San Francisco Giants 2023 Season Preview
A lot of really smart people expected a huge drop-off from the San Francisco Giants last season. Whether or not I’m smart is debatable, but I was not one of the people looking for a decline. I truly believed that the Giants figured some things out during the 2021 season that ended with a 107-55 record. I didn’t expect them to win 107 games, but I certainly expected playoff contention and something in the 90s.
Well, that wasn’t the case at all. The Giants fell all the way to 81-81, a 26-win difference from the season prior. They were a little bit better in terms of Pythagorean Win-Loss, finishing the season with a +19 run differential, but the team was never really in contention after the calendar flipped to July. The Giants got off to a solid 35-26 start of the first 61 games, but played nine games under .500 over the last 101 games. Except for a streak with 10 wins in 11 games in September, this was a pretty bad baseball team for two agonizing months in July and August.
The Giants were 4-15 against the Dodgers and 6-13 against the Padres (only -2 in run differential), so that was a wake-up call in terms of how far behind the top two teams in the division they had fallen. As we head into the 2023 season, expectations are certainly lower and fall along the same lines as the disappointing .500 finish of 2022.