Bay Area MLB Teams Suffer Worst Drop-Offs From 2021 to 2022
The San Francisco Giants had a historically great 2021 season. They won 107 games,
the most in franchise history.
The 107 wins were the most by a National League team since the
1986 New York Mets won 108 games. The Giants followed that incredible regular season by losing in the first round of the playoffs.
And the losing continued into the following year. Due to a number of factors, the Giants won only 81 games in 2022. The drop in
wins (26) was the largest such drop by the Giants since moving to San Francisco
in 1958 (excluding the strike-shortened '94 season and the COVID-shortened '20 season). What caused the decline? Marc Delucchi answers that question in
this well-written article. The 26-win drop was tied for
the largest decline by any MLB team from 2021 to 2022.
Which team did they tie?
That would be the other Bay Area MLB team (Oakland Athletics). After winning a respectable 86 games in 2021, the A's
went on a fire sale that
would make the '97 Florida
Marlins jealous. They traded away both of their 2021 All-Stars (Matt Olson and
Chris Bassitt) as well as
Matt Chapman (27 home runs, Gold Glove) and
Sean Manaea (3.91 ERA). They also lost Starling Marte (.310 batting average, 47 stolen bases), Mark Canha (.358 on-base percentage, 93 runs), and Josh Harrison (.279 batting average) to
free agency. The departures of all those key players partly explain why the A's won an American League-worst 60 games in 2022.
Unlike with the Giants, the 26-win drop was not the largest for the A's since
they moved to the Bay Area. Their largest drop was 28 wins: they won 68
games in 1993 after winning 96 games in 1992.
Unfortunately, the Giants (79 wins) and A's (50 wins) had even worse years in 2023.