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.