Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images

This season was supposed to be something different for the Giants. Following last year’s 81-81 finish, president of baseball operations and franchise icon Buster Posey went outside the box to hire manager Tony Vitello straight from the college ranks, and added free agents Luis Arraez and Harrison Bader to upgrade a couple of the lineup’s dead spots. Throw in a full season of mid-2025 acquisition Rafael Devers, and the team had reasonable hope of reaching the playoffs for the first time since 2021, and just the second time in the past 10 seasons. Instead, the 2026 Giants haven’t spent a day over .500, and at 58-83, they own the National League’s second-worst record. Like the Tigers, they’re in danger of making some dubious history, in their case by falling short of their BaseRuns-projected win total by the largest margin of any team since 2002.

As I explained on Thursday, the Tigers are nearly 11 full wins short of their Pythagorean-projected win total, an estimate based upon their totals of runs scored and runs allowed using the formula Winning % = RS^2 /(RS^2 +RA^2). Out of all the teams playing full seasons in the Wild Card era (not the strike-shortened 1995 season or the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, but including 2026 for the purposes of comparison), that’s the third-largest shortfall.

Where Pythagorean projections use actual runs scored and allowed to calculate an expected winning percentage, BaseRuns uses estimated runs scored and allowed, derived from familiar statistical components such as hits, walks, hit-by-pitches, stolen bases, and so on. Those run estimates are then plugged into the Pythagenpat formula — a variant of Bill James’ Pythagorean formula where the exponent itself is a function of the scoring environment via the formula X = ((RS + RA)/G)^0.287 — for a second-order estimate of winning percentage. Both the Pythagorean and BaseRuns estimated winning percentages provide useful if imperfect ways of measuring teams’ underlying performance and helping to identify outliers in either direction.

Our historical data for BaseRuns — which you can access through our Projected Standings page — only goes back to 2002, but for that timeframe, the Giants have the fourth-largest margin between their actual and expected win totals. They have some ignominious company alongside a couple of other teams from this season:

The Giants’ season started so poorly that it took them until their third game to score their first run, by which point, Vitello had already made headlines for getting “all fire and brimstone” while addressing his players in a tone that may have impressed 20-year-old kids concerned with keeping their scholarships but not seasoned professionals. Bad play and bad news continued to follow for reasons as varied as their absurdly low walk rate, the slow starts of Devers and Willy Adames, Bader’s alcohol-related scooter crash, in which he severely injured his left foot while already sidelined by plantar fasciitis, and — most damaging from a public relations standpoint — a Pride Night cap controversy. The last of those alienated fans, damaged Posey’s reputation and riled up another franchise legend, retiring broadcaster Mike Krukow. The highlight of the team’s season might be the high marks it received for the prospects acquired when trading Arraez, Heliot Ramos, and Robbie Ray ahead of the August 3 trade deadline.

Picking apart a team’s performance relative to its Pythagorean record generally starts with checking its records in blowouts and one-run games. On Thursday I noted that the Tigers have been very good in the former (23-14 in games decided by five or more runs for a .611 winning percentage, fifth in the majors) but very bad in the latter (13-23 in one-run games for a .361 winning percentage, second-worst in the majors). The Giants don’t have as interesting a contrast, in that they’re an unimpressive 21-26 (.447) in blowouts and a major league-worst 12-25 (.324) in one-run games. That’s left them “only” 4.77 wins short of their Pythagorean projection.

Diving into BaseRuns discrepancies generally means focusing on sequencing. This many singles, doubles, triples, homers, walks, stolen bases, double plays grounded into, and so forth usually averages out to this many runs, but — for example — a team hitting poorly with runners in scoring position and piling up solo homers is likely to undershoot that estimate. Oddly, the Tigers’ actual runs scored and allowed per game (4.39 and 4.05, respectively) are just a hair’s breadth from their BaseRuns estimates (4.37 and 4.04, respectively), but for the Giants, that’s not the case. They’ve scored 4.16 runs per game, 0.22 less than their projected rate and 23rd in the majors overall; meanwhile, they’ve allowed 4.67 runs per game, 0.3 more than projected, and 21st overall. Pinpointing where they’ve gone wrong, at least on the offensive side, is more of a challenge. Here’s a table showing some key situational splits:

Adjusted for their ballpark, the Giants’ offense has been two points of wRC+ below league average overall. They’ve been a point better than the league average with the bases empty and four points better with runners in scoring position, but five points worse than the league average when considering all runners on base. While they’ve been a point better than average in medium-leverage situations, they’ve been three points worse than average in low-leverage sitautions, and seven points worse in high-leverage situations.

While that may not look like it should add up to much of a shortfall, the key here is opportunity. The Giants walked a ridiculously low 5.7% of the time through the end of May, two percentage points lower than any other team this year to that point, and lower than any team in the integration era — in a season when the league-wide rate (8.9%) has been higher than any full season since 2009. The Giants have since improved in that department to the point that their major league-worst rate is only 0.1 points below the 29th-ranked team (the Blue Jays), but that has still cost them not only runners on base, but also the plate appearances that come from keeping the line moving in those advantageous situations. You can see that the table shows the average number of plate appearances each team has taken in a given situation. The Giants have 59 more plate appearances than average with the bases empty, 85 fewer than average with runners in scoring position, and 96 fewer than average with men on base. They have far more low-leverage plate appearances than the average team, and far fewer high-leverage ones. So their almost-average offense isn’t giving itself as many opportunities in important situations, and in some of those, it’s also underperforming substantially.

On a league-wide basis, teams hit for a wRC+ that’s nine points higher with men on base (105) than with the bases empty (96), but for the Giants, the margin is only three points (100 to 97). On an individual basis, three of the five hitters with the most plate appearances with runners on base have a wRC+ that’s at least 21 points lower in that context than with the bases empty, namely Devers, Adames, and Bryce Eldridge:

Meanwhile, four of the top nine players in terms of plate appearances with runners on base, all with a higher wRC+ in that context than with the bases empty, are no longer with the team, namely the since-traded Arraez and Ramos, and the injured Schmitt and Chapman, both of whom are out for the season; Schmitt underwent surgery to repair the torn meniscus in his left knee on July 31, while Chapman underwent core muscle surgery in mid-August. On the subject of shutdowns, Adames, who has struggled this year while battling back woes, may now be done for the year after spraining the ulnar collateral ligament of his left elbow in late August.

A couple other things stand out about the Giants offense, the first of which applies to the table above. This season, 57.8% of all home runs have been hit with the bases empty, but for the Giants, that rate is 62.4%. Devers (68.8%), Adames (66.7%), and Eldridge (80%) — three of the four Giants with double-digit totals — have solo homer rates much higher than average, while the fourth, Schmitt, is right around average (57.1%). All of this has seeped into the situational table, but it bears repeating: The timing of their home runs could be better.

My final point on the offense is that while stolen bases and caught stealing are accounted for in BaseRuns, other aspects of baserunning, such as taking an extra base, are not. As a team, the Giants have a 77% success rate on steals, right at the major league average, but they’ve stolen only 67 bases, the majors’ fifth-lowest total. They’re 6.1 runs below average in terms of their overall baserunning, the third-lowest mark in the majors. At Baseball Reference, we can see that while they’re above-average in the number of times they’ve advanced from first to third on a single, they’re below average when it comes to scoring from first on a double or from second on a single, and overall, their 40% rate of extra bases taken is two points below average.

I think you can see that there are ways the Giants offense has missed the mark. Using the same type of comparison, it’s not hard to see where the Giants’ pitching has gone wrong:

Giants pitchers have held opposing batters to a 99 wRC+ overall. They’ve been one point better than the league average with the bases empty, one point worse than the league average with runners on base… and 11 points worse with runners in scoring position, where they’ve given the opposition 135 extra opportunities relative to the average team. Giants pitchers have been very good in low-leverage situations, but six points worse than average in medium-leverage situations, and 28 points worse than average in high-leverage situations. Good grief.

As for individuals, here’s a similar table to the one for the hitters, but comparing their bases-empty performance with that when runners are in scoring position, since that’s an area where the team has been significantly worse than league average. Since we don’t present situational pitching wRC+ on the site, I’m sticking with wOBA here:

While the subpar performances of the two starters with the most plate appearances with runners in scoring position (Webb and Roupp) are offset by those of the next two (Houser and the since-traded Ray), only three of the other pitchers have a lower wOBA allowed with runners in scoring position than with the bases empty. Five relievers are at least 95 points worse, including Walker and Hentges, two of their top setup men. It’s not great.

The Giants didn’t look like world-beaters coming into the season, but even matching their projected win total of 82 would have constituted a mild improvement, and with Playoff Odds of 31.4%, they had a reasonable chance to take an even bigger step forward. Instead, they’ve been an absolute mess from the outset, and particularly bad timing on both sides of the ball is just one more reason why.