! ! ! ! Can’t get any lower. Still I feel I’m sinking ! ! ! !
Outshined by Chris Cornell and Soundgarden. The theme song for your SF Giants 2026 team.
In a season full of pitching debacles and crushing losses, they managed to pull one out for the ages.
Yes, the biggest blown 9th inning league in the 125 year history of the team. They were 2,208-0 when leading by 6 or more in the 9th. Til today.
Up 9-3 in the top of the 9th, the team could not even get an out before Cincy tied it. Bivans came in and really had no clue. Not sure why whoever the interim manager even was didn’t pull him a little faster, but I think it was pretty obvious Bivens didn’t have it. He gave up the longest home run into the cove that I’ve ever seen. Then again, Smith came in and nuked the joint. And the rest was errors, walks and general rookie ball crap.
I guess the lockout is a blessing.
For Dolly . . .
Forty Niners Forever 
Not defending Adames at all, he’s tough to watch. Butin his last season with MIL he had OPS of .794 and in 4 years there OPS was .780. so far with SF, it’s .730. There’s been a noticeable drop off in BBs and OB (20 points) in general He has begun to hit for more power and extra base hits like he did with brewers, but slugging is still off another 30 points.
SS had been black hole for Giants since 2021 (Ahmed, Fitzy et al) and is probably toughest spot to fill on any roster. Posey was looking for as much overall value (as in WAR) that he could find in terms of D baserunning and hitting and convinced ownership this was right fit in terms of skill and personality. Challenge for Giants to find predictive formula on best value going forward to add more wins in next season with deadline moves.
Yeah it’s rough knowing how the Giants are stuck with Adames.Their top 4 prospects are all SS, Gonzalez,Hernandez,Level,and Klein .First 3 are atleast 2-3 years away, while Klein the closest maybe next year who’s having a great year as is the others
Giants top 2 Outfield Prospects are Bo Davidson and Dakota Jordan both exciting players with speed and athleticism/ power .Davidson is definitely closer to the show (was at AA Squirrels now AAA?) Jordan’s at high A Emerald Nuts? Nuts also have an interesting player the Giants signed from Mexico Luis De la Torrez LHP hits 97-up to triple digits..also good breaking ball etc .Giants are stacked with LHP when you add Whiz,Whitman,Wilkerson(Tugboat)
Last thing they need is another SS in this upcoming draft with that 4th pick! RHP Jackson Flora 6’5 209 great stuff from UC Santa Barbara has been linked to Giants at 4 but who knows with this team?they swung and missed on Bart..
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/49109205/mlb-2026-san-francisco-giants-struggles-tony-vitello-buster-posey-trade-deadline
“Organizational Pivot???”
“I think we’re going to have to be open-minded,” president of baseball operations Buster Posey told ESPN. “Based on today, June 13, unless things really turn around, we’re going to have to be open-minded and consider a variety of possibilities.”
. . . Please Lord, Buddha, Brahma, Allah, Universe, etc., give Buster the strengh and wisdom to stand up to Greg Johnson and make improvements to this team . . . Amen
I think Buster is fully in charge. My guess is that any constraint he operated under was more along the lines of “if you’re gonna go full LA payroll on us, you’d better damn well be 100% sure it pays off!” The pitchers that could have helped the Giants this year, like the two Suarez’s, are not spring chickens. It was not entirely unreasonable to pass on them and the big $$$ they commanded. He tried to pull off a Zaidi, hoping that Mahle and/or Houser would provide something like 2021 Disco/Wood numbers, and he got burned badly. Combined with the failed gamble on Walker and the across the board underperformance (at least until now) of the Big 3, we have the current shit sandwich.
What will he do moving forward? Probably watch Adames, Chapman, and Devers (maybe) get hot in the second half for a 500ish finish and sorta lament not shelling out for the 2-3 pitchers that would have meant a WC spot.
sorta lament? We’ve been wailing and gnashing teeth over that central flaw for months.
Well, I think I was aiming for understatement there for the full rhetorical effect, but, hell, Buster’s also gotta have a big strong no regrets ego to do that job!
SS has been mess since Craw was done. Remember feeding frenzy on them few years ago, when Giants had contract on table for Correa? Trying to predict how much value an FA will have going forward and how many more wins he can give your team is nightmare of all GMs and FOs. Not everyone that signed big contract worked out for everyone else either. Coming off 5 WAR year last year, Trea Turner has OPS of .610, .223/.276/.334 and signed through 2033. Xander Bogaerts .226/.307/.342 also collects through 2033.
Posey has who he has right now and there might not be lot of movement except around fringes of position players. Fixing pitching staff has to be major focus either from within or without.
sorta lament? We’ve been wailing and gnashing teeth for months over that central flaw.
sorry.
Posey’s “failure” has as much to do with not fully recognizing the talent left behind by the Zaidi regime as anything else. Imagine if they hadn’t traded for Devers and instead signed Suarez X 2 and Tyler Rogers. Right now, we might have an IF of Chapman, Adames, Schmitt, and Eldridge. OF of Lee, Cox/Gilbert, Tibbs? Rotation of Webb, Suarez, Harrison, Ray, Whisenhunt? That may not be a great or even very good team, but it looks more like a winner than what we have. The money saved on Devers, Houser, Mahle, and Arraez pays for the FA pitching. At the very least, we’d probably be feeling a little better about the future.
Again, I don’t really blame Posey or the organization at large. His choices weren’t irrational. They just turned out to be wrong.
I think you’re right (though Gilbert came in the deal I dislike that sent Rogers away–maybe they could’ve re-signed him off season nonetheless). The Devers deal is Buster’s big bust, but that’s true only because Eldridge rose. Arraez is his big success. The catching corps, not horrible. The pitching ….
The Giants lack of success in the last decade can largely, IMO, be traced to its abject failure to develop players through its farm system. That failure has lead to continuous acquisition of outside the organization players to fit continuing spots of need unfilled from within, often to bad result.
You cannot have a consistent winning organization by cobbling it together from washed up/waived vets to no name AAAA players who get tossed to and fro from team to team. Nor can you do it with key positions regularly filled by picking up FAs at premium-to-market prices nobody else is willing to pay because you don’t have a player even close to being ready in AAA or AA to take that spot.
Look at the present. How many on the current 26 are original draftees or international picks with in-house development? 18 out of 26 have come from other organizations. I think the percentage of No has been higher in past years, since just recently as the slide continues, Buster has brought up some farmhands, and rightly so, including Eldridge. You can argue any team’s Pen is always going to be a mixed bag of players from year to year, but I’m not sure of the extent of that league wide. Position players are really skewed, with only 3 of 13 players being “Giants drafted and grown”, with all of the big three albatross contracts obviously being players who started elsewhere.
Which players are fully “home grown”?
Brubaker – No
Beck – No
Houser – No
McDonald – Yes
Ray – No
Roupp – Yes
Gage – Yes
Hentjes – No
Kilian – No
Smith – No
Walker – Yes
Webb – Yes
Miller – No
——
Haase – No
Susac – No
Arraez – No
Adames – No
Chapman – No
Devers – No
Kennedy – No
Bericoto – Yes
Gilbert – No
Lee – No
Cox – No
Schmitt – Yes
Eldridge – Yes
.
https://www.fangraphs.com/roster-resource/breakdowns/active-roster
Of course, in the above no-Devers scenario, there would be one very important net additional “homegrown” player on the roster. Also, Ramos isn’t on the 26 man right now. They also started the season with Bailey.
I’m not seeing much of a correlation between teams who are winning and the percentage of players drafted by the organization currently on the roster.
Well, what’s the old saying, “Hindsight is notably cleverer than foresight.” Or, “Hindsight is 20/20” . . . Whatever.
The fact of the matter is this, no one, absolutely no one here at Flap headquarters, disagreed with Buster on Devers. Conversely, there were many of us, myself included, hated the Chapman extension. Adames? Admittedly, I wanted this tool on the team and said so, before the signing occurred. Others did too. My bad.
Perhaps, as a way of explanation, I was just freaking pissed off about this organization, NOT going after the “Big Fish” free agents and/or supposedly making making big offers, but being outbid by another team (e.g., almost ALWAYS New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia). At the time, each of these announcements were made by ownership or Zaidi, I thought to myself, “Bull fucking shit.”
I think you can call the Devers move a bust only on its own terms, becz it was so big and bold. Devers himself hasn’t been as tremendous as we might have hoped but he’s been good overall. Streaky at the plate, but very dangerous and powerful at times; not the slickest at 1B, but ok with good reach and arm and hustle and smarts. Seems like a fine teammate.
I like Chapman; I don’t like Willy. I know Giants fans who feel just the opposite. Wtf. somebody’s gotta fill those spots.
I like Chapman too; the idea he has to be traded to free up 3b for Schmitt is head scratcher. He’s nowhere near the fielder nor baserunner Chapman is. Hopefully by end of season Giants will have better take on Schmitt’s value as a hitter. I hope he can continue to hit for power and once in a while draw a BB too and kick the OBP up.
For now I’d leave him in LF, especially if they don’t trade Arraez. Given state of pitching Giants need all the offense they can get.
I think most of us knew the pitching was gonna be the problem this year.
and it is in spades. Buster sat on his thumbs and figured Walker and the band of nonames in the pen was gonna be fine?
Mahler and dookie were middling at best. Dog shit at worst. And we know how that’s going.
yeah they spent. But who put the brakes on the improvement. We had a lot of downtime after signing Bader in January .
Chapman got fooled by the first slider, almost got fooled by the second, and he spit on the third. Hope Willy was watching.
Willy gets a hanger!
this marlins pitcher looks very vulnerable all of a sudden.
well they almost cashed in on him.
Marlins defense has been excellent.
I knew this would happen.
https://x.com/nbcsgiants/status/2068012060324294899?s=46&t=k0FDC_rVBvlG86Y-OHTiNQ
The “investigation” will go away if the senior Johnson cuts a substantial MAGA check to America’s 250 Reflecting Pool (slush) Fund…
Eldridge facing junk yard dog. 5 off speed pitches.
Still laughable 5 hits,2 walks,SB and yet the usual no clutch hit in RISP! Fleming acts like he’s never seen this before??
Marlins leaving quite a few on base too. I have the Marlin’s TV feed and it’s interesting that every inning, either the play by play or color guy will encourage folks to come out to the ball park. I guess that’s not surprising looking at the empty seats, although the Marlins are not playing bad baseball, particularly at home.
Obvious that they emphasize speed (leading the league with 83 stolen bases. Gmen with 23 or 24 I think).
Hasve they ever drawn well? Even when they were winning World Series?
Dunno Unc. I have been to Miami at least a half dozen times (SCUBA trips to the Bahamas or Grand Cayman; conferences; and a cruise out of Miami with my parents . . . Maybe just me, but if I wanted to get out of the heat, I would definitely go to this yard with AC, and what looks like, great amenities.
So, no idea why they don’t draw.
There we go! Boom! Devers got all of that.
No doubter there.
Wow Devers put both cheeks in that Upper Deck HR!! I’m impressed with him lot more recently for sure. 2 hits today, went 1st to 3rd hustling all the way in the inning of course they couldn’t score in, but still he’s playing hard and seems happy here..
Agree AK. He was motoring around 2nd base, with intense looking face.
And why is Adames batting ahead of Schmitt?
. . . and why is Gilbert even playing? Dude is something like 0-25 against lefties. Thank his lucky stars the manager was his college coach.
Marlins on their 6th pitcher. hmmn
still have to get 9 more outs to finish 9th.
That’s amazing. I can’t imagine they got too many options going forward in this game. Conversely, Roupp has been pretty good with 7 K’s, scattering 7 hits, 2 earned runs.
Didn’t realize it but Kapler is GM over there.
Yeah, I am happy for him. I liked him while he was with us.