Your 2026 Giants: A Giant Among The Giants

Bryce Eldridge just hit a walk off grand slam at age 21, the youngest to do so in MLB history (just beat out Roberto Clemente), so I thought I would write a follow up on how Eldridge is doing in what appears to be his breakout season. 

I have been keeping track of his batting line for this breakout period, where he has mostly started, unlike the early start and stop, which, to me, made sense because he was struggling, and needed to work on cutting his strikeouts (I covered this is a recent post). 

ogc thoughts 

Since May 18th, when he began to get to start almost every game, Bryce Eldridge has been a different hitter than before, not striking out as much.  

I covered that in my prior post, people were getting hysterical about how he’s being used, when it was clear that the Giants were giving him some opportunities to show what he can do, but then giving him some days off to work on his issues, and repeating that.  There was only two short periods of time off, yet fans were mad like he was not playing for a long period.  This was no Luciano situation, Eldridge was being coached, and the Giant have did this before with other prospects, holding them out when teaching them something.

At the 10 game point, after he started to swing better, he had a contact rate of 82% and strikeout rate of 15%, where the best hitters maintain a contact rate of 85%+.  It dipped after that, but basically been in the 75-79% range.  This is what allowed the Giants to start playing him more regularly, because in every short stint of play he got before, he struck out too much if he was a good MLB hitter.

And it’s not like he was okay from the get go.  His first seven games after May 18th, he only batted .261/.346/.348/.694, which is about average, but not what most were expecting out of him.  Still, he was making contact, so the Giants stuck with him and now he’s making great contact.

In the 20 games, 82 PA/70 AB, since he started swinging better, his contact rate is an okay 79% and 18% strikeout rate.  He has had 11 walks and 15 strikeouts, which is a good ratio of walks to strikeouts, 73%.  His batting line is an elite .371/.451/.629/1.080, with 3 homers and 9 doubles in this hot streak.  That is roughly a 25-30 homer seasonal rate, 50-70 doubles. Of course , this streak will end at some point, but this just shows how elite this streak is.  

Eldridge is Excelling in Strikeouts

Nobody is mentioning Eldridge’s extreme improvement in strikeouts.  Per Fangraphs, power hitters are in the 20-25% range, while above average hitters are in the 15-20% range.  As I noted above, he is at 18% after figuring out his issue was and executing it, which is in the good hitter range.  He went from unsustainable strikeouts before (30%+), to at times above average strikeouts.  

However, if we look at his range of 10 game percentages, while he was low during parts, he has mostly been right around the 20% range, putting him at the border of power and above average. Still, per Fangraphs, a hitter’s strikeout rate stabilizes at 60 PA, and he’s now at 82 PA, so this appears to be a sign of real skill in avoiding strikeouts. His walk rate (an excellent 13%) will stabilize at 120 PA, so hopefully he continues to do well drawing walks.