Lessons from SF Giants’ first half and what will determine their fate down the stretch

About three weeks into the season, Bob Melvin was asked if he had seen enough of his new team to determine its characteristics. Too early, he responded, on cue. Yet, as the manager makes his way to Denver, where the Giants begin the second half, his answer might as well be the same.

With 97 games in the rearview mirror, the Giants have lost three more than they have won. They sit toward the bottom of a jumbled mess in the National League wild-card standings. There are eight teams within four games of .500 and 3½ games of playoff position; two of them will advance to October.

They head to Los Angeles after three against the Rockies — their last games against the Dodgers all year — but the NL West isn’t on anybody’s mind. Even if Shohei Ohtani were to return to human form and the Dodgers only won half their remaining games, the Giants would have to go 37-28 over their final 65 games just to catch them — a 92-win pace over 162.

But they do have a knack for theatrics. Mike Yastrzemski’s walkoff whatever-that-was sent them into the All-Star break with their ninth walkoff win of the season, tied with the Marlins for the most in the majors. And when it’s gotten weird, it’s often gone their way, with a walkoff balk, a walkoff walk and a walkoff Little League home run responsible for three of those wins.

From the eighth inning on, the Giants have scored 99 runs, more than all but two teams in the majors. The problem has been building leads in the first seven innings, where their scoring output ranks in the bottom third of the league. (One reason: Their .230 batting average with runners in scoring position in those innings, fourth-worst in the majors.)

Despite their All-Star Game performances, the Giants’ two representatives have been serious bright spots — for now and the future. (And, hey, both got in the game — just ask fans of the Mariners or Angels, who didn’t see their lone All-Stars make an appearance.)

On their eternal search for a franchise cornerstone, there are more candidates on this roster (and its injured list) than any since Buster Posey retired.

Heliot Ramos, their first homegrown outfielder to play in the game since Chili Davis in 1986, was a surprise emergence only after the player who initially looked to be the team’s lightning rod, Jung Hoo Lee, was lost to season-ending surgery, and now both appear entrenched in the outfield for years to come.

Now 27 and in his third year atop the rotation, there wasn’t any question about Logan Webb’s place in the Giants’ present and future. But “the same old Webby,” in the words of his buddy Kyle Harrison, has provided stability more valuable than ever this season. With a rotating cast of rookies, a converted reliever and 12 bullpen games in the other four rotation spots, the right-hander from Rocklin has accounted for more than one in every four innings thrown by Giants starting pitchers this season.

Ramos was the first position player the Giants drafted and developed to become an All-Star since Posey and Brandon Crawford’s final appearances in 2021, and Webb joined Camilo Doval last year as their only homegrown pitchers since Madison Bumgarner’s fourth and final selection in 2016.

Add Patrick Bailey to the list. And Matt Chapman can stick around, too, if he wants. (The first of three player options, a $17 million decision, looms after this season.) It should be great fun watching Lee, still only 25, patrol the outfield next to Ramos, 24, starting next season; if nothing else, they give it their all.

The Giants set out to put a more entertaining product on the field, and they succeeded. Look no further than the seats, many more of which have been filled this season compared to any since the pandemic. They’re averaging 33,739 fans per game, ninth in MLB, up more than 3,000 per game from last year, when they ranked 14th, and have seen the sixth-largest increase in the league, behind only the two defending World Series participants and the up-and-coming Orioles, Guardians and Nationals.

That said, ticket sales don’t translate to a team’s success. (Often it’s the inverse correlation.)

Fans have rewarded the team’s $300-plus million investment over the offseason and the emergence of a budding new core, but it remains to be seen how much of the spending pays off. Chapman has quietly been the most valuable third baseman in the majors, according to Baseball-Reference, with 2.2 Wins Above Replacement, and Jordan Hicks’ seamless move to the rotation looks even more valuable in retrospect, even if it has hit some speed bumps lately.

While the Giants might be hoping Chapman picks up his option, they may be feeling buyer’s remorse with Jorge Soler and Tom Murphy, who are locked in through 2026 and 2025, respectively. Whether the same can be said about Blake Snell will be determined by his performance in the second half, which brings us to the crux of the issue.

Does the above count for anything when the Giants have one Cy Young winner seemingly molding into second-half shape and another, Robbie Ray, lined up to join him in the rotation out of the All-Star break? To say nothing of the absence of Alex Cobb, their All-Star and No. 2 starter last year, who is not far behind Ray? Is it fair to evaluate a team that played the first portion of its season in such emaciated shape?

What the Giants do over the next two weeks will likely influence Farhan Zaidi’s maneuvering at the trade deadline. It’s unlikely they push all their chips in, but they could shuffle the deck. They also have pieces to move if they stumble — and Zaidi intimated as much in a recent appearance on KNBR — but it’s not clear the president of baseball operations has the flexibility to further extend their timeline, even after signing a two-year extension this past winter.

What will ultimately determine their fate is what they get from Snell, Ray and Cobb, which remains a total mystery. Are they quadrupling the horsepower of their starting rotation? Or will reintegrating two veterans coming off major surgeries only put a further strain on a bullpen that has already thrown the most innings in the majors?

The early returns from their rehab outings have been positive — Ray struck out nine over five scoreless innings Sunday for Single-A San Jose in what is expected to be his final tuneup — and Snell flashed his Cy Young stuff for his first time in a Giants uniform in his final start of the first half.

They can’t expect Snell to take perfect game bids into the seventh inning in every start, but having more than one starter they can count on to pitch past the fifth inning every fifth day would be a leap forward from the charred remains of their first-half rotation.

Their reliance on Hicks and Kyle Harrison (and Keaton Winn, to a lesser extent) means they will have to take their workloads into account, a task made easier if Snell, Ray and Cobb are providing reinforcements. Hicks has already surpassed his career-high in innings, and Harrison is 27 innings away from reaching his.

The Giants’ odds are long — 23.9% chances of reaching the postseason, according to FanGraphs, third-worst of the eight wild-card hopefuls — but if they get there, and the best-case scenario plays out, it’s possible to envision their pitching making them a team others wouldn’t want to play.

In this National League wild card race, it seems anything is possible. It’s the last team to the bottom.