SAN FRANCISCO — You heard it repeatedly over the season’s final month.
If we were healthy, this team could have competed for a World Series title.
The 2018 Giants finished 73-89, so the statement sounds ridiculous at first, but you can see where the Giants are coming from. With a banged-up roster, they were just five games out in the NL West as late as August 14, and it’s not like the Dodgers and Rockies put the hammer down in September. There’s an alternative universe where a healthy Giants roster stays in that race, takes the West by a couple of games, and then goes on a run in October. You can picture it.
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Madison Bumgarner does what he has done before in the postseason. Johnny Cueto, with no elbow pain, gives the Giants a second ace. Buster Posey, with a healthy hip, again catches every inning in October. Brandon Crawford, Brandon Belt and Joe Panik get another round of clutch hits in close postseason games. Someone you didn’t expect — Alen Hanson or Mac Williamson or Ryder Jones — becomes this year’s Travis Ishikawa.
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Stranger things have happened. The Giants have proven that in past Octobers, and that’s why they had faith in how good this team could have been if healthy.
But that narrative misses something important. Yes, the Giants had a series of injuries in 2018, but it’s not like they were alone.
San Francisco Giants
According to STATS, Giants players spent 1,107 days on the disabled list in 2018, but that placed them right in the middle of the pack. They were 15th, well behind the Angels, who led the Majors with 1,821 DL days, nearly all of which came from their pitching staff. The Mets paced the National League at 1,746. Two National League West clubs had more DL days than the Giants. The average for MLB teams was actually 1,127 DL days, so the Giants weren't particularly unlucky.
Of the 14 teams ahead of the Giants in DL days, seven made the postseason, including the Dodgers and Red Sox (1,257), who faced off in the World Series. Across the bridge, the A’s (1,267) found their way to October despite losing practically an entire rotation to Tommy John and their young ace, Sean Manaea, to shoulder surgery.
Now, there certainly are caveats here. Not all DL days are created equal. It’s a bigger hit to lose Cueto to Tommy John than it is to lose a No. 5 starter. Then there are guys like Posey, who officially missed 32 games because of injury but played five months with a compromised hip. He didn't add to the DL numbers much, but his injury left a mark on the record.
But Cueto and Posey and others are also part of why the Giants should have seen this coming. Team officials often pushed back on that concept, pointing to fluke injuries like Panik fracturing his thumb on a tag or Bumgarner getting hit by a line drive. That’s true, but the majority of the DL days were because of wear-and-tear on older players. That’s not surprising.
Cueto is 32, has thrown nearly 2,000 big league innings, and dealt with elbow discomfort before coming to the Giants. Tommy John wasn’t a shocker. Jeff Samardzija is 33. Same with Mark Melancon, who had forearm issues when he signed. Pablo Sandoval (hamstring) is 32. Posey is 31.
There’s nothing you can do to plan for Belt’s appendix flaring up or Steven Duggar’s shoulder popping out as he dives into second, but in general, the Giants put together an old roster, and they should not have been surprised that so many players went down.
They also should not look at those DL days and retroactively inflate their view of the 2018 roster. This was not a roster that was a bit more injury luck away from a World Series run.
The good news is that we know the front office won’t go into these biggest weeks of the offseason with that view. We know this because of who they hired, a man who previously served as general manager of the Dodgers.
Farhan Zaidi’s old club put together a roster that actually did win the division and make the World Series, and did so with players spending 1,617 days on the DL, the third-highest total in the majors.