The San Francisco Giants fell back to Earth last season. A year after the Giants shocked the nation by upsetting the Los Angeles Dodgers for the NL West crown in 2021 with a 107-55 record and a gargantuan +210 run differential, the Giants missed the playoffs entirely in 2022. They went from 26 games above .500 to being exactly .500 in 2022. Their run differential cratered from +210 all the way down to +19.

Things aren't looking too much better for the Bay Area natives in 2023. Their 65-61 record is on track to be better than their 81-81 mark in 2022, but not by much. They're holding onto the final NL Wild Card for dear life. The Arizona Diamondbacks, Cincinnati Reds, and Miami Marlins are all within 1.5 games of the Giants. San Francisco's run differential is better than all of those teams' run differential, but a +2 run differential for the season isn't going to put much fear in the hearts of the Diamondbacks, Reds, or Marlins players.

The Giants are a good team, but they aren't a great team. They're good enough to make the playoffs, but they don't seem like a team that is all that menacing to make a deep run if they even get in. They've got flaws like everybody. What those flaws are and how they can mask those flaws is a different question.

Lethal Hitting

What the San Francisco Giants have working in their favor is that they are a tremendous pitching team. Though they rank 13th in the MLB in runs allowed, only two other NL teams have given up fewer runs than the Giants' 537: the Atlanta Braves (513) and the Milwaukee Brewers (532). The Giants also rank ninth as a team in ERA (3.95) and WHIP (1.24). However, they do also rank 22nd in opponents batting average at .253, which is a problem because they themselves are not a great hitting team.

Case in point: the Giants have scored the 10th-fewest runs in all of MLB with 539. Similar to how only two NL teams allowed fewer runs than the Giants, only three NL teams are worse than the Giants in runs scored. Those teams would be the Milwaukee Brewers (537), the Pittsburgh Pirates (524), and the Miami Marlins (515).

To add to that, the Giants' team batting stats don't put them in much greater light. The Giants rank 24th in the MLB in batting average (.238), 22nd in on-base percentage (.314), 24th in slugging (.388), and 23rd in OPS (.702). They also rank 20th in home runs hit on the season with only 138 through 125 games and 24th in total bases at 1,629. Not that many teams steal as often as they did back in the day, but the Giants rank last in the MLB in stolen bases with just 46 of them. There isn't a single area in offense that the San Francisco Giants hang their hats on offensively.

On an individual level, it doesn't get much better. The Giants don't have a single player to have registered 20 home runs or 60 RBI on the season yet and the season is past the three-quarters mark. The leader in almost every hitting category for the Giants is Wilmer Flores, who is a fine player, but not a superstar or close to it by any means. JD Davis, Michael Conforto, LaMonte Wade Jr., among others, are all fine player who are having solid seasons, but there isn't a star to anchor them and find ways to get easy runs or runners on base.

Giant Steps Onward

The San Francisco Giants are a solid team. They're firmly in the playoff race and are fighting for the final NL Wild Card spot as things stand. They're a very good pitching team which could be enough to let them squeeze into the playoffs, but they're going to need more from their offense to get there. Nothing comes easy for San Francisco on offense. If they want to make the postseason and make a run once there, they have to find a way to turn that around and need to do it soon.