Which team would you rather have going forward?

Hey, 13-15… that’s… not so bad, right? The past decade or so of Giants Baseball has — except for that one time — basically conditioned us to expect and embrace mediocrity and here we are, paired again with a familiar friend. That’s actually preferrable to the vibes — nay, the objective reality — that followed the first week of the season, when it looked like everyone in the organization was in over his head. The Giants are basically playing a lot closer to expectations now and, well, even if you don’t agree with what those were heading into the season, perhaps you’d admit that it’s a far better place to be than where some other teams are right now.

In the offseason, the New York Mets drastically retooled their roster and the results have been disastrous: 9-19 with a 12-game losing streak. The Phillies basically stood pat and the results have been disastrous: 9-19 with a 10-game losing streak. The Royals tried to build off their nice 2025 with some tinkering at the margins and the results have been disastrous: 11-17 with an 8-game losing streak. The AL pennant winner Blue Jays are 12-15 and the Boston Red Sox, primed to be a top team this season, are just 11-17 and on Sunday they liquidated their entire coaching staff. Finally, the Houston Astros have far too many pitching injuries to list to go with an 11-18 record.

On the other side of surprise ledger, there are the Reds at 18-10 and the Pirates 16-12 while the Padres are not just holding strong in second place but pushing the Dodgers for the top of the NL West with their 18-9 record.

That’s 9 teams that are not where people expected them to be before the season. The Giants, though, are pretty much rolling along according to plan. For the purposes of the postseason race, would you take the Giants against this field going forward?

There are plenty of compelling reasons to answer YES:

• Willy Adames, the notorious slow starter, is off to merely a slow-ish start.

• Rafael Devers will almost certainly hit better than this going forward, even if that might be closer to the 10-20% better than league average range.

• Logan Webb will almost certainly get rolling and solidify that top of the Giants rotation.

• Luis Arraez is hitting and fielding like an All-Star second baseman.

• Jung Hoo Lee and Landen Roupp look like the sort of load-bearing players every good team needs. Think the 2026 versions of 2010’s Andres Torres and Jonathan Sanchez.

• The Giants’ pitching staff is much closer to being a top 15 pitching staff than a bottom third, according to the advanced metrics. They’ve got 65 more home games to really goose those numbers and create better luck for stronger W-L results.

• Speaking of W-L records, I had tormented you all with a couple of posts about the history of Giants teams that have started 3-7 or 8-12, and I’m here to deliver slightly better news in that regard: 13-15 teams have usually wound up okay. The 2024 squad was 80-82, sure, but the 2011 team went 86-76 and before that the 1988 team was 83-89. The worst results were in 1979 (71-91) and 1956 (67-87).

But if you remain skeptical of the Giants this season — or, really, just believe that a lot of these surprisingly bad teams will be able to turn things around just as the Giants did already in April — there are perfectly valid data points to support the position.

• The top 10 most difficult remaining schedules belong to National League teams, so, it’s going to be a tough summer no matter how you slice it. Even the Rockies might prove a challenge going forward.

• The Giants are essentially one injury away from having a bad bullpen, a bad rotation, or a bad lineup, which puts a lot of pressure on the aforementioned prospect depth to perform at or better than the level of player they’re replacing. Sure, maybe Carson Seymour could be better than Adrian Houser, but how much better? He seems better suited as a reliever. Bryce Eldridge would almost certainly be an upgrade over Rafael Devers today, but over the rest of the season? Not sure about that. Will Bednar or Wilkin Ramos or Sam Hentges or Gregory Santos might be solid Blade Tidwell fill-ins if he gets bumped to the rotation at some point, but it’s iffy.

• Besides, it’s highly unlikely that the field remains in their present state. Obviously, the focus here is on the Giants and who they’re competing with for a postseason spot, but just taking the notion on its face, is it likely that all of the Royals, Blue Jays, Astros or Red Sox will remain big stinking losers over the next five months? Doubtful. At least a couple of those teams will turn things around (Boston is already 2-0 with their new coaching staff). It seems unlikely that the Mets and Phillies turn around their seasons, but you know, stranger things have happened. Although, seriously, 9-19s in the first 28 games has happened 118 times in MLB history and only 7 times has one of those teams had a winning season:

  • 1996 Boston Red Sox: 85-77

  • 2024 Houston Astros: 88-73 (Division Champ)

  • 1965 Pittsburgh Pirates: 90-72

  • 1914 Boston Braves: 94-59-5 (Won World Series)

• Then there are the teams right there in the middle with the Giants: will the Marlins be spoilers all year long? How about the Rockies? Is the NL Central for real? All five teams have winning records. That includes the perennial losers the Pittsburgh Pirates along with the rebuilding St. Louis Cardinals.

It’s not that the field is wide open so much that there’s a lot more uncertainty in the system than we might’ve expected even at this point in the season. Last year on this exact date, the Mets were 19-9 and the Giants were leading the NL West at 19-10. Only 2 of the 5 NL Central teams had winning records. And, by the way, the Brewers, who racked up the most wins last season, were just 14-15 (they’re 14-13 today)

So, it’s still early, but the Giants have shown a bit more gumption and perseverance than some other teams with even greater expectations. The Giants have played their way back into a decent spot for competing over the next five months. They still don’t have the most talented bunch when compared to a lot of teams out there, though, so, given that, if you had to make a final decision today, would you rather be in a position of one of the other teams (who aren’t the Dodgers, Yankees, or Cubs) or roll the dice and see if the Giants really have righted the ship?