Five weeks ago, the Giants took 2 out of 3 from these Athletics and were a bad, but not completely embarrassing 20-27. That series ended with a 10-1 blowout that looked so good that all the Giants seemed to get healthy from it. Adrian Houser even got the win thanks to 6 innings of 1-run ball. Since then, the Giants have gone 11-19, Adrian Houser has been demoted to the bullpen, and even the vestiges of the notion that this season might wind up being at least a little entertaining have long since
withered away. The Athletics are not a good baseball team (they have the same -54 run differential), but they are a far cry from whatever the Giants are supposed to be.
So, it should be an interesting series at Oracle Park this week! The Giants return home after a 40% decent road trip while the Athletics work their way through a strange part of their schedule. Technically, they’ve just concluded a 13-game homestand, and with these 3 in San Francisco, even though they’re in West Sacramento now, that’s still basically an extension of the homestand. But 6 of these games were technically in Summerlin, Nevada as a special showcase for their future home crowd. They went 4-2 during this stretch, and just 3-4 upon returning to Sutter Health Park.
Anyway, the A’s Shea Langeliers leads all American League catchers in All-Star voting (1,414,697 in the first batch of ballots, +577,408 over Alejandro Kirk) while first baseman Nick Kurtz is 4th in the AL first base vote race, trailing Munetaka Murakami for 3rd by ~150,000 votes. Kurtz has followed up his Rookie of the Year 2025 with another stellar season — 19 home runs in 353 PA with a triple slash of .290/.439/.556. He is the sixth-most valuable player according to FanGraphs’ fWAR (3.5). Langeliers is 28th (2.4 fWAR) on a .271/.333/.521 line — he also has 19 home runs (321 PA). He trails in overall value at the catching position behind Detroit’s Dillon Dingler (3.6 fWAR) and Adley Rutschman (2.3), but there he is leading the pack for the moment. They are the primary engine of the A’s lineup, too, as West Sac is just 10th in runs scored (364) and 7th in wRC+ (105). They’re also one of the worst defenses in the sport (-25.1 Defensive Runs Above Average — 28th in MLB).
Thanks to their ballpark — well, at least in part — the Athletics’ pitching is actually worse than the Giants. Their team ERA of 5.04 trails only Colorado in all of MLB. Their +3.1 fWAR is just half a win worse than the Giants’ pitching value (3.6 — 25th). But the Athletics actually get much better away from their home park(s). Their team road ERA of 3.67 is fourth-best in MLB (though, their 4.18 xFIP is only 14th). They also have a 20-17 road record, which is currently the second-best road record in MLB behind only the Yankees. The Giants are 14-20 at home.
How relieved is John Fisher right now? The Giants are villains, his cursed stadium project is now proceeding apace, and there’s probably going to be a lockout that “right-sizes” labor costs going forward. The hatred towards him will probably fade and who cares about Oakland and those fans? This is the bet the Giants are making, that time plus inertia will carry them through any controversy. Most sports team owners seem to have settled into an adversarial relationship with their fans, realizing that they can treat them like paypigs and come away richer and entirely unscathed. Such is the story of the 21st century and wealthy, right?
But while the Giants and Athletics have owners who are no different from the rest of the world, it’s rare that you get to see former “crosstown” rivals where the fan bases would teeter-totter the moral high ground get shoved together when both franchises are on the same moral plain. It’s a series that far fewer people have cared about than ever before, even if these teams have quickly become a mirror for each other.
Who: San Francisco Giants (31-46) vs. Athletics (38-40)
Where: Oracle Park | San Francisco, California
When: Tuesday & Wednesday at 6:45pm PT, Thursday at 12:45pm PT
National broadcasts: None
Projected starters
Tuesday: Robbie Ray (LHP 5-6, 4.07 ERA) vs. Aaron Civale (RHP 5-3, 4.91 ERA)
Wednesday: Tyler Mahle (RHP 1-7, 6.04 ERA) vs. Gage Jump (LHP 3-1, 2.37 ERA)
Thursday: Landen Roupp (RHP 5-7, 4.15 ERA) vs. Jeffrey Springs (LHP 3-7, 5.55 ERA)
Players to watch
Athletics
Jacob Wilson: The shortstop dislocated his shoulder and was on the IL before the last series, and up to that point he’d been having “the sophomore slump,” following his 2025 rookie season (where he placed 2nd behind teammate Nick Kurtz) of .311/.355/.444 with .292/.311/.398 through his first 39 games of 2026 (168 PA). Since being activated on June 12th, he’s just 8-for-35 with a homer, 2 doubles and 4 walks and 4 strikeouts (.229/.308/.371), but in the just concluded 4-game series against the Angels, he was 4-for-16 with that homer, one of those doubles, and 2 walks and 2 strikeouts (.250/.333/.500). He also had this cool slide to avoid a tag at home plate:
Jeff McNeil: The Mets’ attempt to shakeup their roster blew up in their faces this season, but it’s not like David Stearns didn’t have some idea of what he was doing. The 34-year old McNeil was clearly on the downside of his career, but he has fallen waaaaay off he cliff, going from a better than league average hitter for his career to nearly 30% below the average. He has, historically, tormented the Giants, but in that series at Sutter Health Park, he was just 2-for-8 with a double and pair of RBI. And since that series, over hist last 96 PA, he’s hitting just .172/.250/.253. But! He’s a career .345/.409/.536 hitter at Oracle Park.
Gage Jump: The A’s Competitive Balance Round B pick of the 2024 draft is already up in the majors and looks like a real stud. He’s the team’s #3 prospect according to MLB Pipeline and #38 in the entire sport. It feels like he should be higher? A lefty starter who averages 96 mph with his four seamer and has swing and miss breaking pitches on top of a changeup? Nasty, nasty, nasty. Rafael Devers leads the starting lineup in pitches seen with 95+ mph velocity, experiencing that pitch 26.5% of the time. He’s hitting .231 against that sort of velocity. Luis Arraez is second among the starters at 24.1%, but he’s hitting .431. That they’re both lefties and Gage is a lefty could be a pretty compelling reason why this will be a tough matchup.
Giants
Tyler Mahle: Adrian Houser to the bullpen is what gets Mahle a start coming back from the IL. The Giants need to try to salvage his value because there is a high probability that he is tradeable if he bounces back. He made one appearance for the River Cats, walking 5 while striking out 3 and allowing a run. Okay, so, yeah, maybe it’s unlikely he bounces back.
Rafael Devers: Wednesday’s game against Gage Jump seems like a great time to sit Devers, especially after his emotional outburst on Sunday, but going back to the Cubs series at Wrigley Field (14 games, 62 PA), he’s been working hard to make me eat some crow after writing about how he’s unlikely to hit much better this season: .231/.355/.538 (.893 OPS), 4 homers, 4 doubles, 10 walks, 16 strikeouts.
Willy Adames: That series at Sutter Health Park marked Adames’s turnaround. He had a .592 OPS going into the series and since then (32 games, 137 PA), he’s slashing .230/.285/.532 (.816). Technically, a .285 on base percentage is bad. A 3:1 strikeouts to walk ratio is also bad. That the streak is really only a 20 game segment, as his last 12 games (49 PA) is a bad line of .083/.102/.208. He has just 1 walk and 16 strikeouts. He’sjust 4-for-his-last-48. A total disaster.
Prediction time
The Giants will do something really dumb. An A will hit a home run.
