There’s no doubt veteran Harrison Bader improves the Giants outfield defensively. He’s got the flair, the hair, and the hardware, not to mention eight years of consistently excellent defensive metrics, to back up his reputation as one of the best center fielders in the game.
Considering the 2025 Giants outfield defense ranked dead last in many meaningful categories, this is a good get and a necessary one. The signing is a rising tide that lifts all ships. Thanks to Bader’s range, left field will get smaller, penning Heliot Ramos in and allowing him to focus on being more consistent within his patch of grass. Jung Hoo Lee is a far better fielder than last season’s numbers suggest. In 2026, he’ll have a season’s worth of first-hand experience in his back pocket. He’ll know the dimensions of outfields better, be better acclimated to playing outdoors, be more assertive — but with Bader now as the meat in the outfield sandwich, Lee will take this progress, along with his natural athleticism and strong arm, and focus on right field. Considering Oracle’s tough dimensions in the corner, it’s a position that deserves a player’s full attention.
What feels more up in the air is what Bader can do with his bat. The 31-year old has been a defensive first player for his entire career. He’s a harbor seal: graceful in the water, incredibly awkward on land. A wide flat lawn is Bader’s happy place. When he gets his cherubic curls bouncing as he tracks a liner into the gap, everything is gravy. Give him a glove and he’s zero to hero — he looks like the cartoon version of Hercules too.
But swap leather for wood, and Bader’s grace goes out the window. Hitting for Bader is all 12 of Hercules’ labors, from the Nemean Lion to Cerberus, rolled into one frustrating task. He’s been a free swinger who doesn’t walk much. When he makes contact, it’s rarely hard-hit. His career 96 OPS+ has him a hair below average — and that’s after a bit of a lift from a 114 OPS+ in 2021 (103 G) and a 117 OPS+ in 2025 (146 G). In the intervening three years, Bader didn’t log an OPS above .657. Success with the club has been few and far between.
Then, after years in the wilderness, bouncing from team to team, Bader set career-highs with 146 games played and 501 plate appearances logged between the Twins and Phillies. He slashed .277/ .347/ .449, his .796 OPS, another career mark at the plate.
Some nice, productive numbers there — but there’s plenty to suggest they’re a little fluke-y. For instance, his expected stats, like .220 xBA and .374 xSLG, were not only well below his actual results and in the bottom quarter percentile compared to the rest of the league. After hitting .258 against fastballs as a Met in 2024, Bader’s average jumped to .319 against the heater — but his .252 xBA suggests there wasn’t any significant change in the quality of contact. Did he just get lucky? Was he just catching an unsustainable amount of breaks, with squirrely balls in play finding gaps and holes? Those kinds of things to happen. Bader’s .359 BABIP was the highest in his career by far and another significant jump from 2024’s .276 average.
While there’s plenty to doubt about some of Bader’s seemingly inflated offensive numbers in 2025, there are foundational differences that might give us some hope that the improvements are viable.
Bader made some important changes to how he set up at the plate. He maintained the same distance from the plate and depth in the box but closed off his stance a bit, but shortened the distance between his feet by about ten inches and closed off his stance from 16 degrees open to 12 degrees open. This tweak simplifies his lower half as he steps into his swing. Instead of having to pull his front foot back and in at pitch release, the front foot starts further back and has a much quieter move to its position when the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand.
This fundamental adjustment in how Bader sets up at the plate could lend some credibility to the offensive numbers last year. The quality of contact did improve: His 40.3% Hard-Hit rate was a career high as was his 10.2% Barrel percentage (not including 2020). The harder contact came from a much quicker swing speed, jumping from a 71.2 MPH (38th percentile) in 2024 to a 73.5 MPH (71st percentile). Statcast points out that a “fast swing” at 75 MPH or quicker is akin to hitting a ball 95 MPH or faster. Good things happen when you pass that threshold. Fast swings mean harder hit balls in play which generally translate to higher averages and more damage.
Bader started making those quality cuts at a much higher clip than ever before, going from uncorking a Fast Swing 20% of the time to doing it 37% of the time. Now he didn’t catapult himself into the upper-echelon of bat tracking gods like Kyle Schwarber or Aaron Judge, but those swing improvements did land him among a relatively high-tier. Bader’s 2025 bat tracking metrics would’ve put him comfortably in the top-3 of fast-swingers on the Giants line-up clustered right alongside Heliot Ramos and Matt Chapman.
The swing isn’t perfect by any means, but it’s got good bones. That being said, it’s hard to argue with history. Players don’t typically improve as hitters in the early-30s, or in San Francisco, and Bader will be both in his early-thirties and playing in San Francisco in 2026. So yeah, it’d be realistic to expect some sort of regression back to his mean offensively. The positive improvements and adjustments he made in 2025 aren’t cures to every ingrained bad-habit. You’d be right to point out that a fast swing still has to make contact with a baseball.
All those qualifications and realism aside — what happened last year happened. People change, and there’s the possibility that Bader is a better, not badder, batter than we thought.
