San Francisco Giants World Series Hero Deemed ‘Biggest One-Hit-Wonder’ for Team

The 2010 season kicked off an incredible stretch for the San Francisco Giants. After missing the playoffs six consecutive years, they won the World Series that year.

They would alternate missing the postseason with taking home the championship, adding two more in 2012 and 2014. That streak ended in 2016.

After defeating the New York Mets in the single-game wild card matchup, they were eliminated in the Divisional Round in 2016. A wild card game or playoff series hasn’t been won since.

Their performance on the field would almost assuredly turn around if they were able to come across another player who peaked in the fashion Marco Scutaro did for the franchise in 2012.

He was acquired from the Colorado Rockies in a deal that mostly went unnoticed by baseball fans. A solid utility player in his own right, but no one expected him to turn into someone who carries an entire offense.

Alas, at 36 years old, that is exactly what he did. In 61 games and 284 plate appearances with the Giants, the veteran infielder recorded a .362/.385/.473 slugging percentage. The only person who hit more than him down the stretch of the season was his new teammate, catcher Buster Posey, who won the National League MVP Award.

That production carried right over into the postseason, as Scutaro was one of the heroes for the team on their championship run. That is part of the reason Zachary D. Rymer of Bleacher Report selected him as the franchise’s biggest one-hit-wonder in recent history.

“Scutaro almost single-handedly willed the Giants into the World Series with an MVP-winning performance in the NLCS, collecting six multi-hit games in seven tries and batting .500 overall. He later added an exclamation point with the hit that won the title for the club.

The Giants didn’t really get their money’s worth out of the three-year deal they did with Scutaro after 2012, but it’s not like you could blame them for wanting him back,” wrote Rymer.

In the first season of that new contract, 2013, he did make the All-Star team for the only time in his career. He finished that season with a .297/.357/.369 slash line as a reliable source of production at the keystone.

But, he would play in only five games in 2014, as his career came to an end at that point. The contract Scutaro received from San Francisco was as much a reward for what he helped the team accomplish en route to a title as anything.