San Francisco Giants: 2016 in Review
The San Francisco Giants even year magic ran out. A look back at the 2016 San Francisco Giants
Unfortunately, all good things come to an end. For the San Francisco Giants, their even year magic voodoo UFC chokehold on this decade is over. The Chicago Cubs ended their season, Madison Bumgarner‘s postseason dominance and even year run in the NLDS.
Bumgarner shut out the Mets in the Wild Card game in an epic duel with Noah Syndergaard and the Giants had to scratch and claw and hold off the St. Louis Cardinals in order to reach the game.
The Giants started 2016 looking like it was going to be a cakewalk to a division title. They had a better first half record than the Cubs with a 57-33 record, despite injuries to players like Hunter Pence.
At the deadline, the Giants acquired Will Smith to strengthen the bullpen. They added Matt Moore to give them four solid starters and Eduardo Nunez to give them some speed at the top of the order.
Unfortunately, the Giants bullpen had more leaks than a presidential campaign and that lead to their downfall. The Giants didn’t have a reliable option to get the last three outs of the game and their second half record was 12 games under .500. It got so bad that Joe Nathan, who is over 40 and coming off two Tommy John surgeries, earned a spot in the bullpen.
Let’s take a look at each part of the Giants and look back at their 2016 season.
Offense
One area the Giants may look to upgrade this off-season is their offense. One of the things they can benefit from next year is health. Joe Panik missed 35 games. Hunter Pence missed 56 games. Matt Duffy only played in 70 games before he got injured and subsequently traded.
The Giants were 19th in runs and 11th in doubles but 28th in homers. They were seventh in OBP but just 25th in slugging. In 2016, 111 players had 20 or more homers. Guys like Gary Sanchez who played in only 53 games hit the plateau. Brandon Belt led the team with 17 homers. That put him at 118th.
Buster Posey was his usual productive self, however, in the second half, he went from 11 homers to just three with his OPS dropping over 100 points. Brandon Crawford had his OPS drop from .807 to .735 in the second half as well, though he did lead the league in triples with 11.
Eduardo Nunez should give the Giants a bit of a different look in his first full season with the club. In just 50 games, he had 13 steals, which put him at second place on the club. For a team with not a lot of home run power, but the ability to get on base and get hits, Nunez could be very productive next year.
Starting Pitching
The strength of the San Francisco Giants continues to be their starting pitching and the same held true in 2016.
It was another excellent year for ace Madison Bumgarner. Mad Bum made his fourth straight All-Star team. He was seventh in WAR, fourth in ERA, fourth in WHIP, second in innings, third in strikeouts and tied for the lead in games started with 34. He continues to be among the best pitchers in the game today.
The Giants went out in free agency before last season and added Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija to make the rotation deeper. Cueto was an All-Star himself in 2016. He was second in WAR, fifth in ERA, third in wins and eighth in WHIP. Him and Bumgarner form one of the best 1-2 punches in the game.
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Samardzija improved over his sub-par 2015 with the Chicago White Sox. He cut his ERA by over a full run, while still throwing over 200 innings.
The Giants were counting on veterans Jake Peavy and Matt Cain to form the back end of the rotation, but both had ERAs over 5.00 this year. Peavy will be a free agent, but Cain will more than likely have either a starting spot or a long man role next year. He’s due $21 million in 2017 and in 2018 will either have a $21 million salary or a $7.5 million buyout.
Those two performances led to the Giants adding Matt Moore before the deadline. Moore went 6-5 with an ERA over 4.00, but did pitch two excellent games against the Dodgers including almost no-hitting them.
Ty Blach and Albert Suarez came up and contributed to the rotation and could be fifth starter options in 2017.
Bullpen
The Achilles heel for the Giants all season long was the bullpen. The Giants were 27th in K/9 ratio. They were 15th in ERA and 11th in FIP. It wasn’t necessarily getting to the end of games that was the problem. It was those pesky final three outs.
Santiago Casilla started out as the closer but didn’t finish there. He had his ERA jump almost two runs in the second half and saw his K rate drop by almost three strikeouts per nine innings. The Giants had Joe Nathan close out a game. They had Sergio Romo closing games.
Instead of getting Andrew Miller, Mark Melancon or Aroldis Chapman, the Giants made a deal for Will Smith instead. Smith had an ERA under 3.00 and had a good strikeout rate, but is not the end of game option the Giants truly needed.
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Derek Law and Hunter Strickland give the Giants two young righties that can be setup men for the club moving forward. Javier Lopez continued to be an excellent LOOGY, but he’s 39 and a free agent.
George Kontos missed about a month early on but came back and continued to be a reliever to be counted on for Bruce Bochy.