Now that we have seen Robbie Ray grunt through a few starts, and see the benefits of having a good rotation, along with the fact that the Giants have a weaker schedule now (due to having a tougher schedule earlier), and the Cobb trade opening up the rotation for Birdsong, I thought I would run through some possibilities.
ogc thoughts
I will start with the goal of making the playoffs. Teams seem to be better this season, overall, in the wild card chase, so I first pulled Fangraphs projected standings, based on their analysis. Per this projection, this is the teams making the NL playoffs:
- Phillies NL East
- Dodgers NL West
- Wild Card:
- Brewers NL Central
- Braves (88 wins)
- Padres (87 wins)
- Diamondbacks (87 wins)
So it looks like the Giants need at least 87 wins (and the tie breakers are yet to be determined yet) and per this projection, the Mets at 84 wins and Cardinals at 82 wins are in the hunt too, with the Giants projected at 81 wins and Pirates at 81 as well.
Giants Rotation Analysis
At their current 57-58 record, they need to go 30-17, a high .638 winning percentage to get there, or finish the season at 13 games above .500.
With 47 starts, Snell and Harrison have 10 starts left, and Birdsong, Ray and Webb have 9 starts each.
Snell
Snell has an 0.55 Runs Allowed/ERA since he came off the IL. With 10 games left, and the Giants offense producing at 4.20 runs scored for the past month, that would calc per Pythagorean to be 10 wins, so lets go with 9 wins (9-1), which implies Runs Allowed of 1.26, and what do you know, his ERA for his last 25 starts in 2023 was 1.20, with an RA of 1.27. So 9-1 is doable if he can continue to be as dominant as he has been since coming back, and that's not impossible, he did it over 25 games at the end of last season.
So, obviously, this is a tough task to accomplish. But if he did, that would cover 8 of the 12 games, leaving the remaining four to be 4 games over .500, or 21-17, which seems very doable with Ray, Webb, Harrison, Birdsong.
So let's go with 7-3, which covers 4 of the 12 games we need to be above .500, but with a possibility of up to 9-1, which stretches that up to 8 of the games.
Harrison
Harrison has been mostly good (that is, average) for the season, and the team has won a lot with him starting, going 12-7 in his starts so far. In 10 starts, that rounds down to 6 wins, for a +2 over .500 (6-4). Assuming he can continue to do what he has this season, that gets us to 6 games above .500, needing 6 more from the rest of the rotation, basically we need +2 from each of the three (and up to 10 games over .500)
Webb
He's been a very consistent starter, he has a 3.49 ERA and a 3.42 career ERA. However, he seems to draw the aces from other teams, and even measuring from when Ramos joined the lineup, which has averaged 4.7 runs scored since May 8th, the Giants have only been 7-9 in Webb starts, even though his ERA is a good 3.49 in those 16 games (see how steady he is?). Now, part of that was unearned runs costing him a couple of games, but also, he had a bad 3 starts in July, before correcting in his last two starts. Let's say he can get us similarly, at 5-4, which adds a win above .500 and pushes us to 7 to 11 games over .500.
Ray
Unfortunately we don't have a lot of past record as to what expect from Ray or Birdsong. In Ray's case, he has two great starts (Game Score of 69 and 61 in first and third start; PQS 4 and 3, respectively) and one bad start (Game Score of only 34 and is a 0 PQS DIS start, which is automatic when a starting pitcher doesn't reach 5 IP, but even without that, it would have only been a 1 PQS). Given how overpowering he was in two of his three starts, he should be 5-4 or 6-3 in his nine remaining starts. That gets us to 8 to 14 games over .500.
Birdsong
Hayden Birdsong did not sing in this start against the Nationals. He got hit around pretty hard. But you cannot expect a pitcher to be good in every start. Since he was constrained early on, I did his PQS without the auto zero rule, and he's been mostly okay: 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 4, 2. Also, his Game Score was very good, 54 to 70 (with one at 66 and one at 70, which are great) in four of his seven starts, and only two bad starts (42 and lower). The Giants have been 4-3 in his starts.
With 9 starts left, I can see him being anywhere from 3-6 to 5-4 (-3 to +1), which puts our range at 5 to 15 games over .500 (or 26-21 to 31-16, which leaves the Giants at 83-79 to 88-74.
Playoffs Will Require A Lot to Go Right
Which means a lot has to go right for the team to reach the last playoff spot. So it's lot like walking a tightrope between two buildings, to make it across, you need to move steadily and safely in the time (games left), and you won't know whether you can make it across until you make it most of the way across, but you can fall off pretty quickly, if you go on an extended losing streak.
The key things that need to happen is Snell and Ray need to be dominant enough to win at least two thirds of their remaining starts, and for Webb, Harrison, and Birdsong to be at .500 or better. We should not panic over every loss right now, but focus more on winning every series, as losses will occur, but hopefully the Giants can still win series, and gain a game on their record with most remaining series. They especially need to win (or tie) the series against the teams who they are competing with for a playoff spot. And a sweep or two (White Sox? Marlins? A's?) would be great.
I don't know what will happen, but I'm excited to see how our young team holds up and whether our veteran starting pitchers can lead the way, as we really need them to be on top of their game in most of their starts in order to have any hope of reaching the playoffs. Which looks very hard to do, but if Snell and Ray can be dominant in most of their remaining starts, it also looks doable.
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