Can he hit? No. Is he good? Also no; but, he’s useful, and that matters.
As you watch Joey Bart hit bombs for another team, it’s important to remember that position player development has never been one of the strengths of the San Francisco Giants organization. They’ve always been better at adding guys from outside to improve their position, and Nick Ahmed is a near-perfect example of this.
Sure, the shortstop doesn’t hit all that well, but he’s not completely unplayable. His defense and stick-to-it-ness is what creates that value. He’s a classic veteran scrapper, a species of ballplayer you’d have thought the Statcast era would’ve purged by now. And yet, he’s basically the second coming of 2019 Kevin Pillar and I think that means he’s going to be a fixture in the Giants lineup for the rest of the season. That’s not actually bad, it’s probably pretty good, even if he’s not.
It’s easy to fall into the trap that the most efficient team is the team where every position player is at least league average while at the same time an above average defender; but if we’re really talking about averages, all that really means is that for every dip into below league average you need that player to both have plus-plus defense and a counterpoint in the lineup whose line combines with his to make it a league average combination. Of course, the worse that below average hitter is, the greater the need for an All-Star bat to balance it out, but right now, Ahmed isn’t horrendous. He’s on the fringe of competent.
Let’s stick with the Kevin Pillar comp for a second. On literally Opening Day I commented,
Nick Ahmed’s junk swing is not part of any plan this is gonna be like when Zaidi just threw Kevin Pillar into the mix and it worked lol
— Every6thDay (@Every6thDay) March 28, 2024
Pillar hit .264/.293/.442 in 156 games for the Giants in 2019 with 21 home runs and 87 RBI. That was “good” enough for an 89 wRC+ and 0.8 wins above replacement and, amusingly, a 10th place MVP vote from former Giants beat writer Henry Schulman. This was one of the best seasons of Pillar’s career from a counting stat standpoint — a career-high in home runs too — but there was already a noticeable dip in the quality of defense in centerfield. And yet, there he was being a real sticking point in the Giants’ lineup.
His Statcast numbers were unremarkable (30.8% Hard Hit rate), but he made a lot of contact (83.4% overall, 93% inside the strike zone) and didn’t strike out much (13.8%) — but he also didn’t walk (2.8% BB rate). A classic contact and defense guy where the defense was the bigger question mark.
That’s not the case with Nick Ahmed. In his heyday (2015-2021), he was, simply, the best defender in Baseball according to Statcast. He had shoulder surgery in 2022 and Arizona cut him last season, but this year, fully healthy, he’s already at +4 Fielding Run Value, the third-best defender in MLB.
It’s the hitting side of the equation where you and others might say, “Yeah, but” and ordinarily I might agree with you, but if a player is so good with the glove, then how bad does he have to be on offense to be unplayable? Right now, he’s at .269/.305/.333 — an 84 wRC+ or 16% worse than the league average line. Compared to last season, somewhere between Patrick Bailey and Luis Matos.
He’s not walking much (3.6%) and he’s not as good at limiting strikeouts (18.1%) as Pillar was in 2019, but his 86.3 mph average exit velocity and 31.3% Hard Hit rate means he’s hitting the ball about as hard as Pillar was then but also harder than Mike Yastrzemski and Wilmer Flores right now. Both of those players you’d expect to improve over the course of the season and with Ahmed you might expect this to be his ceiling and I’d think that fair. The question is can he sustain basically this same level of performance the rest of the way?
It’s silly to make predictions about the rest of the season in April (even though I do it all the time), but if we take Ahmed’s elite defense as a given — particularly with Matt Chapman to his right soaking up the hot corner — then we need only wonder if the bat can maintain. Right now, his peripherals are in line with the aforementioned heyday:
2015-2021: 87 mph average exit velocity, 3.4% Barrel rate, 29% Hard Hit rate, .290 wOBA
2024: 86.3 mph average exit velocity, 3.1% Barrel rate, 31.3% Hard Hit rate, .288 wOBA
Ahmed is far from a problem right now and when you survey the possible replacements, they’re both in the current correct situation. Luciano just hit his first home run yesterday. We already know his defense isn’t anywhere near as good as Ahmed’s and so you’d have to assume that, barring injury, he’d have to hit so incredibly well that he could not be ignored. Since Giants prospects don’t usually force the issue by hitting blindingly well, the Luciano argument can be tabled for nwo. Meanwhile, Tyler Fitzgerald is playing like a really good 26th man and Thairo Estrada’s best position is still second base — and he’s hitting far worse.
I can’t believe we’re this many games into the season and Nick Ahmed is both not a problem and probably one of the main reasons why the Giants are doing just fine, record-wise. It harkens back to the days of Brian Sabean, just as the Pillar season did. The downside is that Ahmed’s not going to play any better than this, but the upside might just be that he won’t play any worse. There’s value in consistency, especially when one element of it is Gold Glove defense at shortstop.
In the lede I said that Nick Ahmed wasn’t good and I think a survey of fans and pundits across the nation would agree — but he’s not bad, either. He’s good at what he does and that’s very valuable for this Giants team.