Further down in that link, there\u2019s more good news for the farm system. Giants minor leaguers are hitting the snot out of the ball, and they\u2019re also doing a great job preventing runs. The organizational run differential was +169 runs as of Tuesday. The second-best organization (Nationals) has a +59 differential. Giants prospects are absolutely thriving as a collective.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re choosing between the long-term health of the franchise or the short-term success of the major-league team, the responsible choice would be to choose the former. This means it\u2019s a great season for the ol\u2019 Giants, technically speaking. They\u2019re thriving. In a way. It should make you feel as good as a friend sending you vacation pictures while you\u2019re stuck in a TSA line. Good for them, you guess.<\/p>\n
Now to the un-fun facts. If you\u2019re wondering why 37 games is the benchmark, it\u2019s because a) it\u2019s right now and b) the off day allows the stats and rankings to stay fresh longer. Apologies to the round-number enthusiasts, but it\u2019s not like another three games are going to help the Giants look good in any of these categories.<\/p>\n
Winning percentage (.378), fifth-worst start through 37 games in franchise history<\/a><\/p>\n If you were wondering if there was a team of Giants lore that charged back into the postseason chase after a miserable start, the answer is yes. They\u2019re called the 1951 Giants, and they probably cheated<\/a>, but the radio call of Bobby Thomson\u2019s home run became such a part of American culture that we all let it slide. That\u2019s how I see it, anyway. I\u2019m sure there are Dodgers fans who disagree, but whoops, we\u2019re running out of time.<\/p>\n That \u201951 team didn\u2019t start this slowly, though. The only teams that started like the 2026 Giants were some of the worst in franchise history, castoffs and miscreants, all of them finishing under .500. The only 100-loss team in franchise history, the 1985 Giants, also started 14-23, so that\u2019s the kind of company we\u2019re dealing with here.<\/p>\n The best example of a Giants team that charged back into relevance, at least, was the 2004 club that had a miserable start to its season, only to stay in a postseason chase long enough to have it end in one of the worst ways possible<\/a>. Be careful what you wish for with teams like this. If they start winning too much, you might start caring again.<\/p>\n Home runs (23), 42nd-worst in franchise history<\/a> through 37 games<\/p>\n This doesn\u2019t seem too bad. Only 42nd worst?<\/p>\n Ah, but this includes teams such as the 1902 Giants that played back when there was one baseball in the world, it was made out of plaster and sand and all 16 teams shared it. That team had one home run, and it probably ricocheted off a hartebeest that was still native to those climes. You can\u2019t compare modern teams to teams from the beginning of the 20th century.<\/p>\n \n Casey Schmitt is the only Giants\u2019 batter who has hit with any kind of authority in the early going. (Ezra Shaw \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n Remove the teams from the New York era, then, and the Giants\u2019 low home run total through 37 games is still bad, but not egregiously so. The 2026 Giants have the 10th-lowest home run total since the franchise moved to San Francisco, 68 seasons ago. Not great, but far from an all-time worst.<\/p>\n Except if we\u2019re throwing out the Dead Ball Era, we should also look askance at teams from the 1970s and 1980s. A lot of those teams included players who looked a rough 45 when they were in their mid-20s and were built like Michael Cera. They didn\u2019t hit home runs, and it\u2019s not like the ballparks helped them out, either.<\/p>\n Of course, even without accounting for the difference in eras and styles of play, it\u2019s not like this season\u2019s team is doing that much better, historically speaking. They\u2019re on a worse home run pace than the 1974 Giants, a team that finished with 93 homers.<\/p>\n The best comparison is probably the teams from the Oracle Park Era, the ones you remember. They played a similar sport to the one you\u2019re watching, and in that cohort, only the 2009 Giants had fewer home runs through 37 games than these Giants.<\/p>\n (Casey Schmitt should probably get a gift certificate to Outback Steakhouse for single-handedly keeping the Giants out of the ranks of the Dead Ball teams. Kick the idea up to HR, see if they can make it work.)<\/p>\n Walks (72): worst through 37 games in franchise history<\/a><\/p>\n All that banter about the different eras wasn\u2019t just to give you context for the above stats. It\u2019s also very, very illuminating for this one: Through 37 games, no Giants team has drawn fewer walks.<\/p>\n Giants teams from the early 1900s, the ones that had players with names such as Knuckles O\u2019Peeberton and Duff Jackman, drew more walks.<\/p>\n Every Giants team in the \u201970s had four 150-pound middle infielders in the lineup at all times; they were all shaking uncontrollably after too many cups of Players Coffee and none of them could hit a ball farther than 350 feet. They drew more walks.<\/p>\n Remember those post-Barry Bonds Giants teams that were so impatient, it was like an international court had ordered them to give back some of Bonds\u2019 walks to avoid larger sanctions? They all drew more walks than this year\u2019s team.<\/p>\n And, again, this team wasn\u2019t bad at drawing walks (or hitting home runs!) just a few months ago. It\u2019s almost as if there\u2019s straight-up industrial sabotage to blame, a virus that one of the other NL West teams snuck into the organization database that adds a zero here and there or flips a few z- and y-axes in some of their heat maps. And if you\u2019ll look at this blurry security footage, you\u2019ll see \u2026<\/p>\n OK, maybe it\u2019s not time for conspiracy theories yet. But it\u2019s getting that weird \u2014 and that historically awful.<\/p>\n![\"Casey](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GettyImages-2274718547-scaled.jpg\")
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