{"id":467711,"date":"2026-09-18T08:06:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T08:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/467711\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T08:06:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T08:06:14","slug":"the-bullpen-sure-but-how-do-the-giants-fix-their-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/467711\/","title":{"rendered":"The bullpen, sure, but how do the Giants fix their defense?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Buster Posey\u2019s big interview with Tim Kawakami<\/a>, he stated that the bullpen would be a point of emphasis this offseason. That group has been among the worst in the sport, but not quite negative in value, believe it or not: +0.9 fWAR, bad enough for 25th in MLB. As bad as they\u2019ve been there, they\u2019ve been as bad with their gloves in the field, coming in 24th place with -16.4 Defensive Runs Above Average. In fact, they lead all of Major League Baseball in errors with 102 and counting. They need better defense. How can they make that happen?<\/p>\n

Well, this is where trading away Patrick Bailey and losing Daniel Susac to injury hurts. Bailey had been the top defender on the team three years running and even this year, with just 238.1 innings under his belt before the trade, his +5 Fielding Run Value and 4.8 Defensive Runs Above Average made him third-best. Susac\u2019s +8 FRV and +8.7 Def in 351 innings wound up being a great swap (second-best), but here are the other two players in the top four: Luis Arraez, the team leader in defensive value this season (+9 FRV, +9.2 Def in 885.2 innings), and Matt Chapman (+5 FRV, 4.6 Def in 718.2 innings), checking in at #4. Drew Gilbert is #5 with +4 and +2.6. Casey Schmitt follows, then Christian Koss, then Jonah Cox are the next bunch of positive defenders. So, let\u2019s just say that Susac, Chapman, Gilbert, Schmitt, Koss, and Cox aren\u2019t the problem.<\/p>\n

Also not the problem? Bryce Eldridge (-2.3 Def) or Rafael Devers (-7.9). Defensive measures for first basemen are typically tough because it\u2019s considered such an easy position. Very easy to drop into negative numbers. Admittedly, Devers\u2019 8 errors are the third-most on the team behind Willy Adames (18) and Matt Chapman (9), but I\u2019m going to chalk some of that up to lingering injuries<\/a> and basically settling in to a new position. Still this trio makes up 34% of the team\u2019s errors this season.<\/p>\n

But the worst defenders on the Giants are pretty easy to identify. Willy Adames (-8.3) and Jung Hoo Lee (-10.5) both have both cost the Giants about 1 game each over the course of the season with their poor defense. They are the worst position players on the roster by far (minimum: 100 innings). The pitching group\u2019s 17 errors is tied with Cincinnati for 2nd in MLB (or, 29th) behind only Toronto.<\/p>\n

Now, maybe you\u2019re a gut-trusting eye-tester when it comes to defense, and I can understand that because it\u2019s hard to conceive of how laser tracking and computer modeling could properly value defensive contributions or the subtleties of playing in the field, but if you line up the good defending teams vs. the bad defending teams this season, an interesting pattern emerges:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

With the exceptions of the Royals and Phillies, bad teams have bad defense and good teams have good defense. Though, it must be noted that the Royals have gone 38-41 over the last 3 months and the Phillies 25-15 since improving their defense significantly with the addition of Luis Arraez.<\/p>\n

And just to underscore how important defense is, in the past 10 years, the only Giants teams with positive Defensive Runs Above Average values were:<\/p>\n

2021 (+28.3) | 107-552023 (+22.6) | 79-832019 (+19.6) | 77-852024 (+8.9) | 80-822025 (+7.9) | 81-81<\/p>\n

Not exactly the strong point I was hoping to make but you can see that the past decade of Giants Baseball, whenever it has even bothered to approach success, has had strong defense as part of the foundation.<\/p>\n

So, how can the Giants improve? The sexy call is to figure out how to get Jung Hoo Lee off the roster. If that\u2019s possible, sure, why not? That\u2019s a good step in the direction of fixing the defense while getting cheaper. I\u2019m not confident that Lee\u2019s bat is worth keeping around, either. But it\u2019s not that easy to trade a player like Lee. There\u2019s the money owed to him for one thing, but it\u2019ll be tough from a fanbase position to do it, too. He is a draw, even though he and the team are not good.<\/p>\n

And, if Casey Schmitt hadn\u2019t torn his meniscus, I\u2019d think it\u2019d be close to a no-brainer to put him at short and slide Willy Adames over to second base; but, I\u2019m not so sure that\u2019s in the cards now. In any case, Adames had better move in with Ron Washington this offseason and hope that he has an Arraezean renaissance in 2027. But that could still happen with him at second base. He has been bad enough there that I think trying to get Chapman to play short while sticking Schmitt at third might make more sense than giving Adames another go.<\/p>\n

The team has increased its athleticism in the field as the season has gone along and that\u2019s the sort of thing they\u2019ll need to keep doing in order to improve this part of the team. On paper for next season, it\u2019s basically Daniel Susac, Jonah Cox, and Matt Chapman as the defensive keystones. The team does have a glut of up the middle players working their way through the minors so reinforcements could be well on the way, but I\u2019ll just go ahead and say that the Giants don\u2019t go anywhere without better defensive play. A better defense will take the pressure off the team needing to spend big bucks on the bullpen \u2014 or even the rotation, which might be a better use of time and resources, Buster Posey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Buster Posey\u2019s big interview with Tim Kawakami, he stated that the bullpen would be a point of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,112796,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-467711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-giants-analysis","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}