The Giants are 20-21 at the quarter pole of the season, but that should be seen as a success considering everything that’s happened.
First off, San Francisco has been outscored by 28 runs so far in 2018, the fourth worst run differential in the National League. Secondly, the club has been severely bitten by the injury bug before the season even started, losing ace Madison Bumgarner to a broken left pinkie in his last start of spring training, and losing Johnny Cueto (who had a MLB best 0.84 ERA) at the beginning of May with an elbow issue.
When all that gets taken into account, things could be much worse for for the Giants 41 games in. Veteran MLB reporter Bob Nightengale went a step further when he joined Gary & Larry on Monday morning, saying that the Giants could be a scary team when they get healthy.
“I feel good about the Giants,” Nightengale said. “So many things have gone wrong. You talk about Cueto making five starts, you know Bumgarner still hasn’t started, (Jeff) Samardzija has struggled in the early going, and the fact they’re right there, hanging in the race, has got to be a good feeling. So once things start going, once you get Bumgarner back in, and Cueto back, you know Samardzija will start pitching a lot better, then they could be a scary team.”
As it currently stands, the Giants are in third place in the NL West, sitting two games behind the second place Rockies and four and a half behind the Diamondbacks. San Francisco begins a three game series with the last place Cincinnati Reds on Monday night.