The statistics where the San Francisco Giants’ rank last around the league
The final month of the 2026 San Francisco Giants season reminds me of a sunny weekend afternoon at Candlestick Park. If you’re a young’un, you can use the final days of the Oakland Coliseum for the analogy, but it goes something like this: The place was a mess, literally falling apart, and there might’ve been sewage and/or municipal waste in the air, but when the sun was shining and the baseball was good, well, it was the best place in the world.
When the baseball is good for this year’s Giants, it’s typically good in a way that helps you forget the other stuff, at least for a few minutes. Yunior Marte made a surprise debut in the second game of Saturday’s doubleheader, and he could have passed for a seven-year veteran, locating his fastballs and cutters right on the edges of the strike zone when he wanted. Bryce Eldridge sprayed the ball all over the field, looking more like Tony Gwynn than Tony Clark, which is almost certainly for the best on a number of fronts. Jonah Cox stole three bases, which brings the Giants up to two steals on the season, give or take.
When it works, it’s fun. I see a smile. Who’s got a little smile? And when it doesn’t work, well, I call that “the 2026 season,” ha ha. But seriously, folks, it’s OK to be happy when the good things happen. And this season’s team has a surprising abundance of those positive developments, considering how disappointing the collective results have been.
Now let’s talk about all the different ways the Giants are the worst in the league.
It felt like the introduction was necessary because I spent a lot of time looking for statistics where the Giants were the best or worst in the league and — you’re not going to believe this — only last-place stats kept coming up. So, these aren’t fun stats. They sure are accurate and informative, though, so down the hatch they go. Builds character.
Here’s where the Giants either rank 30th out of all 30 MLB teams, or dead last in the National League:
Last in NL on runs on extra bases taken
Last in BsR (base-running runs)
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’ success in great detail, and he’s determined that the team’s base running is a substantial and unmistakable part of it. 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.
The Giants are … not having that kind of season. And you might say that they’re the anti-Brewers on the basepaths this season, ranking last in stats that are linked to above and ones that aren’t, because it would have been overkill.
The Giants have made a lot of outs on the bases this season. (Neville E. Guard / Imagn Images)
However, with all of these stats, it’s important to remember that the current roster isn’t 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’s missed substantial time, which isn’t 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 “wreaking” for the first time in years. It’s just a word that doesn’t come up often for Giants writers.
Overall, though, you haven’t been imagining things: The Giants aren’t manufacturing a lot of runs on the bases these days. The factory has some extremely bitey possums in there, but they’re at least starting to clear the place out. We’ll see where the team ranks next season, but they don’t have to stay in last place.
Last in Major League Baseball in walk rate (hitters)
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, 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’t 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.
This year’s team isn’t going to offer up a fact quite that fun, but if you’ve been paying attention, you know that it’s 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.
Just like everything else about Devers’ season, it looks exactly like a typical year for him if you pretend April didn’t exist, including the walks. He’s never been a hacker, and he actually started drawing a lot more walks last season than he ever had before, so it’s not a complete surprise to see him leading the team. But while it shows how much he turned his season around, it probably wouldn’t be Devers who leads a postseason-bound team in walks. (That should be Bryce Eldridge’s job going forward, with any luck.)
Last in NL in BB/K ratio (hitters)
This is a continuation of the last section, but it’s worth pulling out in case you were wondering about the Luis Arraez effect. He’s been gone for a month, but he’s 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?
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 percentile) and dead-last walk rate.
He’s 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’s been just one of the Giants batters who hasn’t 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).
If there’s a silver lining, it’s 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’re 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.
Last in MLB in successful catcher-initiated challenges that hose Giants hitters
It’s not just you: Opposing catchers are really, really good at deciding when to challenge a call that benefits a Giants hitter. One second, everyone thinks the count is 3-1, and another, whoops, it’s back to 2-2, which is much worse.
I can’t imagine any possible way this is a repeatable statistic, with the possible exception of catchers in a specific division all being ABS deities, so don’t worry about this happening again. It’s a fluke. An annoying, miserable fluke. At least it’s not happening in a season where the Giants need every last win to make the postseason, I suppose.
Last in NL in successful batter-initiated challenges that hose Giants pitchers
You thought the blight was going to leave the pitching staff alone? Of course not. Because when batters decide to challenge the Giants, they’re also really, really good at it. Again, it’s possible that there’s a reason for this other than “lousy luck,” but none are leaping to mind. It’s yet another One of Those Things™ in a season that’s had roughly Seven Hundred of Those Things™.
The Giants have had a brutal season, but don’t forget that they’ve also been great at picking up a whole lot of extra pokes in the eye and micro-frustrations along the way. It was just a feeling you had, but now you have statistical evidence to back you up.
It doesn’t make you feel better. But, here, you take it. The Giants are last in all sorts of stats they don’t want to be last in. This will probably change next season. Until then, eat your stats. Look how much character you just built.