The 2024 regular season is over and the San Francisco Giants fell short of achieving their postseason goal for another year. In the past decade the Giants have advanced to the playoffs just twice (2016 and 2021). Another barren campaign has done little to comfort an increasingly unsettled fanbase.
Bob Melvin, newly appointed as manager for 2024, will consider his maiden season as Giants skipper a disappointment. San Francisco made significant upgrades to address an ageing and unathletic roster (crossing the luxury tax threshold for the first time since 2017), raising expectations and hopes heading into the new season. The high-profile additions of Jung Hoo Lee, Matt Chapman and Blake Snell had Giants fans dreaming of October baseball returning to Oracle Park once more.
Regrettably, the Giants’ on-field performance fell short, ending with an 80-82 record and confined them to a postseason spent at home.
The writing was on the wall when Lee was lost for the entire year just six weeks into the season. The Korean superstar tore his left shoulder in a brutal crash with the outfield wall during a mid-May home game against Cincinnati. Lee had already endeared himself to the Bay Area with his enthusiasm and sense of humour, and had begun to solidify his role in Melvin’s lineup. It’s such a shame we only got to enjoy him for 37 games.
Snell, the 2023 NL Cy Young Award winner, was a major coup for the Giants and his partnership with Logan Webb atop the rotation looked set to dominate the league. The 31-year-old left-hander was mystifyingly cast adrift during free-agency and he didn’t sign until Spring Training was almost over. The time Snell missed proved crucial, as the veteran scuffled out of the start gate and battled poor performance and injuries for the entire first half of the season. He looked uncharacteristically lost.
Thankfully Snell turned it on in July, as he usually does, rediscovering his best stuff to devastating effect. After his return from the IL on 9 July, Snell was an untouchable force, posting an incredible 1.23 ERA over 80.1 innings with 114 strikeouts. He surrendered just nine extra base hits during that entire stretch. Perhaps more importantly, the Giants recorded a 12-2 record when Snell took the mound, highlighting what they could do behind an elite starter.
As expected, Webb set the tone for the pitching staff, proving once more why he’s the Giants’ ace. The 27-year-old posted another impressive 200+ inning campaign; his 204.2 innings pitched led the National League for the second consecutive year, with a 3.47 ERA to boot. Webb was rewarded with his first All-Star appearance this year, and it was well-deserved.
While Webb and Snell excelled, the rest of the Giants’ rotation struggled to find the consistency required to keep the team competitive.
Robbie Ray was traded to San Francisco in January and was always expected to miss the first half as he recovered from 2023 Tommy John surgery. When Ray did eventually make his Giants debut, the 2021 AL Cy Young Award winner was limited to just seven appearances, and only showed flashes of his best form before returning to the IL for good in August. We didn’t even get to see 2023 All-Star Alex Cobb, who also returned from a long-term injury. By the time Cobb was healthy enough to return, he was shipped to Cleveland in a deadline-day trade.
In the absence of established veterans, the Giants relied on an unproven young core. Kyle Harrison, Jordan Hicks, Hayden Birdsong, Keaton Winn, Landen Roupp and Mason Black rounded out the rest of the group and each man got to enjoy some highlights in orange and black. Unfortunately, they all experienced their fair share of knocks too. Whether it was fatigue from throwing more innings than ever before (Harrison and Hicks) or rookies finding out the hard way that big-league hitters are no joke (Birdsong, Winn, Roupp and Black), the Giants rotation lacked the necessary quality to elevate them from being mired in mediocrity; their collective 4.22 ERA ranked 18th in the entire league.
Middle-of-the-pack is nothing to be embarrassed of but it won’t get you anywhere without a truly spectacular lineup to compensate.
Turning our attention to that lineup, we must celebrate the one man who produced to a standard we can qualify as spectacular. He did it all season long, and that was the Giants’ other big free-agent addition, Matt Chapman.
Chapman ranked second in the entire National League with 7.1 bWAR, only trailing the unstoppable unicorn that is Shohei Ohtani. His stellar, Gold Glove-worthy play at third base made him a must-watch, and he wasn’t too shabby with the bat either; Chapman led the entire team in hits (142), home runs (27), doubles (39), and RBI (78). He dominated almost every major hitting category.
The Giants had been crying out for a leader like Chapman, on the field and in the clubhouse. San Francisco couldn’t allow him to walk away in free-agency and managed to secure the 31-year-old to a six-year deal before the season concluded (just like I asked for). Chapman is a cornerstone for the club to build around, and the future of the Giants’ lineup now appears much brighter.
That future extends to the likes of Tyler Fitzgerald and Heliot Ramos, who both enjoyed breakthrough seasons. Ramos emerged from prospect purgatory to smash 22 home runs and Fitzgerald came out of nowhere to record an impressive .831 OPS over 96 appearances. I discussed both men in some detail recently, and the duo’s rare combination of power and speed should excite Giants fans for years to come.
Unfortunately, the rest of the Giants lineup were rarely better than your average player. San Francisco ranked 20th overall in team batting average (.239), 21st in team OBP (.305) and 19th in team OPS (.701). Despite a player like Michael Conforto hitting 20 bombs, he still accumulated just 1.3 bWAR. Patrick Bailey showed he was worthy of being a Gold Glove catcher but his 84 OPS+ left something to be desired.
In the preseason it was mentioned there would be an increase in aggressiveness on the bases but there was barely any improvement; the Giants finished with 68 total stolen bases, the second-worst in all of MLB (only behind the Twins). Fitzgerald and Chapman were far and away the best base-stealers on a frustratingly slow team.
Ultimately, the Giants’ inability to rise above average would cost Farhan Zaidi his job as president of baseball operations. On 30 September, the day after the Giants’ season ended in defeat to the St Louis Cardinals, Zaidi’s six-year reign as the boss came to an end. Since his hire in 2019, Zaidi achieved just one winning season, the unforgettable 107-win campaign in 2021. Sadly, that memorable year proved to be the exception and not the rule for San Francisco.
Zaidi was replaced almost immediately, and in dramatic fashion, by the returning Buster Posey.
Posey’s surprise appointment marks an exciting future for San Francisco fans, a beloved franchise legend taking charge. Posey knows the city and the team better than most, and has experienced firsthand what it takes to lead the Giants to championship-level success. He’s been behind the curtain on both sides of the game and should be ideally suited for the role.
Posey will already be hard at work assembling a staff around him, addressing the holes in the roster, evaluating whether someone like Snell can or will be brought back, and re-establishing the Giants as a top-tier team within the sport.
The 2024 Giants are already passing into history. Their on-field heroics and mishaps will likely be forgotten, lost to time.
And yet, this could be the catalyst for something historic, something truly special. Under Posey’s new leadership, the Giants might find their way back to glory once again.
Ash Day is the San Francisco Giants writer for Bat Flips and Nerds. Follow him on X (Twitter) @AshDay29
Photo credit for featured image by Suzanna Mitchell/San Francisco Giants/Getty Images.
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