SF Giants infielder Wilmer Flores nears milestone amidst career year

After winning the Willie Mac Award in 2022, it seemed like the SF Giants had already seen Wilmer Flores at his best. But he's found another gear this season.

The SF Giants may have fallen in the standings over the past two months. But infielder Wilmer Flores has been doing everything he can to keep that from happening. On Saturday's 7-3 loss to Atlanta, Flores hit a two-run home run off Max Fried. While it was not enough to win the game, it was his 19th homer of the season, tying his single-season career-high. With a little over a month to go in the season, it’s likely that the 11-year MLB veteran will set a new career high in home runs alongside several other statistical categories. Coming off a 2022 campaign when Flores set several single-season career highs, won the Willie Mac Award, and played his way into a multi-year extension with the Giants, the 32-year-old has somehow managed to be even better.

“If you look up on the board, anytime Wilmer’s at the plate, you see the great contact numbers,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler told reporters over the weekend. “You see the low strikeout numbers, those numbers get even better when facing left-handed pitching, so against Fried or against any other pitcher over the course of the last few months, two months, it's hard to argue that Wilmer isn’t one of the better hitters in all of baseball and one of the more clutch hitters in all of baseball. Not sure where we'd be without him, kind of sitting in the middle of our lineup on the more recent side.”

Flores’ ISO (Isolated Slugging Percentage) is also at a career high of .242. While his WAR numbers vary across the board (1.7 WARP, 2.5 bWAR, 2.3 fWAR), it is clear how valuable he's been for the Giants’ lineup.

Kapler suggested that Flores is an underrated player in national conversation but pointed out that limited plate appearances may be a reason for that. After all, Flores was rarely seeing the field earlier this season and seemed like a potential trade candidate.

“We appreciate him the most because we see him every single day, but he does kind of fly under the radar, and part of that has to do with just overall at-bats,” Kapler said. “Some of these guys that play every single day and from the start of the season and at the end of the season are going to end up with 600 plate appearances. Wilmer is not gonna end up with that many because he has played more of a role on our team over the last couple of years. He’s been one of the best pinch hitters in baseball.”

Even in his limited role, Flores has easily been San Francisco's most productive hitter. He's done the bulk of the damage since the start of June, though, when the rest of the team began falling into a horrendous offensive slump. Since June 1st, Flores has been one of the most productive hitters in MLB, posting a .339/.407/.619 triple-slash with 14 doubles, 13 home runs, 19 walks, and just 22 strikeouts in 214 plate appearances.

“There's some value in him not starting games just so he can come off in the biggest spot and make the biggest impact,” Kapler added. “And therefore, he doesn't have the counting statistics that are going to get him that kind of national recognition. But we see it, we appreciate it. There's nobody I'd rather have up in the biggest moments.”

Flores said he hasn’t changed his approach much, just being more aggressive in the zone. Despite nearing a home run milestone, he’s not specifically setting out to hit big flies. For him, it’s all about helping the team win games.

“I'm not looking for homers,” Flores told reporters on Saturday. “I'm looking to hit the ball hard. [If] it goes out, it goes out. Good for us, but I’m not trying. It’s not on my mind [to] hit 20 homers, hit 30 homers. It’s just: hit the ball hard somewhere.”

Kapler said that as a team, they expected to hit more home runs this year, but haven’t. Flores is the exception.

“Wilmer is one of the guys that we expected to contribute in the way that he is,” Kapler said. “I think he's exceeded that. I think this is probably going to turn out to be his best season to date. But I think that the contributions he made has really kind of put us in the position that we're in. I think we're right within playoff striking distance and I think a lot of that is attributable to Wilmer’s performance both on defense and offense, but a really good first baseman for us and goes over to third base. He's unequivocally one of the leaders in our clubhouse, one of the guys that everybody looks up to and looks to in times, these times of struggle. I think there are gonna be multiple people having conversations with Wilmer in the coming days just to kind of think about the different ways you can get out of this rut that we're in”

Wilmer Flores may be in the middle of the best season of his career, but the veteran is not focused on personal accolades at the moment. Instead, he is doing everything he can to get the SF Giants back to the postseason for the second time since 2017.

“We definitely have to play better,” Flores said. “It's right there for us. We just have to play better.”