How do the Giants stack up to other really bad teams?

The Giants lost 98 games last year, which is a lot of games to lose. The Giants think they can turn things around next year, win a lot of games, and make the playoffs, which, after a year in which they lost a lot of games, is iffy.

But how iffy is it? I decided to do some research to find out. I went through the last 40 years* of teams losing at least 98 games, from 1977 to 2016, just to see how those teams tended to do the next year (badly) and how much hope we should have for the Giants in 2018 (more than none, technically).

* The idea was to look at 40 years of data, but because there were two years with significant labor stoppages (1981 and 1994), no team was able to lose 98 games in either of those years. So it’s really 38 years. Information from teams in 1980 and 1993 is included, and those strikes are why I’ll be talking about winning percentage instead of number of wins the next year.

So how many 98+ loss teams are there?

71, though that doesn’t include the 2017 Giants or Tigers because the point of this exercise was to look at how they’ll do next year, and we don’t have information on the future. We apologize for our inexcusable failure.

How many of them were above .500 the next year?

10! The 1989 Orioles, 2004 Padres, 1986 Rangers, 2009 Mariners, 2017 Twins, 1986 Indians, 1980 A’s, 1986 Giants, 2003 Royals, and 1993 Mariners were all above .500 after losing between 98 and 107 (!!!) games the previous year.

Who won the most games the next year?

The first three teams I mentioned in the previous list, the 1989 Orioles, 2004 Padres, and 1986 Rangers, all went 87-75.

Ah, and Bruce Bochy managed those 2004 Padres, did he not?

He did.

Which means that he can turn this team around too.

It does not mean that.

You can’t prove he won’t.

Okay.

The 2017 Twins made the playoffs!

They did.

Which means that the 2018 Giants also have a very good shot of making the playoffs.

It does not mean that.

You can’t prove they won’t.

Okay.

How many teams lost exactly 98 games in a season?

15, and I’m introducing that fact now so that when I refer to it later, you won’t think that came up out of nowhere.

How many of them were over .500 the next year?

Just the ‘93 Mariners (who finished 82-80) and the ‘04 Padres (who went 87-75) were over .500 out of those 15 teams.

So how can you tell if a bad team will massively improve the next year?

I, uh ... I don’t know.

First off, a lot of the easily accessible information doesn’t correlate with improved winning percentage. Total team WAR? There was barely any effect, and if you graph it out, there’s a very, very slight negative correlation, which is completely meaningless, because the information’s so scattered. Here, take a look:

And the thing is, it’s all like that. Just offensive WAR? Same thing. Just pitching WAR? Same thing. ERA, FIP, same thing. The better the team is overall in terms of wins and losses, the better its record the next year, but those teams also improve less than the field as a whole. Teams as a whole improved by .062 points of winning percentage; 98-loss teams specifically improved by .051. Of those ten over .500 teams, seven lost at least 100 games the year before.

If we’re being honest here, the real answer to that question is “You can’t.” There is no real way to tell, at least without getting into an extensive analysis of the entire organization for each team, and even then you might not come up with anything. But only losing 98 instead of 110 hasn’t historically been especially helpful when it comes to a quick turnaround back to contention.

I’m morbidly curious about how the team WAR totals of the 2017 Giants stack up with the other teams on the list.

The 2017 Giants had 11.6 WAR from their pitchers and 9.9 from their hitters, for a total of 21.5. That is the 19th best value for a pitching staff out of all 71 teams, and tied for 25th among hitters. For the overall WAR total, it comes in 16th. Purely among 98 loss teams, it’s decent. The pitching is 6th in WAR out of the 16 (because we’re including the Giants now, because this is the company they keep!), the offense 8th, and overall they’re 6th.

For the record, I didn’t include last year’s Tigers, also 98 game losers, in this analysis because I don’t care about them. Hope that clears things up.

So the 2017 Giants were an average team among the sample of teams that have lost 98 games since 1977. Again, as I showed in the last section, none of this has any effect on how the team will do next year. It’s just here for those of you who want to know because, hey, when else are you gonna be able to get this information?

Had any teams on the list won a World Series within the previous three years?

Yes! The 2004 Diamondbacks lost 111 games. Now, they didn’t have as many holdovers from their championship season as the 2017 Giants did — for them, it was really just Randy Johnson, Steve Finley, and Luis Gonzalez — but they sure fell far in just a few years, and it was even a precipitous decline from the year before, when they won a not horrendous 84 games. They ended up improving to 77-85 in 2005, which was a massive improvement, though they were still bad, and would remain bad until 2007.

The 1998 and 1999 Marlins were also on the list, but their front office systemically dismantled the team after they won the World Series the year before, which is basically the exact opposite of what Giants management has done, so they don’t really apply for our purposes.

So what’s the conclusion here, other than “The 2017 Giants were bad”?

First off, it’s “The 2017 Giants were really bad.” Show some self-respect for the crap you endured last year. You did a great job! Way to go, you.

But the point is more this: manage your expectations. A season where the Giants finish over .500 will be a wild success. A season where the Giants are even remotely close to a playoff spot — 87 wins would have tied the Rockies last year for the second wild card spot -- will be a massive, stunning success. There is, realistically, very little chance that the Giants will be a decent team next year. And so, as we conclude the article on a note of pure despair-

Hey! I have one more question. What about 97-loss teams? They’re not that different from 98-loss teams. Why weren’t they included in the sample?

Well, uh, shut up, that’s why.

Here’s the page on Fangraphs with all those teams. Most of them were very bad the next year. Very, very bad. It’s a similar story to the rest of the article, really. But there are (at a glance) three teams that were quite good the next year. They are the 1991 Braves, the 1999 Diamondbacks, and the 2011 Diamondbacks. Now, the ‘91 Braves and ‘11 Diamondbacks aren’t great comps for the Giants; they each had a few veteran contributors, but they were also loaded with young players who stepped up in a way that the 2018 Giants are just not going to see.

But if you look at the ‘99 Diamondbacks, over the offseason they signed one (1) Hall of Fame pitcher in Randy Johnson, one (1) Hall of Very Gooder in Steve Finley, made a smart trade for Luis Gonzalez, bought Erubiel Durazo from the Mexican League, and shored up their bullpen, and then they won 100 games. That’s the thing that’s not impossible for the Giants.

Is it likely? No. Oh, no. Heavens, no. Please, please don’t think it’s likely. The point above about managing your expectations for next year stands. If the Giants don’t horribly embarrass themselves in most of their games next year, that’ll be a win. But it’s not impossible. If they do get some big ticket free agent who turns out to exceed expectations, then there is a chance that, combined with Evan Longoria and a resurgent core, this could be a good team in 2018.

That’s your piece of driftwood in the middle of the ocean. The Giants, though they lost quite a few games last year, are certainly starting from a better place than those Diamondbacks, who had literally just started existing in 1998, and if they could do it, we can do it. Most teams have a better shot than the Giants this year, but they don’t have no shot, and that’s a reason to hope.