With Brandon Belt Down and Out, What Will Giants Do at First Base?

Brandon Belt has had his fair share of freak injuries throughout his career; Monday evening brought news of yet another, as an X-ray on his thumb revealed a fracture that occurred Sunday afternoon when he was hit on the hand when squaring around to bunt against Rockies reliever Lucas Gilbreath. Some may question why Belt was bunting in the first place, but he sadly has a history of being on the wrong end of poorly thrown baseballs. Also, bunting has long been a tactic he’s successfully used as a heavily shifted upon hitter.

When it comes to Belt, you don’t often have to search for analogous injuries from around the league to get a sense of a timeline, because a similar injury has probably already happened to Belt himself. In fact, this exact same scenario is a repeat: In 2014, he was hit by a pitch and missed eight weeks with a fracture in his thumb. Recovery time from this latest injury is officially unknown, and a timetable will come out soon, but it’s possible if not likely that the Giants will be without Belt for the rest of the year.

That would be a huge loss for San Francisco. Not only has Belt been the team’s best hitter since the start of last season, but he’s also been one of the best in all of baseball over that span:

Throughout his prime, Belt was always a great hitter (a 136 wRC+ from 2013 to ’16), but his lack of homers and his injury history made him a rather contentious figure among Giants fans. When his production wavered from 2017 to ’19 (107 wRC+), like most of the team’s core, it seemed that the best was behind him. But as you saw in that chart, he has reached unforeseen heights thanks to a new diet of home runs that has his isolated slugging (ISO) at a career-high .323, up alongside the game’s best sluggers.

It’s no surprise that Belt’s revival coincides with the start of 2020, as that’s when the Giants revamped their coaching staff and moved in the outfield fences at Oracle Park by eight feet, with a new trio of hitting coaches preaching a team-wide philosophy based on only swinging at pitches that you can truly damage. Belt has always had the plate discipline part down, routinely putting up some of the best O-Swing Rates in baseball (94th percentile this year). In fact, since 2016, no hitter has struck out looking on pitches out of the zone more often than he has. He doesn’t chase pitches, even if umpires do.

Now, on top of the discipline, he’s damaging the hittable pitches even more, with this improved power and approach leading to a career-high 29 home runs. (In fact, he had never even reached 20 homers before this season.) Power has been so hard to come by in recent years for the Giants that Belt’s 29 homers are the most in a season for the team since Barry Bonds hit 45 in 2004.

Belt has always been good at keeping the ball off the ground, and this year is no different, as he has a 50% fly-ball rate, the highest of his career, paired with the lowest ground-ball rate in the majors. He’s made the most of his fly balls this year, too:

The spikes in wOBA and ISO are big improvements on their own, but when you notice how often he is pulling his fly balls, it becomes clear where his power breakout is coming from.

So how do you replace that? The Giants have a deep and talented lineup — the best in the National League — and have survived and thrived without key players all season, but losing Belt, who had a 207 wRC+ in September, feels like the toughest blow yet. This isn’t the first time this year they’ve had to go on without him, though, as a knee injury kept him out for six weeks earlier in the season, so we certainly have a better idea about how Gabe Kapler will approach the loss this time around.

The Giants went 20–14 without Belt earlier in the year, which somehow is one of their worst stretches of the year. The relatively pedestrian performance was not the fault of his replacements, though. LaMonte Wade Jr. and Darin Ruf both filled in at first base with resounding success — a 145 wRC+ for the former and an absurd 175 wRC+ for the latter. The problem right now is that Ruf is currently dealing with a minor oblique injury, though it seems likely he’ll be back before the postseason starts.

If you are a frequent reader of FanGraphs, you may already be familiar with these two players and the breakouts they have had this year. Just last week, Jay Jaffe wrote all about Wade and his success in high-leverage moments:

Wade’s splits, small sample though they may be, are just ridiculous, the stuff of cartoon superheroes. He’s hit .375/.413/.696 in 124 PA with men on base (but just .208/.307/.416 with the bases empty), .379/.408/.652 in 71 PA with runners in scoring position, .356/.442/.511 in 52 PA in close-and-late situations, .412/.426/.667 in 56 PA in high-leverage situations, and .423/.483/.923 in 29 PA with two outs and runners in scoring position.

As good as Wade has been, he’s largely only in the lineups against righties; he has 41 plate appearances and a 0 wRC+ against southpaws. This is where Ruf and his 164 wRC+ against lefties comes in. Earlier this month, Devan Fink wrote about his elite plate discipline, like his very low Swing%:

This tendency gets him into more favorable counts more often, with more than 31% of the pitches he’s seen this season coming while ahead in the count, a 91st percentile mark. That’s by far the highest rate of his career.

Ruf is more than just a lefty masher, though. He’s played a lot against righties this year (164 PA) and more than held his own (125 wRC+). That figure is good for sixth best on the team versus right-handers, more than enough to be earning starts against them in the postseason. As far as replacements go, you could do a lot worse than those two.

I have a feeling we may see both Wade and Ruf start against righties, with the former in a corner outfield spot, where he has more experience than Ruf, and the latter at first base. The right-handed hitting Wilmer Flores is another option at first, especially until Ruf returns; his 118 career wRC+ against lefties and a career-high walk rate have earned him plenty of playing time this season.

Regardless of whether he returns in October, Belt’s contract is up after this season, so he very well could have played his final game in a Giants uniform. His performance the last two years couldn’t have come at a better time; he’s more than earned himself a multi-year contract, even if he’s turning 34 next April. He’s been a huge part of why the Giants have baseball’s best record heading into the final week of the season, and his tenure and leadership role on this team will likely have both sides eager to work out a contract, even if he doesn’t take another at-bat this season.