Your 2026 Giants: Eldridge Update

I have been covering Bryce Eldridge’s breakout this season in a series of posts.  I last covered him in this post, and thought this was a good time to update since he was out for bereavement leave.  

To recap, many fans and media were, and still are, confused about how Eldridge was handled early on.  But as I detailed in my first post, he was immediately started, struck out too much, got took out, presumably to work on things, started again and struck out too much again, resulting in his next break to work on things.  

His next starts was when things changed.  He didn’t start hitting, but the key thing was that he was making good contact, even if he wasn’t hitting, and the Giants didn’t take him out, and soon after, he was hitting great, like a superstar, over 1.000 OPS.  We left off right around the end of that sizzling hot streak.

Your 2026 Giants: the Silver Lining

Dieter Kurtenbach, of the SJ Mercury, wrote a scathing diatribe about the Giants titled, “There’s no silver lining to the most pathetic SF Giants team in a decade.”  (subscription needed).  

Prospect Theory: Using Age Relative to League as Guideposts for Heliot Ramos

A theory, or rule of thumb, that I’ve been noodling on for over two decades is about gauging when a prospect might break through in the majors, after which point, I would give up hope that he will develop.  I was hoping to get it done before the draft, but, alas, I didn’t.  And now my subject has been traded away, but that’s okay.  

One prospect that worked for this idea was Heliot Ramos.  After struggling for two MLB seasons, 2022-23, he broke out in 2024.  Many fans had given up on him, but because he did well in A ball when he was 3-4 years younger than the league, I was waiting for the equivalent in the majors, and 2024 was that season, and he broke out.

But, obviously, that’s just one case, one example.  So I thought I would go through Giants history and see how prior hot prospects did, using this rule, and how the theory fits reality.  But first, I should go over what I did with Heliot Ramos.  This post will review my thoughts as it related to Ramos when he was a prospect, and discuss my theory on prospect analysis.