Which Diamondbacks Hit the Giants?

Which players have hit against the Giants better than any others? Thanks to baseball-reference.com, we can figure that out.

As of April, 2013, Paul Goldschmidt had 1474 major-league plate appearances. He was a career .289/.376/.517 hitter. If you took his numbers against the Giants out of his career total, he became a .279/.351/.476 hitter. If you took his numbers against Tim Lincecum out of his career numbers, he became  a .277/.355/.471 hitter. Goldschmidt’s slugging percentage went down 23 points if you took away his 14 at-bats against Tim Lincecum. He was, at that stage of his career, a Giant killer.

With the help of baseball-reference.com, we’ll be taking a look at the players for each team who hit best against the Giants. This will be based on two stats: raw OPS and OPStot, with a minimum of 100 at-bats. The first stat is obvious, but the second one compares a player’s performance against a specific team with his overall performance.

Or, more specifically, the raw OPS leaders should be filled with Hall of Famers and All-Stars because they’re good against just about everyone. The OPStot leaders will be filled with players who killed the Giants in a way you wouldn’t expect from their total stats while playing for that specific Giant opponent. For example, if Neifi Perez was a career .267/.297/.375 hitter, but he hit .388/.419/.578 against the Giants, he would have an incredibly high OPStot against the Giants.

So which Arizona Diamondback hitters have had the most success against the Giants?

OPS:  Luis Gonzalez (.915) (Full table)

OPStop:  Matt Williams (.106) (his .904 OPS as a Diamondback vs. the Giants minus his .798 OPS as a Diamondback generally)

Luis Gonzalez used to kill the Giants, but fortunately he victimized all other teams combined worse, to the tune of a .919 OPS while a Diamondback. So I guess the Giants were lucky. Huh.

After using Neifi Perez as an example of the type of hitter who would look good when measuring with OPStop, look who pops up representing the Diamonbacks! In his prime, with the Giants, Matt Williams was a great hitter. I knew he was in decline, though, when the Giants traded him to Cleveland before the 1997 season, but I didn’t remember him being so mediocre a hitter with the Diamondbacks as he actually was. To his credit, though, Williams killed his old team when he faced them.