San Francisco Giants: Winning Without Power
By Marc Grandi
In recent years, the San Francisco Giants have never had a surplus of power. They have survived and thrived by capitalizing on the spacious gaps AT&T Park has to offer and by hitting just enough clutch home runs that crush the will of the opposition.
However, the 2015 season will be different. With Michael Morse and Pablo Sandoval departing and Hunter Pence missing at least the first month of the season after fracturing his left ulna in early March, San Francisco will have less power than ever before.
Last season, Morse played left field for the Giants but struggled to find consistent playing time due to both injuries and less-than-ideal defensive ability. In all likelihood, free-agent signee Nori Aoki will start in left field for San Francisco for the time being. Morse is one of the most powerful hitters on the planet, and Aoki is the exact opposite (he hit one home run with Kansas City last season).
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Replacing Sandoval at third base is Casey McGehee. While the power disparity between these two players is not quite as large as the one between the left fielders, the Giants are certainly losing power with this exchange. McGehee hit four home runs for the Marlins last season while Sandoval has racked up six-straight seasons with double-digit home run totals despite being sidelined by multiple nagging injuries.
During Pence’s absence, Gregor Blanco is likely to play right field for San Francisco. That replacement leaves center fielder Angel Pagan as the starting outfielder with the most power for the Giants. To put that into perspective, Pagan has only hit more than ten home runs in any season a single time in his entire career.
However, there is no need to fret. While power is a luxury and San Francisco certainly could use more of it, they are set up perfectly to use the dimensions on AT&T Park to their advantage.
Aoki puts the ball in play much more than Morse ever has. Aoki’s strikeout percentage (the percentage of at-bats that end in a strikeout) was an excellent 8.9 percent compared to Morse’s 25.1 percent in 2014. Combine Aoki’s ability to make contact with his speed, and the Giants have another one of those pesky hitters that makes things difficult for the opposition.
While McGehee’s and Sandoval’s strikeout percentages are similar (14.8 to 13.3, respectively), McGehee’s game complements AT&T Park more than Sandoval’s ever has. San Francisco will miss Sandoval’s switch-hitting ability, but besides that, McGehee can hit the gaps just as Sandoval did, and although it is unlikely for him to find his power swing again, it would make little sense to compromise the quality of his at bats by swinging for the fences.
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McGehee draws more walks than Sandoval does, and he will adjust better to certain counts while Sandoval will continue to swing as hard as possible even when faced with an unfavorable count. Albeit unrelated to his offensive production, McGehee has also shown that there will be minimal — if any — defensive dropoff at third base this season.
Blanco is similar to Aoki in the way that his speed creates problems for the defense. If Blanco can continue to put the ball in play more and more (his strikeout percentage has decreased during each of his three years in the orange and black), the Giants may be able to successfully deal with the loss of Pence.
However, it will not be easy. Replacing Pence is a monumental task, and there is no one on San Francisco’s roster — perhaps no one in the entire league — who is equipped to do as much for his team as Pence does for the Giants.
Losing Pence to injury is certainly a blow, but the other changes made over the offseason should help to counteract that. No matter how well Aoki, McGehee, and Blanco play, the success of the team will, as always, rest on the shoulders of the pitching staff. Despite major questions concerning the rotation as a whole, the Giants should be just fine with Madison Bumgarner at the helm.
April and the beginning of May will be tough without Pence, but if San Francisco can stay afloat until then, another postseason run is in the cards.