Sabean Now Available

Just saw on Twitter that Brian Sabean was let go by the Yankees.

Your 2026 Giants: 40-Man Roster Reduction

With so many players on the 60-Day IL, the Giants have a huge job of reducing the 56 players they currently have to reduce to 40, after the end of the World Series.  This post will go through the current players on the roster, and see who the Giants might select for the final 40-man of 2026, before the Rule 5 draft (depending on the lockout).

Your 2026 Giants: Bryce Eldridge Breakout Season

I've been providing an analysis of Bryce Eldridge's progress this season.  This is the final post covering his season, which has been a marvelous breakout season.  The seasonal highlights include (from Baseball Refrence and Fangraphs):

• 2.1 bWAR/1.8fWAR
• .269/.364/.461/.825
• 50 runs and 57 RBI
• 23 doubles and 17 HR
• 59 walks vs 119 strikeouts in 448 PA/386 AB in 107 games
• 131 wRC+

Per Grant Brisbee of The Athletic, when a 21 YO player walks at least 50 times and hits at least 15 homers, many of them became very good baseball players.  Of course, each player is individual, but players who have accomplished a lot at such a young age tends to get even better with MLB experience.  

Think Will the Thrill, who only hit 11 homers in his first season (old man at age 22), and 35 homers in his second.  He wasn’t on the list, but these were:  Mays, Mantle, Williams, Kaline, Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr, Mike Trout, Frank Robinson, Mel Ott, Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, Bryce Harper, Juan Soto, Ronald Acuna Jr, Giancarlo Stanton.  It’s not a full list, but a very impressive list, though there were still many who were not as good, who were not as well known.  Will Bryce be among the greats or the also rans?  Will be interesting to watch, lots of memories either way.

Your 2026 Giants: Do You Believe in Posey?

Many fans are upset with the Giants and Posey, and want him fired, along with Minasian and Vitello.  The following is what I wrote as comments on The Athletic, after the End of Season press conference.  

I will address the End of Season press conference in another post. I normally try to find a full transcript, but having a down period in life, don’t have the time (or will) to listen and write down each and every word.  I will see what work around satisfies me.

Your 2026 Giants: An Identity That Posey Sees As Ideal

A while back (took me a while to finish this), the Mercury’s Dieter Kurtenbach wrote this opinion piece, “The SF Giants stumbled into an identity. Will they embrace it?”  He likes the new Giants who have stepped up after Adames was ILed for the rest of the season, going 12-11 since then (at the time of his article; of course, they ended the season getting swept, multiple times…).

Because this little run of competence represents a team that isn’t rolling over and playing dead. They’re finally, mercifully playing an irritating brand of baseball (complimentary), which sure beats their prior brand: comatose.

As usual, I have thoughts. 

Your 2026 Giants: Trading Bailey Was a Smart Move That was Immediately Successful

The San Francisco Standard has an email service which shares news and thoughts about the local teams, like the Giants. Kerry Crowley wrote about the Bailey trade to Cleveland in a recent email (September 4th), part of which I excerpt here for your reference:

… 

Was trading Bailey a smart move?

It’s too soon to say whether the Giants or Guardians won the deal, in part because Bailey’s primary replacement, Daniel Susac, appeared in just 53 games before a fractured left kneecap ended his season.

Susac isn’t as highly regarded as Bailey defensively, yet this season he recorded six defensive runs saved (DRS) compared with Bailey’s seven. Bailey has a narrow edge in pop time (1.85 seconds to 1.89 seconds), but Susac graded out as a slightly better framer (92nd percentile to 83rd percentile). 

Giants pitchers recorded a 3.63 ERA throwing to Bailey this season, nearly two-tenths of a point better than the 3.82 mark they recorded with Susac catching. 

Bailey’s two Gold Glove Awards and longer track record suggest he’ll remain the better defensive player, but he’s arbitration-eligible and will command a higher salary moving forward. 

Susac’s .664 OPS is well below league average, but a strong September at the plate will give Bailey — who has a .604 OPS — a chance to catch up. The switch-hitting veteran has a .699 OPS with Cleveland, a .789 mark since the All-Star break, and had a .814 OPS in September 2025, whereas Susac regressed following a red-hot start to his career.

After a right elbow injury forced Susac to the injured list in April, he returned May 15 and hit just .198 with a .574 OPS in 42 games. 

The good news for the Giants is that Susac isn’t the only player responsible for filling Bailey’s void. The bad news is that neither of the other top catchers — Drew Cavanaugh and Jesús Rodríguez — is a strong defender. Cavanaugh’s pop time and blocking skills grade out above average, but his framing ranks in the 31st percentile among catchers, and Giants pitchers have recorded a 4.70 ERA with Cavanaugh behind the plate. Rodríguez, meanwhile, has poor defensive metrics and is likely better suited to a role as a utility infielder.

It’s possible the best path forward for the Giants would have been keeping Bailey and platooning him with Susac. It’s also possible Bailey, a multiyear starter in San Francisco, would have been frustrated with that arrangement. 

So with the team struggling and Bailey underperforming, Posey took a risk by resetting the catching depth chart in return for a pair of valuable assets. Wilkinson might struggle as a starter, but it’s realistic to think he could succeed out of the bullpen.

Then there’s Bolemon, a 19-year-old lefty who is already one of the Giants’ top 10 prospects. If the 6-foot-4 South Carolinian becomes a force in the rotation, Posey may look back on the Bailey trade as one of his best moves.

A lot has to go right — Susac must improve, Wilkinson must contribute, and Bolemon must develop into a trusted starter — but one of the bolder trades of Posey’s tenure could eventually pay off.

Another Perspective of the Giants’ past 12 Seasons

{Note: I started this on July 24th, and though most of it was done, I forgot about it, and just finished it today. Of course, the trade deadline is now way in the past, so I added the addendum, as well as tweaked some, as I am wont to do}

I received an email on July 24th from the SF Standard, and the writer described their view of what the Giants have gone through from the end of Evans’ tenure as GM, to Zaidi and finally to Posey.  I will quote here since not everyone gets this:

This is a franchise that desperately needs to start over.

The Giants consider “rebuild” a dirty word, but their atrocious play demands they consider a process they’ve scoffed at. 

It’s time to abandon the typical offseason approach of signing veteran free agents to fill every roster hole. From Bobby Evans to Farhan Zaidi to Posey, it’s clear that regardless of which executive is calling the shots, those free-agent signings have created even more problems. 

The last time the Giants had such a clear chance to rebuild, they ignored the opportunity. After a 98-loss 2017 season, Evans traded for Evan Longoria and Andrew McCutchen, signed Austin Jackson, and insisted they could compete for an NL West crown while staying under MLB’s luxury tax threshold. 

An 89-loss season cost Evans his job and ushered in the Zaidi era.

If the Giants are serious about building a contender again, the team’s next few offseasons should look a lot like Zaidi’s first.

Entering 2019, the Giants signed switch-pitcher Pat Venditte, re-signed lefty Derek Holland, and added another southpaw, Drew Pomeranz, on a one-year contract. They also made a series of waiver claims, minor-league trades, and minor moves that were so difficult to keep track of that fans grew furious.

The most important part of Zaidi’s first offseason: He didn’t acquire anyone who blocked an emerging prospect from securing meaningful opportunities with the Giants’ major-league club.

The only issue? The Giants didn’t really have any emerging prospects. 

Trade acquisition Mike Yastrzemskidebuted in May and 2014 draftee Logan Webb arrived in August, but the farm system was so underwhelming that clearing the way for young talent didn’t lead to much of a long-term payoff. 

The opposite is true now. Signing more Tyler Mahles, Adrian Housers, and Harrison Baders will block the path for a pipeline that features more promising prospects. And it’s a group that should only grow stronger when the Giants start dealing away veterans before the Aug. 3 deadline. 

The Giants’ performance demands drastic action. The focus must shift from the present to the future and from identifying major leaguers who can help now to minor leaguers who can help eventually. The face of the franchise, Bryce Eldridge, isn’t going anywhere, but everyone else is tradable. 

If the Giants don’t rebuild now, they never will. 

Your 2026 Giants: The Future Horizon

Some fans and media are so bummed out about how bad the Giants season has been, that they are missing the big story of this season: the rise of the farm system.  One beat writer wrote that improving the farm system is the only positive development of the 2026 season.  Below is my comment, with added content.

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. 

Your 2026 Giants: Trade Thoughts

The Giants pulled one their biggest overhaul at the trade deadline by trading away the following players:

• Luis Arraez:  to the Phillies
• Caleb Kilian: to the Phillies
• Tyler Mahle:  to Atlanta
• Robbie Ray: to the Padres
• Heliot Ramos: to the Yankees
• Eric Miller: to Boston
• Carlos Gutierrez (MiLB):  to Boston

Your 2026 Giants: signed 19 of 21 picks

Per the Giants announcement, they have signed 19 of their 21 draft picks from the 2026 Draft.

Your 2026 Giants: Flora Signs!

Per Jim Callis of MLB.com, Flora has signed with the Giants for $7.9975M.  With a bonus slot of $8.9884, the Giants have bonus slot left over of $990,900.

Your 2026 Giants: Drafting Flora and Other Pitchers Plus a Bonds

On the first day of the MLB 2026 draft, the Giants selected the following prospects (per Maria Guardado of MLB, Keith Law of The Athletic, which I’m sharing here, plus his article on the Day One picks):

• Jackson Flora, college RHP (4th overall)
• Carson Bolemon, HS LHP (first round, 29th)
• Kaden Waechter, HS RHP (second round)
• Peyton Bonds, college CF (third round)
• Carlos Martinez, college RHP (fourth round)

Your 2026 Giants: Mock Draft Intel

With the 2026 Draft coming on July 11th, I thought it would be interesting to see what the major baseball content outlets are saying about the Giants draft.  Especially because they have both the 4th pick overall (which was lucky, they were supposed to have the 15th pick, a huge leap) and the 29th pick overall, plus the rest of the normal picks.  Their total bonus slots for the draft is $17.351M, fourth highest behind Pirates, Rays and White Sox. They have the 4th pick, 29th, 55th, 90th, and 118th in the first day, which covers rounds 1 to 4.  

Here are some of the sources I found that I used for this post:

• ESPN
• Baseball America:  early preview (via compilation by SBNation); Top 10
• Perfect Game
• MLB Pipeline
• Fangraphs
• The Athletic (Keith Law)
• MLB (Maria Guardado)
• MLB Pipeline Top Draft Prospects

Your 2026 Giants: League Adjusting to Eldridge

I’ve been tracking Eldridge’s game stats since he started striking out less, and to a low enough strikeout rate that he was hitting great. He went on a long heater, but now he’s in a bad patch.

Your 2026 Giants: Thoughts on Vitello

I see a lot of people who want to fire Vitello.  So I wrote a comment in reply, and now expanded it greatly here.  

Your 2026 Giants: Eldridge’s Progress at 25 Games

Since I’m collecting Bryce Eldridge’s batting game log data, I thought I would give a 25 game update.

Your 2026 Giants: A Giant Among The Giants

Bryce Eldridge just hit a walk off grand slam at age 21, the youngest to do so in MLB history (just beat out Roberto Clemente), so I thought I would write a follow up on how Eldridge is doing in what appears to be his breakout season. 

I have been keeping track of his batting line for this breakout period, where he has mostly started, unlike the early start and stop, which, to me, made sense because he was struggling, and needed to work on cutting his strikeouts (I covered this is a recent post). 

Your 2026 Giants: Eldridge Usage

There has been a lot of talk about mishandling Eldridge after his promotion. I didn’t share that opinion, but didn’t keep detailed track of his usage, so I decided to look into this, see whose impression is correct.

Your 2026 Giants: Rebuilding While Not Officially Rebuilding

A Giants beat writer thinks that the trade of Bailey signals a rebuild, but not a rebuild in a traditional sense.

Your 2026 Giants: Posey Boldly Trades Bailey

The Giants traded Patrick Bailey to Cleveland for a AA pitcher, Matt “Tugboat” Wilkinson and their 29th overall pick in the upcoming draft.  Here is one of NBC’s accounts of the trade and this is MLB’s report.

Your 2026 Giants: Webb vs. Winning Teams

One complaint I’ve seen about Logan Webb over the years is that he’s unable to pitch well against good teams. Which is nonsense, much like what used to be directed at Matt Cain.  And his opening day clobbering at the hands of the Yankees brought that up again.  I thought I would look into it again.

Your 2026 Giants: Rookie Error for Vitello

Obviously, it is a huge deal hiring Tony Vitello as the manager of the San Francisco Giants, and his every move and words are scrutinized minutely.  I like the hiring, but he recently pulled what I would call his first mistake, a rookie mistake.

Your 2026 Giants: Opening Day Roster

The roster has been released: 

• Alex Pavlovic tweet
• Andy Baggarly BlueSky

Your 2026 Giants: Big Six Prospects

As I am wont to do, I sometimes cover the top prospects of the Giants.  I call it the Big Six in honor of Giants great Christy Mathewson, as well as because, as much as I would like every prospect to be stars, there are at most six prospects, generally, who look like they can be regular major leaguers.  

MLB Pipeline has published their Giants Top 30 list, and I will be pulling some interesting quotes from there that supports what I think about each prospect.

Giants Draft Analysis: 2025 Update of the End of the Sabean Era Drafts (fourth in a series)

In early 2020, I was finishing up my series of draft analysis articles, using my updated draft odds results in analyzing Sabean's performance up to the 2019 season.  Now that the 2025 Season is over, I thought I would review which players can be updated to be good or great players, or dropped off the possibility list.

You can read what I wrote in the link above, but the players I reviewed were:

• Joey Bart
• Heliot Ramos
• Tyler Beede
• Seth Corry
• Connor Menez
• Logan Webb
• Bryan Reynolds
• Zack Wheeler (he was mentioned in the second article)

As you can see, most have dropped off, but Ramos, Webb, Reynolds, and Wheeler have looked like good players who either reached or potentially should reach, if he continues to play as well.  

Your 2026 Giants: ZiPS Projections

Happy St Patrick’s Day!  Had my corned beef, cabbage and Guinness for dinner, yum!!!

Every season, Dan Szymborski publishes his ZiPS projections, and his system is honed pretty well, for when he examines after each season how his system does, roughly half exceeds their 50th percentile projection.  It even works roughly by percentiles, thus 10% of the players fail to meet their 10th percentile projections and 90% of the players (again, roughy) fail to meet their 90th percentile projections (which means 10% beats them).  

I thought I would review his Giants annual, and see what looks interesting to comment or report on, especially as Opening Day is approaching.  I have been using his projections the past couple of seasons because the Giants have been relying on pitching prospects, and the Giants under Zaidi had stockpiled a bunch of pitching prospects who are projected to pitch as well as the average MLB pitcher. 

He Ain’t Having That: Buster is Bold and Decisive

Buster Posey hasn’t been too bold in this offseason, other than boldly doing nothing much, but his leadership so far has been marked by decisive moves that shows his need for speed, when he can step up.

Your 2026 Giants: Bullpen Angst

I see a lot of comments about the bullpen, as well as articles concerned about the bullpen.  

Your 2026 Giants: Lineup Roster-bations

I like ZiPS projections for doing analysis for the upcoming season for the Giants.  For about a dozen years, I would collect a variety of projections from sources, and I found that ZiPS generally were in the middle.  Baseball Forecast would often be on the higher side, while Steamer would be on the lower side.  The ZiPS methodology is pretty rock solid as well, as it calculates decile percentile projections, and his reviews of prior year percentile projections find that roughly 50% of players projected beat their 50th percentile projections, and so on, up to 10% beating their 90th percentile and down to 90% beating their 10th percentile projections. No wonder pro teams pay him for consulting services.

Another tool I like is the Lineup Analyzer that Baseball Musings designed based on research from others.  It utilizes the regression analysis of long term batting lineup data that the researcher provided (I was able to confirm the analysis still worked by inputting the NL lineup data and comparing it with the actual, and it was always close back then), to calculate the runs scored by the OBP and SLG of each hitter of the lineup, and after you input a lineup of hitters with their projections for the new season, it can analyze which lineups maximizes the runs scored by this particular lineup.  

That’s how the concept of batting the pitcher 8th came about, as this analysis showed that to maximize runs scored, placing even your worst position player hitter 9th would improve scoring by placing additional runners for the top of the order to drive in.  Tony LaRussa was one MLB manager who took this to heart and batted his pitchers 8th.  

I thought I would take the expected Giants position starters (since there is not much competition there this year), input their projections, and see what the best lineup would be.

Your 2026 Giants: Heliot Phone Home

Heliot Ramos had an up and down season in 2025.  What most remember is his down offensive season and horrendous defensive performance.  He discusses when it went downhill in an interview with the Chronicle (Subscription required), noting a play in the July 20th game against Toronto.  I thought I would look into before and after, to get a picture of what we might expect in 2026.

Your 2026 Giants: Pivotal Analysis

Now, I am with most Giants fans that it has been an underwhelming Hot Stove season, it wasn’t even mildly lukewarm.  Hentges, Foley, Houser, Mahle, Bader, Arraez.  I was expecting a big signing of an ace level starting pitcher, to go with all their investments in Chapman, Adames, Devers, Lee, and Webb.  

Still, I was underwhelmed sometimes by Sabean, then looked at his changes by seeing how he is pivoting his roster, even if the moves don’t look like they moved the needle much, and found improvements, whether by addition by subtraction or adding a minor addition where it is still a huge improvement over the previous season.  So I will go over some examples of pivots I have seen so far in moves this offseason.

Your 2026 Giants: Signs Three Time Batting Champ, Luis Arraez

Per reports (MLB, NBC) three time batting champ, Luis Arraez, has signed with the Giants for one year at $12M. He will start at second base.

Your 2026 Giants: Harrison Bader Signing

Per reports, Harrison Bader agreed to two year contract with the Giants for $20.5M, and incentives could raise that to $21.0M.  Posey reported that Bader will play CF, where he has won a gold glove before.

Posey also noted that Jung Hoo Lee took the news of moving to RF well, and Lee was also told that he would still get starts in CF, which fits what Vitello said in a recent interview, that the starters in the outfield will be fluid. Apparently Lee has played a lot of RF in KBO, and his StatCast physical stats compared well with other MLB RF, so they expect him to be good defensively there. 

To clear space on the 40 man, they traded pitcher Kai-Wei Teng to the Astros, for a catcher, Jameel Vlattoel and international a lot money. 

Your 2026 Giants: Don’t Trade Bryce Eldridge

With the lackluster offseason, many Giants fans are desperate to boost the roster by trading away Bryce Eldridge for a better starting pitcher and improve the rotation, under the rationale that with Rafael Devers, another power hitting left-handed first baseman, the Giants could afford to trade Eldridge for someone like Joe Ryan.  Some also note the poor success rate of top prospects to justify this move.

Here’s a major part of the reason why I do not want to trade Eldridge:  he’s an extremely rare position player.