Last in BsR (base-running runs)<\/a><\/p>\n
The Brewers are having another remarkable season. Their entire team payroll is roughly what the Giants will pay Mark Melancon in deferred salary this year, yet they keep winning and winning in the regular season. Sam Miller has looked at the Brewers\u2019 success in great detail, and he\u2019s determined that the team\u2019s base running is a substantial and unmistakable part of it<\/a>. The tiny little advantages start stacking up, and they eventually start turning into wins. Do that all over the roster, and, baby, you have a Brewers going.<\/a><\/p>\n The Giants are \u2026 not having that kind of season. And you might say that they\u2019re the anti-Brewers on the basepaths this season, ranking last in stats that are linked to above and ones that aren\u2019t, because it would have been overkill<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n The Giants have made a lot of outs on the bases this season. (Neville E. Guard \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n However, with all of these stats, it\u2019s important to remember that the current roster isn\u2019t necessarily the one that was responsible for the team being in last place in this category. Heliot Ramos was a contributor to the low ranking, as was Casey Schmitt. Matt Chapman was typically one of the players helping the Giants stay out of the cellar every season, but he\u2019s missed substantial time, which isn\u2019t expected to happen next season. Drew Gilbert has the speed and enthusiasm to be a plus runner for years to come. Cox is wreaking havoc enough to make me check the spelling of \u201cwreaking\u201d for the first time in years. It\u2019s just a word that doesn\u2019t come up often for Giants writers.<\/p>\n Overall, though, you haven\u2019t been imagining things: The Giants aren\u2019t manufacturing a lot of runs on the bases these days. The factory has some extremely bitey possums in there, but they\u2019re at least starting to clear the place out. We\u2019ll see where the team ranks next season, but they don\u2019t have to stay in last place.<\/p>\n Last in Major League Baseball in walk rate (hitters)<\/a><\/p>\n Is this a good place for a team to rank? Friends, it is not. The last time the Giants ranked last in walk rate was 2009,<\/a> which was one of the hardest offensive teams to watch in franchise history. Pablo Sandoval led that team in walks. Read nothing else but that sentence for an hour, and it still won\u2019t make sense. Sandoval was the kind of hitter who would swing at a moth flying in a different ballpark, yet he still led the team in walks. He did it with just 52 walks, but it was still an unlikely base-on-balls leader.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s team isn\u2019t going to offer up a fact quite that fun, but if you\u2019ve been paying attention, you know that it\u2019s a little strange that Rafael Devers will probably lead the 2026 Giants in walks. One of the reasons it was so easy to believe that he was cooked earlier in the season was his inability to draw a walk; he had just seven in 129 plate appearances through April.<\/p>\n Just like everything else about Devers\u2019 season, it looks exactly like a typical year for him if you pretend April didn\u2019t exist, including the walks. He\u2019s never been a hacker, and he actually started drawing a lot more walks last season than he ever had before<\/a>, so it\u2019s not a complete surprise to see him leading the team. But while it shows how much he turned his season around, it probably wouldn\u2019t be Devers who leads a postseason-bound team in walks. (That should be Bryce Eldridge\u2019s job going forward, with any luck.)<\/p>\n Last in NL in BB\/K ratio (hitters)<\/a><\/p>\n This is a continuation of the last section, but it\u2019s worth pulling out in case you were wondering about the Luis Arraez effect. He\u2019s been gone for a month, but he\u2019s such an outlier and general baseball freak that he can mess with the stats for his entire team, much like Tyler Rogers and the average fastball velocity of a bullpen. If the Giants are last in walk rate, perhaps they make up for it with their contact?<\/p>\n Not really. For one thing, they had Schmitt on the active roster for most of the season, and he was literally a first-percentile player in terms of walk rate. His Baseball Savant page is a delight, because it shows off gaudy stats like his expected batting average (95th percentile), barrel rate (80th percentile) and expected slugging percentage (96th percentile), while also showing off his extreme chase rate (16th\u00a0percentile) and dead-last walk rate.<\/p>\n He\u2019s not alone in the hacking. Cox has drawn three walks over his last 13 plate appearances, which brings him up to three on the season. That was likely the output of a hitter just learning the majors, but he\u2019s been just one of the Giants batters who hasn\u2019t walked much. The league walk rate is 8.9 percent, and a couple of other prominent hitters are well below that, like Willy Adames (7.3) and Jung Hoo Lee (4.7).<\/p>\n If there\u2019s a silver lining, it\u2019s that a lot of the players responsible for the last-place rankings are gone, whether by trade or attrition. Chapman and Devers are both above average, and they\u2019re expected to form a part of the lineup core that also includes Eldridge and possibly Drew Gilbert or Drew Cavanaugh. They should be better at drewing walks, you might say.<\/p>\n![\"San](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2026-06-14T040239Z_2026063690_MT1USATODAY29194838_RTRMADP_3_MLB-CHICAGO-CUBS-AT-SAN-FRANCISCO-GIANTS.jpeg\")
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