12 Game Poll: Some Concerns Surrounding the Giants 4-8 Start

There is an old adage in baseball: "You can't make the playoffs in April, but you can certainly miss them." This isn't as true in the current era with the addition of multiple wild cards in each league, but digging a deep hole is still ill advised. At the time of writing this the Giants are officially 12 games in, which for perspective is only 7.4 percent of the Major League season. It's been two weeks. Oddly enough, Spring Training feels like it was 6 months ago. After finishing the Cactus League schedule with the fewest losses for the second straight season, the Giants have all but left that behind them. Through 12 games, they stand at 4-8 with a -21 run differential, which is good for last in the National League.

Before breaking down the start, understand that 12 games in a Major League season is a puny sample size. Players don't play a ton in Spring Training anymore as they try and avoid injury, so unless you're a guy that is fighting for a roster spot, you're generally not totally ramped up on Opening Day. However, there are still some plays and decisions that should raise some eyebrows and cause some concern.

The Bats

Starting with the obvious, the bats have been pretty icy. The Giants rank dead last in MLB in runs/game (3.0), home runs (4), and .OPS (.605). They are bottom 3 in MLB in on base percentage and slugging percentage, hence the lowest .OPS. You have some every day players REALLY struggling right now. Devers, Ramos, Bader, Lee, and Bailey are 5 guys that the Giants expect to run out as regular starters. They are all hitting under .200. The only player currently hitting at or above his career slash line (avg/slug/obp) is Matt Chapman (.304/.478/.360).

I think the Giants will start to hit better and end up being a middle of the pack offensive team. I always tell teams that no matter how good of a hitter you are personally or how good of an offensive team you have, collectively you will go through a slump at some point during a season. Hitting is volatile. When it's this bad it magnifies the other things that are going wrong like...

The Bullpen

This was the biggest question mark heading into the season. The Giants traded away most of the bullpen last trade deadline (Tyler Rogers, Camilo Doval) and then lost potential closer Randy Rodriguez to Tommy John Surgery. They didn't really go out and replace those guys with proven commodities, which is fine if you have confidence that the Minor League system has competent arms. So far the bullpen has just been OK. The Giants haven't played a lot with the lead to force guys into high leverage situations to get a true litmus test. In the couple games they have had the opportunity to lock down a game, they haven't really done so. Ryan Walker was shaky in his lone save opportunity in San Diego and then with a 4-2 lead on Monday night, the bullpen couldn't keep Adrian Houser's stranded runners from cashing, eventually leading to a 6-4 loss.

Currently the Giants rank 21st in MLB in bullpen ERA (4.65), 21st in WHIP (1.43) and 19th in opponent's batting average (.242). I think as currently constructed, this is a middle of the pack bullpen at best, but we will see as we get more opportunities for all of these guys.

Bench Usage

The two things above can make a manager look really bad. When a team isn't hitting, people want to blame how the lineup is constructed. When a team has relievers cashing in a lot of runs, people want to blame how they're being used and who's going in the game. What if the guys just aren't that good? Sometimes the manager doesn't have a lot of quality options at his disposal and I don't always think those are fair critiques.

If I had a critique of Vitello (strictly from an x's and o's baseball perspective, not the interviews or anything off the field that people want to complain about), it's the usage of the bench. As of Tuesday morning (4/7) there were 3 players in all of MLB that started on Opening Day Major League rosters that had yet to receive at bats. Two of them were Giants (Christian Koss and Jared Oliva). Koss is currently listed as a "pitcher" on the MLB stat pages because he's thrown more innings (1) than received at bats (0). Oliva started last night (4/7) and Koss will start today (4/8), but that is WAY too long to put a guy on the bench without seeing Major League pitching. If you're going to plug those guys into the lineup once every two weeks without any at bats in between, you're setting them up for failure. And as you saw last night, Oliva went 0-2, failed to get a bunt down, and then was back picked at 1st base after he reached on an error. Major League Baseball moves FAST. If you don't put a guy into a game for two weeks, this is what you're going to get.

Overall Baseball Plays

Sunday afternoon stood out to me as a game that is what baseball looks like when the team isn't very good. You're looking to salvage a split of a 4-game series at home, your ace gives you the effort you need, leaves the game with a 2-1 lead, and then you cough it up to lose 3 out of 4 on the weekend and fall to 3-7 for the year. It wasn't as much the coughing it up part as much as the bad baseball that we saw throughout the game.

Here we have Jerar Encarnacion, who has been a bright spot with the bat and is trying to earn some more playing time, get thrown out at second after hitting a ball off the wall because he takes a horrible angle and turn around 1st.

Then after coughing up the lead, the Giants get the lead off runner on in the 9th inning. Down 3 runs Matt Chapman gets thrown out stealing and just like that the game is pretty much over.

That is unacceptable baseball. If you are not the tying run, you simply cannot make outs on the bases. I understand Devers is a double play threat and taking the force off by stealing the base does have it's advantages in a regular scenario, but this was a bad decision by Chapman to run. You need to be 100 percent when advancing to the next base if you are not the tying or go ahead run.

Mix this in with a catcher's interference error and second defensive error along with Vitello getting thrown out of the game for arguing a baseline infraction and you have an UGLY 5-2 Easter Sunday loss.

Personally, I find these types of things more concerning than the hitting. You can still play a good baseball game if the team doesn't hit. But you need to continue to play with good process in order to give your team a chance to win. The Giants are down, but again, it is EARLY. Look for these types of plays over the next couple weeks.