How does ZiPS think the 2020 Giants will do?

Projection Szn is a great time if you’re a fan of a good team comprised of good players.

Given that you purposely made the decision to read this article on a San Francisco Giants blog, I’m guessing that does not apply to you. We here at McCovey Cove Chronicles totally support your love of this bad team comprised of bad players, though. We join you in that love.

But we are still contractually obligated (this is a lie) to talk about projections and share them with you.

A few weeks ago, Bryan kicked things off by sharing the Fangraphs ZiPS player projections for the Giants. The article was titled, “Look on the Giants’ 2020 ZiPS projections and despair” and jeez, Bryan, chill buddy, you’re being a little dramat...oh no wait, that’s quite accurate, my god my eyes, IT BURNS.

If you’re a fan of 1-WAR seasons, then whooo buddy have I got some good smut for you. Otherwise . . . I’m so sorry.

Now, with spring training officially here, and the first set of real kind of real baseball games getting underway, Fangraphs is revisiting their ZiPS projections, and looking at the standings.

Ready to see how the Giants do?

Drumroll, please . . . .

Oh wow, thank you computer for obeying that command, I wasn’t expecting that to happen. How handy.

And the Giants are projected for . . .

69 wins.

Okay, well, no. The juvenile humor doesn’t really work here, computer, because 69 wins (nice) is emphatically not nice.

It puts the Giants last in the NL West, 3 games behind the Colorado Rockies, 11 behind the Arizona Diamondbacks, and 18 behind the San Diego Padres.

We’re just going to leave the distance behind the Los Angeles Dodgers out of this, for your health and for mine (but if you must know, the games behind the Dodgers is something north of 31 and south of 33. I won’t say more.).

As bad as that is, ZiPS projects the horrendousness of a few other franchises to block the Giants from capitalizing on their accumulation of losses. They project the Giants average draft position to be 6.6, with just a 2.9% chance of landing the top pick in the draft.

Obviously good picks are good (hooray for tautology), but it is worth noting that, as bad as the Giants project to be, something will have gone very wrong if they end up with a top-three pick.

Okay, that’s a whole lot of bad news I’ve just mentioned, so let’s get to the good news: Fangraphs projects the Giants to have a 0.1% of making the postseason.

You’re damn right I am.