The Giants Are Screwed

When I heard yesterday that Bonds won't be coming back to the Giants next year, my initial thought was "Wow, sucks for Matt Cain, he's gonna get even less run support."

But as I thought about it a little more, I realized this situation (obviously) is a lot bigger than Matt Cain's W-L record. The Giants' offense is pretty bad this year, even with Bonds. Here are the ages and VORPs of the Giants' most common lineup:

Not only is this offense terrible, they're all old. The only guy under 32 is Frandsen, and he's just not very good. At 4.14 R/G, they are second to last in the NL.

It gets worse though. The Giants have actually been really good with runners in scoring position this year- substantially better than in other situations. Here's the breakdown:


Overall, the Giants have hit .250/.318/.383. It's extremely unlikely that they will be this clutch(/lucky) again next year. They have actually scored 633 runs, but a team with that line would only be expected to score 573 to this point, and 607 in a full season.

And all of this is with Bonds. If the Giants replace Bonds with a player as good as their second best offensive player (Winn, 19.1 VORP), they'll lose 37 runs next year. Take that way from 607, and you have a 570-run team- 3.52 runs per game. To put that in context, the Nationals are last in the NL this year with 4.10 R/G. And in the last 10 years, the worst NL offense has been the 2003 Dodgers, who averaged 3.54 R/G.

Of course, this is all assuming that the Giants don't add anybody, which is unlikely. But Brian Sabean better get on that and acquire some legit hitters, because if he doesn't San Francisco is going to have a historically bad offense in 2008.

Picture: Deadspin