The Giants are struggling to score runs. Here are some reasons why

New York Times

14-05-2025

The year is 202(fill in your favorite year here), and you're worried about the Giants' ability to score runs. So it has been, so it shall be.
A lack of runs was the major concern for the 2025 Giants on Opening Day, and it was easy to forget that when the wins were stacking up. Now that cold bats have led to the Giants' first four-game losing streak of the season, though, it's the only concern worth worrying about. It looks and feels worse than it is because of recency bias, park effects and league-wide scoring levels, and it helps to remember the Giants are still around the league average in all sorts of stats, from home runs to OPS+ to runs scored. But that doesn't mean it's not bad. It's definitely not great.
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There's no quick fix, and there's no one-size-fits-all explanation. There's a symphony of reasons why the Giants aren't scoring. Some of the hitters in this symphony are blowing kazoos. Some of them have swallowed their kazoos. At least one of the hitters is poor Roger.
Let's look at just how and why the Giants are struggling.
If you've watched the Giants this season, you are not surprised by this factlet. But you might be surprised by just how extreme it's been.
Let's compare the Giants to their preseason projections from ZiPS, which was actually a little bullish on the lineup. We'll use wRC+ because it accounts for league and park. Don't be intimidated by the nerd stats. Grab them by the lapels and make them work for you. All you need to know is that 100 is average, and that a player with a 95 wRC+ is 5 percent worse than the league-average hitter. A 105 wRC+ is 5 percent better, and so on.
The Giants had a lot of hitters who were expected to provide league-average production or better. Several of them have actually matched or outpaced their projections, and we'll start with them:
These players represent the good news, and there are a lot of them. That's six regulars this season who are doing even better than expected, which is generally where you want a team to be. There's nobody on an MVP pace, and nobody is wildly outpacing their expectations, but if two-thirds of the lineup is doing what you want them to, the offense should be doing fine.
Then there's the other third.
The Giants have several hitters performing better than expected, but none on an MVP pace. The Giants have several hitters performing worse than expected, but a few of those are on an LVP pace. There have been 226 batters in baseball this season with at least 100 plate appearances. Here's where these hitters rank in wRC+ among those 226:
166. Willy Adames
220. LaMonte Wade, Jr.
224. Patrick Bailey
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If it makes you feel better, Joc Pederson and Tommy Pham are right next each other, between Wade and Bailey. None of them are slapping anything right now.
This does not make you feel better. Adames' numbers are below average and worse than projected, but they're also a standard kind of unproductive. A lineup with as many over-performing hitters as the 2025 Giants have, so far, can handle players with Adames' numbers.
Wade and Bailey have been two of the very worst hitters in baseball, and they've been getting a lot of plate appearances. And while Adames hasn't been nearly as ineffective, only 12 players in baseball have had more PA, so his subpar numbers reflect outcomes that have been happening more often compared to other players.
It's all been enough to drag the offense down. It doesn't help that Tyler Fitzgerald was doing well, and his at-bats while on the injured list have been replaced by hitters who aren't doing nearly as well, but if there's one thing the 2025 Giants shouldn't complain about, it's injuries. Even with Fitzgerald, Casey Schmitt and Jerar Encarnación on the IL, this has been a healthier team than most.
There's no way to gussy up these numbers. The Giants are last in the NL and 29th in baseball in hard-hit percentage, which is defined as a ball that leaves the bat at 95 mph or faster. The marine layer at Oracle Park isn't thick enough to affect the speed of the ball off the bat, so this isn't a ballpark thing.
Hard-hit percentage doesn't correlate perfectly with runs, with Steven Kwan and Luis Arraez being famous examples of hitters who have been successful without a ton of 95-mph batted balls. It doesn't even correlate that well for entire teams, although it does correlate a bit. Here's every team this season:
Still, it's better to hit the ball hard than not. Right now, the Giants are not.
Statistically, it's better for pitchers to keep the ball on the ground. This is a baseball truism that helps explain why Logan Webb and Tyler Rogers are excellent major-league pitchers. The next grounder that goes over the fence will be the first one, and if you're eliminating that outcome, you're keeping more runs off the board.
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The reverse is true for hitters. On average, it's preferable to get the ball in the air. Only two teams have a lower ground-ball percentage than the Giants: the Braves and Dodgers. They hit more balls in the air than the Yankees and the Cubs, two of the most potent offenses in baseball. That's a good sign, right?
Except not all balls in the air are created equal. The Giants also rank second in baseball in pop-up percentage and first in the NL.
This is tied to the hard-hit percentage from the last section, as it's hard to hit a ball 95-mph straight into the air. This is how the Giants can get the ball in the air just as much as the Dodgers (good), but not score as many runs (bad).
Only the Rockies have seen a higher percentage of four-seam fastballs than the Giants this season, too, and that's not great company to keep. Pitchers aren't bothering with trickery or subterfuge. They're saying 'here, hit it.' The Giants have a .284 wOBA on the 2,229 four-seamers they've seen this season, and that's the worst mark in baseball. It's the worst in the National League by 23 points.
They've seen more four-seam fastballs (206) right down the middle than most teams, and they're in the bottom third of baseball against them, with a .312 batting average and a .339 wOBA. For comparison, the Diamondbacks have a .500 BA and .614 wOBA on the 192 four-seamers they've seen down the middle. That's an extreme level of success, but 12 teams have a wOBA higher than .400 against fastballs down the middle. Probably because they're fastballs down the middle.
Four-seam fastballs that are in the strike zone but not down the middle, though? The Giants are especially bad there, with a .249 wOBA, which is 57 points worse than the league average. You can get the Giants out with fastballs, even if they're down the middle, but you can really get them out if they're strikes around the perimeter of the strike zone.
Not surprisingly, the Giants aren't great against four-seam fastballs that are thrown harder than 95 mph, ranking dead last against them, which suggests they're flummoxed by velocity even more than most teams. However, they're also dead last against fastballs thrown slower than 95 mph. They're the third-worst team against four-seam fastballs slower than 92 mph. They're bad against them when they're ahead in the count, and they're bad against them when they're behind in the count. On a boat, with a goat, et cetera, et cetera. They just hate four-seam fastballs!
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They're not swinging through them, either, which might be part of the problem. They're making more contact than other teams, with a low whiff rate even against the ones over 95 mph. Whatever the reason, the rest of the league is aware of this. Throw them fastballs, and there's a good chance they'll get under it and pop the ball up.
Fixable? Sure. There are a lot of established narratives through mid-May that vanish by the end of September. But if you're looking for a way to describe what's wrong, and you want evidence to back it up, here's the short version: The Giants don't hit the ball that hard, they pop too many balls up and they struggle against four-seam fastballs, which they see more often than almost every other team. They also have two of the five-worst starting position players in baseball through May 12.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? Well, it's been pretty good for the most part, especially on the pitching side. The Giants still have a winning record, after all. Their biggest concern entering the season was how they were going to score runs, though. That's their biggest concern a month-and-a-half into the season, and it's only grown bigger.
(Photo of Bailey: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)