How the 2013 Giants Compare to Other Giant Teams the Year After a World Series Victory

After Sunday’s thrilling come-from-behind victory, capped by Hunter Pence‘s walk-off RBI, the Giants finish the 2013 season 76-86, tied for third place in the National League West. There were times this season when the Giants were in last place in the division, and all of us feared that they would be only the second team in history to finish in last place the season after having won a World Series. (The Florida Marlins lost 108 games a year after winning the 1997 World Series.)

That ignominy did not happen, but the Giants made it a little closer run than we’d have liked. Just how does this year’s team stack up to Giants teams of the past? Was this the worst Giants team in a season after having won it all?

The Giants first won the World Series in 1905, after having boycotted the 1904 series, which would have been the second, because of John McGraw‘s ongoing grudge against Ban Johnson, the president of the American League. Having seen how much money his players (and the Giant organization) lost out on by not playing, he agreed to face the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1905 series.

The Giants returned most of the same players in 1906, and they had a great year by any standard. But Christy Mathewson missed a few weeks with diphtheria, and did not regain full strength and effectiveness when he came back, and Mike Donlin broke his ankle on May 15 sliding into third base in Cincinnati, and was lost for most the rest of the season. The main difficulty the Giants had in 1906 was simply the blazing play of the Chicago Cubs, who won 116 games, still the modern record if one considers that they played fewer games than the 2001 Seattle Mariners.

As I discussed in another post, the early 1920s were a time of great success for the Giants, and their last period of dynastic supremacy over the rest of baseball. They went to the World Series four seasons in a row (1921-24), winning the first two of those over the Yankees, losing to the Yankees in 1923, and losing to the Washington Senators in 1924.

At the National League meetings in New York on February 6, 1934, Roscoe McGowen, a writer for the New York Times, asked Giants player-manager Bill Terry how he thought Brooklyn would do in 1934. Referring to the Dodgers’ inability to make any offseason trades, Terry responded: “Is Brooklyn still in the league? I haven’t heard from them.” New York went on to lead St. Louis and Chicago by six games on Labor Day, but by mid-September the Giants were faltering and the “Gas House Gang” were rolling. The two teams were tied before New York’s final two games of the season, against Brooklyn at the Polo Grounds. The Dodgers swept the series, while the Cardinals won two from the Reds, and with them the National League pennant. The Giants, alas, had to be satisfied with a better Pythagorean record than the Cardinals, 95-58 to 90-63. With what was, as it had been in 1933, dominant pitching, the 1934 Giants should have won the pennant again.

The 1954 Giants, behind dominant pitching and good hitting, won the National League pennant and then upset the Cleveland Indians, sweeping them in the World Series. 1954’s National League MVP, Willie Mays, sparkled again in 1955, hitting 51 homers in a .319/.400/.659 season. The rest of the offense was lackluster, though, and the pitching, though good, was not as excellent as 1954’s, and could not make up the difference of the poor hitting. The improving Milwaukee Braves would finish second to the Dodgers in 1955.

General manager Brian Sabean brought back 23 of the 25 players on the Giants’ 2010 World Series roster. (By contrast, the World Series-losing Texas Rangers turned over six roster spots and added Adrian Beltre and Mike Napoli, and went to the World Series again.) Juan Uribe bolted for a three-year deal with the Dodgers, and Sabean replaced him with the most similar player available, Miguel Tejada. A temporarily healthy Mark DeRosa took Edgar Renteria‘s spot. Sabean signed Aubrey Huff to a two-year contract, hoping he could repeat, at age 34, his career-best season. Otherwise, the 2011 season was the after-party. Sabean didn’t upgrade the offense. True, he had proven that a team could win a World Series with a subpar lineup, but it was folly to rely on that happening again.

As surprising as the 2012 World Series victory was, how the Giants did it was perhaps most surprising. While the 2010 Giants relied on their pitching to carry a moribund offense, the bats drove the 2012 club. San Francisco posted a surprising 106 OPS+, just one point behind league-leading St. Louis. For 2013, Sabean did just what he had in 2011, bringing back 23 of the 25 players on the 2012 World Series roster. The hitting was again good in 2013, as the Giants tied with the Dodgers and Cardinals for the best OPS+ in the league. The pitching however, continued to deteriorate, the Giants’ 84 ERA+ the worst in the National League.

The 2013 team was undoubtedly the worst the Giants have ever fielded in a season after having won the World Series. The 2011 and 2013 teams are the only such to have finished with a losing record, and the 2013 team did so at the rate of ten games under .500. Their Pythagorean record was even worse, at 74-88. While injuries to Angel Pagan and Marco Scutaro no doubt played a part, the Giants have their work cut out for them in upgrading their starting pitching.