Looking for Areas of Improvement for the Giants

There are 24 full days left until the trade deadline and it is time to take stock of where the Giants need help and more importantly how much these players can help the team this season.

First up today is looking at comparing what the Giants have gotten from their players compared to what is league average for the National League.



Catcher

	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
NL Average	0.248	0.322	0.381	0.703
Giants	0.200	0.278	0.316	0.595
% Difference	-19%	-14%	-17%	-15%

This is for the non Buster Posey catchers and it is pretty much exactly as I imagined it would be. Chris Stewart and Eli Whiteside are nice guys but they are not great hitters. This is a glaring hole in the Giants offense and it is a place that if they could get a guy closer to league average that they could see a fairly large improvement without bringing in an All-Star.

First Base

	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
NL Average	0.265	0.347	0.439	0.786
Giants	0.244	0.305	0.378	0.683
% Difference	-8%	-12%	-14%	-13%

Ouch, this is ugly. The Giants first baseman have been pretty horrible and that is largely attributed to the huge drop off in Aubrey Huff's production. I don't imagine that the Giants are going to look outside the organization for fixes here so the hope is that he can bounce back and that hopefully Brandon Belt can maybe contribute something something if that doesn't work (he was optioned to Fresno today now that he is off the DL so it won't be anytime soon baring an injury).

Second Base

	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
NL Average	0.254	0.315	0.374	0.689
Giants	0.221	0.264	0.279	0.543
% Difference	-13%	-16%	-25%	-21%

This is again minus the injured starter, Freddy Sanchez and his replacements have not been pretty. The hope is that Mike Fontenot can get team closer to league average but if that doesn't work out this could be another area that Giants can look on the trade market to upgrade.

Third Base

	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
NL Average	0.253	0.314	0.373	0.687
Giants	0.270	0.310	0.398	0.708
% Difference	7%	-1%	7%	3%

Hey, look at that the Giants do actually have a position that is better than league average (spoiler alert there is only one other one) and this is due to Pablo Sandoval. It would be higher but while he was injured a bulk of his playing time went to out machine Miguel Tejada which brought the aggregate numbers down.

Short Stop

	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
NL Average	0.259	0.313	0.365	0.678
Giants	0.222	0.290	0.327	0.617
% Difference	-14%	-7%	-10%	-9%

I thought that this would be much worse but luckily the rest of the league is also really bad at short stop as well. Unfortunately that means that this is also not exactly an easy spot to get better at. I hope that Brandon Crawford continues to improve and show that his bat is good enough to be at least league average. I think that he can and have explained this before.

Outfield

LF	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
NL Average	0.264	0.333	0.422	0.755
Giants	0.247	0.339	0.428	0.766
% Difference	-6%	2%	1%	1%
CF	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
NL Average	0.266	0.337	0.419	0.756
Giants	0.250	0.329	0.369	0.699
% Difference	-6%	-2%	-12%	-8%
RF	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
NL Average	0.270	0.341	0.44	0.781
Giants	0.270	0.328	0.408	0.736
% Difference	0%	-4%	-7%	-6%

So the outfield appears to much better off then the infield. There are no glaring holes here that can be fixed quickly or cheaply. Looking at this I think that there is hope that Nate Schierholtz has turned the corner to be a league average hitter to go along with his plus defense and that hopefully Andres Torres can bounce back from the slump that he has been in for the last few weeks. The depth here is pretty nice with Burrell supplying a good power off the bench and Aaron Rowand being at least good against left handed pitching this season.

Later this week I will look at the potential trade targets and how much that could potentially help the team.

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