Through Wednesday, the Giants have won six of their first nine Cactus League games. They have the fourth-best record and the third-best run differential. Is it time to cancel your vacation plans for October? I’m just a humble writer, but the answer is “yes.” Yes, you should cancel your vacation plans for October, even if there’s some sort of cancellation fee or non-refundable deposit. We’ve seen enough. The Giants are postseason bound.

Unless it’s still the wee hours of the spring and we really don’t know anything yet. If you think this is bad, wait until the first week of April, when there are real games and stats that count, and we still won’t know anything. Will the Giants make it to October? Check back in October.

However, that doesn’t mean that we can’t have a little fun. There still isn’t a lot of information, but if you stretch and squint and cock your head just the right way, you can see the things you want to believe. So here are three spring stats that I’m choosing to buy into. Let’s throw caution to the wind. Maybe the caution will blow right back into our faces like Donny’s ashes in “The Big Lebowski,” but we have to try, dang it.

Jung Hoo Lee is hitting

Small sample? Buddy, they’re all small samples. Lee played in 37 games that counted last season, and that wasn’t much of a sample, either. So I’m not going to pretend that Lee’s seven hits in 17 spring at-bats (.412/.500/.647) is especially meaningful. That’s a line that’s 10 hitless at-bats away from being in the mid-.200s, and that wouldn’t be meaningful, either.

Still, what do you want? For Lee to not hit given the chance? There are a lot of ways for the 2025 season to make you feel better about the state of the franchise, just as there are a lot of ways you could feel worse, but Lee can be an outsized part of whatever optimism you carry into next season. He got just over a month’s worth of playing time before getting hurt, finishing with a .641 OPS. Yet there was a palpable sense that he was juuuuust about to take off. He struck out eight times in his first 80 plate appearances, and he struck out five times in his his next 80. He struck out twice in his sixth game of the season, and then didn’t have another two-strikeout game in his remaining 30 games. When he swung the bat, he squared the ball up almost as much as Luis Arraez and Steven Kwan, but he had a fast-swing rate that was much higher than either.

And now Lee hitting .412 in the Cactus League. As of this writing. Please don’t keep checking back after every game. Just assume that he’ll get 41.2 hits in every 100 at-bats forever. There’s obvious rust to shake off — he’s also struck out five times in those 17 at-bats, which is more Kyle Schwarber than Steven Kwan — but there’s an awful lot riding on Lee hitting this season. The projection systems, your gut, your brain and every sentient creature who pays attention are all expecting to be the Giants offense to be average or worse. If it’s better than that, it’ll probably be Lee in the middle of it. Perhaps even literally.

Bryce Eldridge isn’t going to save the lineup this year

Eldridge hit an absolute bomb in his first game this spring. He was also one of the first players optioned this spring, and he struck out eight times in 11 at-bats. Both of those mean as much as the rest of the spring numbers (very little), but it’s a good time to remember a broader point: Eldridge is still a prospect, not a polished slugger on the doorstep of the major leagues. Not quite yet.

At this point last year, Eldridge was still a teenager with only 15 games above Rookie ball. He would still be the Giants’ top prospect if he’d had a nice season with Low-A San Jose, with youth and tools on his side. Instead, he hit his way out of San Jose, and then High-A Eugene. When he started hitting bombs for Double-A Richmond, the Giants moved him up to Triple-A Sacramento to finish the season. Once a player is in Triple A, it’s only a matter of time before he’s in the majors, right?

Kind of. While it’s true that Eldridge was promoted three times last year and has only one promotion to go, it wouldn’t be fair to expect him to contribute in the big leagues this season. It also wouldn’t be wise from a logistical standpoint, what with the scarcity of 40-man roster spots and the Rule 5 Draft forever lurking in the background. Unless it’s absolutely clear that he has nothing left to learn in the minors, the Giants should let him play in a lower-pressure environment this season. Maybe — maybe — he gets a call-up in September before he turns 21 the following month, but that’s only if he mows through the Pacific Coast League so convincingly that he’s almost guaranteed be the Opening Day starter in 2026.

Consider some of the other long-levered power prospects of the past. Aaron Judge didn’t get established in the majors until he was five years older than Eldridge. Ryan Howard — the Phillies’ one and one of the more reasonable best-case outcomes for Eldridge’s career — was 25 as well. Their size was a big part of the delay. It’s a lot of strike zone to cover, especially with a power-first approach.

This doesn’t mean that Eldridge won’t be the Opening Day first baseman next year, or that he’ll have to wait until he’s 24 or 25. Just that it’s prudent to be patient. One of my very first columns at The Athletic was titled “No, Joey Bart won’t save the 2019 Giants.” There’s a lot to unpack there, but it turns out he didn’t save the 2019 Giants. Don’t expect it from Eldridge this season, either.

The Giants’ pitching staff will have one of the better walk rates in baseball

Giants pitchers have thrown 105 innings through Wednesday. They’ve struck out 120 batters and walked just 26. That’s a 4.61 K/BB, which means the entire staff has pitched like Zack Wheeler last season. Boy, could you imagine if they still had Bart and Wheeler right now? Why, it would … wait, come back, I’ll stop.

The 26 walks are the fewest in either spring league. While it’s true that strikeout-to-walk ratios stabilize faster than most statistics, this clearly isn’t a very meaningful number. For example, the ratio is helped by Helcris Olivarez’s four strikeouts without a walk over two innings. That’s great, but Olivarez walked 53 batters in 38 Double-A innings last season. That isn’t a typo. Maybe his perfect command in the spring is a good reminder that we shouldn’t pay too much attention to the collective team stats, either.

Still, in the rotation the Giants have replaced Blake Snell’s make-’em-chase walk rate with Justin Verlander’s been-doing-this-forever walk rate, and you know that Logan Webb isn’t likely to walk too many. Robbie Ray has had high walk rates in the past, but his Cy Young season happened in large part because he stopped giving up free bases, and he hasn’t walked any of the 17 batters he’s faced this spring.

Jordan Hicks is still an occasionally wild card, pun intended, and Camilo Doval still exists, so it’s not as if the Giants are a bunch of Bob Tewksburys out there. But they finished with a below-average walk rate last year after having the best walk rate in baseball in 2023. My guess is that they’ll get back in the top half, and they’ll have a chance to be even better than that. It helps that they pitch half of their games at Oracle Park, where challenges in the strike zone aren’t punished as often as they are in other ballparks. Let’s assume that 2024 was the outlier with their command and control, not the seasons prior.