Fielding Run Value<\/a>, Bailey\u2019s framing was the most valuable defensive player in all of baseball, worth 25 runs above average and helping him to a league-leading total of 31 \u2014 8 runs more than his closest competitor. Based on his hitting, Bailey was one of the worst regulars in baseball.<\/p>\nBy offensive standards, Bailey had his worst season as a professional, with his highest strikeout rate (29.4%), his lowest home run rate (1.3%), his lowest rate of contact (73.8%), his highest rate of swinging at pitches outside the strike zone (31%), and his lowest rate of line drives (18.2%). Basically, Bailey swung and missed more than ever before, judged strikes worse than ever before, and when he did connect, he didn\u2019t hit the ball hard.<\/p>\n
Bailey\u2019s season stats were dragged down by a truly miserable March and April, when he slashed a pitcher-esque .160\/ .207 \/.235, striking out in 36% of his plate appearances. He didn\u2019t hit his first home run until May 21, his 44th game of the season. Bailey was like Katy Perry\u2019s recent career \u2014 very few hits, and only occasionally blasting off into the sky. Historically, he\u2019s been solid at the plate early, then tailed off.<\/p>\n
That could have been a result of an offseason adjustment to a more open batting stance. By September and October, Bailey was excellent at the plate, slashing .288\/ .321\/ .493 and hitting four home runs. Maybe there\u2019s a trend, or maybe small sample sizes for a player who has 2.5 seasons of experience just aren\u2019t very predictive.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Bailey was easily the best defensive catcher in baseball, essentially because of how many strikes he\u2019s stealing with his artful framing. He was no slouch at other aspects of catching, throwing out 27 of 88 potential base stealers. That\u2019s 30.7% when the league average is 23.2%, and got him five fielding runs for his arm, third among all catchers. He should earn his second Gold Glove for his efforts.<\/p>\n
But can the Giants continue with such a giant black hole in their lineup? They haven\u2019t been doing Bailey any favors with their inability to get him a decent backup catcher. Bailey started a career-high 114 games and played in 132 \u2014 and that\u2019s in a season where he spent 10 days on the injured list in June. His durability is impressive for a catcher, but maybe if the team\u2019s Sam Huff experiment had gone better, or if Andrew Knizner could have provided more offense.<\/p>\n
Bailey was again worse from the right side of the plate, with his positive platoon split against left-handers from his rookie season looking more like an aberration, though he wasn\u2019t quite as hapless as in 2024, when he slashed .180\/ .237\/ .213 against southpaws. Yes, his slugging was actually lower than his on-base percentage, something only possible when you get three extra-base hits in 97 plate appearances. The Giants backstop wasn\u2019t that much better against right-handed pitchers, but it\u2019s almost reminiscent of a J.T. Snow situation where a player should simply abandon switch-hitting.<\/p>\n
Still, he\u2019s shown flashes at the plate, and flashes for the dramatic as well. Arguably, Bailey was responsible for the Giants\u2019 second-best win of the year as well, when he hit a walk-off grand slam to down the dastardly Los Angeles Dodgers.<\/p>\n
Bailey does need to improve his hitting, in part because his pitch framing wizardry might not be as valuable after baseball introduces the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System next season, where teams can challenge two ball\/strike calls per game. Of course, Bailey is so good at pitch framing, he may figure out a way to dupe the robots as well, which should lead to a new baseball award: The Gold Power Glove.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2025 stats: 135 G, 452 PA, .222 \/ .277 \/ .325, 6 HR, 55 RBI, 73 OPS+ (70…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,4558,162,4,1830,378,66,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342],"class_list":{"0":"post-383970","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-giants","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-general","10":"tag-giants","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-roster","13":"tag-san-francisco","14":"tag-san-francisco-giants","15":"tag-sanfrancisco","16":"tag-sanfranciscogiants","17":"tag-sf","18":"tag-sf-giants","19":"tag-sfgiants"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115385492676917198","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}