Your 2026 Giants: Rafael Devers

Rafael Devers had a nice first season with the Giants. He’s another player who will help add wins to the 2026 Giants.

ogc thoughts

Devers started out poorly with the Giants.  Whether it was because of his back and groin injuries, disorientation because of all the changes in his life, or whatever, he was not himself at the start of his Giants career, hitting .208/.322/.327/.649.  But once he got going, he was as good as he was with the Red Sox: .248/.358/.517/.875.  

However, the Giants, despite having Devers for half a season, playing both 1B and DH, they ended up below average at both positions, -1.9 WAA at 1B, -0.6 WAA at DH.  I was pretty shocked by this because Devers played well for the Giants overall.  but the other players were simply that bad.  

First base was so bad because Wade was so bad a hitter until he was traded (.494 OPS), plus Devers was pretty bad himself when playing 1B (.595 OPS).  That was also roughly what Schmitt hit, and Dom Smith did not get above .700 OPS either.  

And Devers and Flores got most of the DH starts, but Devers .928 OPS was pushed down tremendously by Flores .674 OPS (and more AB) plus most of the remaining DHers didn’t reach .600 OPS.  Only Matos and Smith hit over .700 OPS (both were over .900 OPS in limited AB’s).  The Giants really need to play Devers at DH: he batted .915 OPS as DH, .595 as 1B, plus less injury risk since he would not be fielding.

Devers Already Improving 2026 Results

The good news there is that while in 2025, the Giants were -2.5 WAA overall, with Devers at first base all season, instead of being with the team half a season, they should be around +2.0 WAA (roughly 4 bWAR, which was his average production 2021-2025). Getting -0.5 WAA (i.e. nearly average production) from DH (hopefully from Schmitt or Encarnacion), combined with Devers would add 4 wins (going from -2.5 WAA to 1.5 WAA) and push an 81 wins team to 85 wins, without adding any free agents.

I still prefer to see Devers playing DH full-time, though.  As much as he likes being a position player (he said he felt better attuned to the game this way), there are good reasons to be DH.  Mostly, it's to avoid him getting injured while on the field.  With such a huge contract, we need him playing every game, like he did in 2025.  Also, he has hit better as DH than he has other positions:  for his career, .904 OPS as DH, .855 OPS as 3B, and .595 OPS as 1B.  However, the vast majority of his PA as DH were in 2025, when he hit great at DH.