Like the Warriors, the path to a 4th Giants title goes through the old dudes

There aren’t a lot of similarities between the 2021-22 Warriors and the 2022 Giants. Other than Steph Curry being roughly the same height as Brandon Belt —which will break your brain if you think about it too long — the two franchises and sports and personnel and histories are wildly different. There’s only one semi-reasonable analogy to Curry in Giants lore, and he retired a few months ago.

So you might say this is a cynical attempt to get “Warriors” in the headline and goose the SEO, which could lead to an extra cookie for me during my quarterly review.

Wait, come back! That’s not entirely it, I promise! There is at least one valid comparison between the two franchises, and it’s worth pointing out, even if it’s oversimplified. This Warriors group won their fourth championship since 2010 because their veteran All-Stars played like All-Stars. If the Giants want to win their fourth championship since 2010, they’ll need their veteran All-Stars to play like All-Stars.

Had to show some love for the @warriors 🏀 #BayAreaUnite pic.twitter.com/fvPSKOukeh

— SFGiants (@SFGiants) June 14, 2022

There is data to back this claim up. The Giants are currently playing well, eight games over .500 and still in contention for the NL West. There are 20 teams having a worse season than them, and there’s plenty that’s going right. That’s harder to notice because their current winning percentage would put them about 15 wins behind last year’s pace, but it’s true.

They could be playing better, though, and there’s a very specific area of the roster that can help. Wins Above Average lacks the cool-name branding of WAR, and it’s not as accessible, but it might be an even more useful stat for reasons explained here. It’s a great, quick and convenient way to see how the Giants compare to their peers at every position in terms of offense and defense, and Baseball-Reference makes it easy to track.

Starting pitching: The Giants are elite, just behind the Yankees and Dodgers. No problems here.

Bullpen: Could be better, but still not bad compared to how the other half lives.

Catcher: Sneakily productive, with a lot of help from Curt Casali.

Outfield: Doin’ fine. Just like the bullpen, it could be better, but Mike Yastrzemski, Joc Pederson and Luis González have contributed an awful lot to the winning record.

According to WAA, here’s where the Giants are behind. And not just by a little bit. This is where they’re way behind:

There’s a common thread with all of these positions: old dudes. Veterans. Players who have made All-Star teams and appeared on an MVP ballot. If the Giants are going to be closer to the 2021 Giants than the 2016 Giants in terms of regular-season success, it’s going to be the old dudes who get them there. And it’s also the only chance if they want that elusive fourth ring.

These rankings aren’t just about a lack of production, either. They’re about a lack of health, too, which means there’s hope. The only problem with this is that health is a common old-guy concern. Old-guy health is why I spent most of the 2021-22 NBA season skeptical that the Warriors could make it even to the Western Conference Finals. There are no guarantees that players in their mid-30s will simply get healthy given enough time.

They’re all healthy at the same time right now, though, and they’re healthy together for the first time this season. Belt, Brandon Crawford and Evan Longoria are the key to the 2022 Giants for a lot of reasons, but the biggest reason is this: They each represent the Giants’ best chance to get production out of the positions that are currently the least productive parts (by far) on the roster. As the Brandons + Longoria go, so go the Giants.

Take Belt, who returned to the lineup on Wednesday and had the beltiest game possible, hitting a home run, taking a walk and striking out after an umpire called a borderline strike against him. It was a pure distillation of the Brandon Belt experience, and it should have helped the Giants win. If he keeps doing it, it will help the Giants win. A huge chunk of the Giants’ 2022 plans revolved around the belief that Belt could provide 400 productive at-bats, which would make him valuable even after the inevitable injury or three. The Giants had no illusions of a 162-game season for Belt, so they were just going to be happy with the production whenever they got it.

When that first inevitable injury comes early and steals a month, though, the stakes get higher for the rest of the season. The Giants are going to need some healthy, productive months of Belt to subsidize what they’ve already lost. Here’s how the playing time at first base has been distributed this season:

Belt, 111 PA
Darin Ruf, 76 PA
Wilmer Flores, 76 PA
Mike Ford, 4 PA
Kevin Padlo, 2 PA
Jason Vosler, 1 PA
Michael Papierski, 1 PA
Curt Casali, 1 PA

Even with the injury, Belt has received a plurality of the playing time, which means he’s disproportionately responsible for the low WAA ranking, and he was in a bit of a skid before the IL.

The best option out of all these players is still Belt by a mile, of course. And it’s hard to overrate just how important he is to the lineup. The Giants don’t need him to hit like the 2020 or 2021 version to be a marked improvement on what they’ve gotten out of the position so far, but the closer he can inch to that production, the closer the team will be to their best-case scenario.

Next, turn to third base, where Longoria is having a strange season. His slugging percentage is .463 (good), his batting average is .225 (bad) and his on-base percentage is .287 (really bad). The early returns on his defense have been mixed, which is to be expected for a rusty player battling a couple different ailments. His plate discipline has been trending in the right direction in June, with four walks and only six strikeouts in 29 PA, but his production hasn’t caught up (.590 OPS).

What does all of this mean for the 2022 Giants? No idea. There isn’t one thing to point at, one statistic that leads to a Eureka! moment in either direction. Longoria is still the kind of player who could carry the Giants for weeks at a time, as he did last season. He’s still a 36-year-old player with significant injury concerns, which is a description that comes with the reddest of red flags.

And it’s important to remember that Longoria will get every last chance to become that best version of himself. Unlike last time, when we looked at how the Giants’ roster wasn’t built for quick fixes, the quickest fix of them all, David Villar, has cooled down. Any evidence-based assessment of the Giants’ active and 40-man roster would give Longoria the best chance to produce, so the Giants will keep hoping he shakes the rust off on both sides of the ball.

We don’t need to talk too much about DH, other than to note that Darin Ruf is also an older veteran who is crucial to the Giants’ success this season, as a first baseman, left fielder and DH. Since his season-low OPS of .475 on May 4, he’s hit .264/.387/.484, which means that he’s been exactly what the organization was hoping for over the last month and a half.

Which brings us to Crawford, and if you think that a healthy Longoria is entrenched in this lineup, regardless of production, here’s a thought experiment for you: Imagine how bad Crawford would have to be for the Giants to think there’s a better alternative.

Trick question: It would never happen. He’s so steady and important to the Giants’ run-prevention plans, even when he’s not hitting, and the best version of Crawford is a player who is so wildly, obviously valuable that it’s a dream worth chasing. You might even say that he’s laden with the potential to be the most valuable player in the National League when he’s playing to his full potential.

He doesn’t have to hit like that to turn the Giants from a team that wins 55 percent of the time into a team that wins 65 percent of the time, but every little bit helps. And if the Giants have designs on being more than a team that squeaks into the postseason with the help of the 17th or 18th wild card or whatever, they’ll get there with the help of a resurgent Crawford.

With a little providence and good fortune, they’ll get there with a variety of resurgent old dudes. You can decide for yourself how likely it is that a bunch of players in their mid-30s will stay healthy and produce. It certainly isn’t guaranteed. But the Giants decided a long time ago that it could work, and they decided a long time ago that this specific infield permutation would give them their best chance at winning more baseball games than other teams in the NL West.

It worked last season. There are reasons to think it could work again this season. There are reasons to think it could flop. If the Giants want their fourth championship in a relatively short amount of time, though, there’s a path that was blazed by some old dudes down the street from them. The sports and situations are closer to “remotely comparable” than “identical,” but the foundation is the same. Get the veteran All-Stars playing like veteran All-Stars, and this team would turn from a solid, contending team into a team that has realistic championship dreams.

(Photo: Will Newton / Getty Images)