against the Chicago Cubs in the National League Division Series and three outs away from forcing a one-game playoff with the best team in baseball, the Giants' bizarre season looked set to continue. They had spent the first half of the season locked in a battle for the best record in baseball; astoundingly, they spent the second half of the year locked in a battle for the worst record in baseball. It was an odd path, but in the end, the Giants blew the lead against the Cubs, lost the series and essentially finished as what they were -- an 87-win team with 87-win talent and a run-differential nearly identical to their hated NL West foes, the Los Angeles Dodgers.
In the Braves preview, I argued that Atlanta's surprisingly successful second-half performance stands as a harbinger of things to come in 2017. Should the Giants fear the same fate from the other side of the coin? I don't think so. The presence of Buster Posey, Madison Bumgarner, Joe Panik and the Brandon duo, Belt and Crawford -- all homegrown -- and their consistent brilliance on both sides of the runs scored/allowed ledger virtually guarantees San Francisco will outscore its opponents and finish above .500. What the Giants want to do though, is win the NL West with 90-plus wins, not ease into the playoffs as a wild card, which means they need to figure out a way to get a little better.
Marginal gains, therefore, are needed in the form of untapped upside or an improved roster, and here's where their consistency actually acts as an impediment.
How much better can any of the core five get? We've seen breakout seasons from all and, with the possible exception of Panik, probably their peaks. So year-over-year gains have to come elsewhere, and the Giants don't have any easy areas of improvement. It's not going to come on defense, where San Francisco has finished second, second and third over the past three years in my adjusted defensive efficiency rankings.
On offense, the Giants were the rare team that got virtually no meaningful sub-replacement-level performance from everyday players -- just 274 at-bats from Gregor Blanco.
Giants fans certainly remember the bullpen fiasco that marked the end of last season, but over the year, with a collective ERA of 3.65, their relievers were materially better than MLB-average (3.93). (To be fair, a couple of awful bullpens skewed the average upward; the Giants' ERA essentially sat right on the league median.) That leaves the rotation and underscores the importance of last year's in-season trade for Matt Moore.
Despite a 3.71 ERA that ranked fifth best in baseball, San Francisco's rotation had enormous issues when Bumgarner, Johnny Cueto or Jeff Samardzija weren't on the mound. Jake Peavy and Matt Cain collectively posted a ghastly 5.62 ERA over 38 starts, until Moore came in and turned in league-average work in 12 starts over the last two months of the season. That is all that's needed from a No. 4 starter with Bumgarner and Cueto anchoring the rotation.
The bad news is that Cain is still slated as the most likely fifth starter when camp breaks. At this point of his career, Cain shouldn't ever be allowed to face more than nine batters in an outing, which means a middle-relief role. That'll happen, hopefully quickly for the Giants, because Ty Blach, who outdueled Clayton Kershaw in a vitally important late-season game in October, is the better rotation choice.
I'm so enamored of the Giants' core that I think they have another division title in their future. Giants and Dodgers fans know this, of course, but others might forget that, despite the San Francisco's dynastylike postseason success since 2010, Los Angeles has won the past four division titles. The Dodgers stand a better chance of winning 100 games, I'll grant you that, but the consistency of the Giants means they only need to get peak performance from someone such as Denard Span or a breakout year from Jarrett Parker or Moore or maybe even an in-season acquisition of a potent bat to get to their win total into the 90s and edge the Dodgers for the division crown. That leads to an "over" call, and it is made just a bit more enticing with a hurdle of 87.5 wins, down a game from last year.
2017 projection: 92-70 (first, NL West)
Bet recommendation: Over