On March 25, 2026, the San Francisco Giants began what would quickly prove to be the worst season in franchise history. You don’t need me to explain all the things that went wrong, but don’t worry: it’s a long and cold offseason, so I will in due time.
A few hours before that horrific journey got underway, I published an article with 26 predictions for the ‘26 season. Now, more than six months later, I can say with confidence what so many of you have uttered to me in the comment sections of articles
over the years: you should not listen to a damn word that comes out of my mouth.
The smartest thing I said in the 5,000 blabbering words came before I even got to the predictions. I stated in the intro that the bulk of the predictions were optimistic, justifying it as such: “Because if you’re a Giants fan who doesn’t have optimism on March 25, when will you have it?”
If only I knew just how true that question would be. Tucked at the start of an article where I look as capable of intelligence as Sam Hentges looks capable of accepting the queer community, I accidentally dropped the smartest sentence I’ve ever written. Go figure.
Anyway, I thought I’d revisit those 26 predictions. Publicly reflecting on past predictions is not something I often dabble in, because 10% of the time it looks braggadocios and 90% of the time I’m just admitting to being bad at my job, which my bosses have informed me I should stop doing. But in a season where the bad news rained down from the ownership suites to the front office to the coaching staff to the players to the broadcast booth, it seemed only fair that I get in on the action.
So here are my 26 predictions, starting with the one I got the most wrong, and ending with the one I got the most right (yes, there were a few accurate predictions).
Feel free to tell me how dumb I am in the comments. Just don’t expect me to learn from it.
Tier 6: Seriously, why do you ever listen to me?
These are the predictions that are so wrong they defy explanation.
For years, my sister and I have had an idea wherein I let her write a game recap for me. To paint a picture of my sister’s understanding of sports: once she texted me from a bar bathroom saying she was being hit on by a college football coach, and wanted to know if there was any intelligent talking point she could bring up. I told her to mention the new rule wherein if the shortstop runs backwards into the goal you get extra points. I figured this was such a ludicrous joke that she would know immediately that I was teasing her. She called me an hour later to berate me for embarrassing her in front of an attractive man. This is a true story.
Anyway, we’ve both long thought it would be funny if she wrote a recap for me, on account of her knowing absolutely nothing about sports. It would be entertaining and, no doubt, stupid. The following predictions are so bad, that I had to stop and think about if I let her moonlight for me in this article. Sadly, she did not.
26. The Giants finish second in the NL West and make the postseason
I’m gonna go make a cup of tea. You can have these 10 minutes to guffaw audibly.
Okay, I’m back. Still laughing? Damn. I deserve that. I’m laughing too, honestly.
The Giants, of course, missed the playoffs. Not only did they miss the playoffs, but they missed the playoffs by 23 games. Worse yet, they missed out on second place in the NL West by 26 games. There were only four teams in the Majors — including the Giants — that were 26 games behind first place, and the Giants were 26 games behind second place, in a division where second place was the second-furthest away from first place.
In other words, this prediction really could not have been more wrong. Let’s move on.
25. Gregory Santos will be their best reliever
My stubbornness really showed itself with this prediction. I was adamant that the Giants signing Santos — once one of their top prospects — to a Minor League deal was one of the best moves of the offseason. I held that stance even when he struggled in Spring Training and even when he started the year in the Minors and even when he struggled in the Minors, and even when he was called up and almost immediately optioned.
And then he was designated for assignment with no corresponding move. Just removed from the 40-man roster because the Giants would rather have 39 players than employ Santos. Not only that, but he didn’t even get to make me look smart, because no one else picked him up.
Santos ended the year with five innings pitched, one strikeout, a 3.60 ERA, a 4.50 FIP, and 0.0 fWAR. Which, in fairness, did make him one of the team’s best relievers.
24. Bryce Eldridge has a distinctly mediocre season
Before you all call me a hater, I contextualized this as a mostly good thing. I ended my blurb on Eldridge by saying, “He’ll see pitches and gameplans that he’s never been exposed to before. He’ll struggle to tread water. And if he holds his own, just at an average level, that will be a sign of how good he is, not how bad he is.”
I stand by that. If Eldridge had posted a league-average wRC+ of 100, I would have been very encouraged and optimistic about who he would be in 2027.
Instead, Eldridge looked more than comfortable. He looked like a veteran in the batter’s box, controlling at-bats, controlling the zone, outsmarting pitchers, drawing walks, and hitting for both average and power. His 131 wRC+ ranked 25th out of 205 Major League hitters (minimum: 400 plate appearances), directly ahead of Fernando Tatis Jr. and Kyle Schwarber.
If I was going to be wrong about a prediction, this was the one. So at least there’s that.
23. Willy Adames and Rafael Devers start the season hot
There was a lot of fear-mongering surrounding Adames and Devers going into the season. Adames has a history of slow starts, got off to a brutal opening to his Giants tenure in 2025, and was having a rough Spring Training. Devers had been fairly awful in his first month with the Giants, and looked lost in Scottsdale.
I thought nothing of it. Spring Training means so little, and I figured these two established sluggers would hit the ground running when the season began.
Instead, when April came to a close, Adames was hitting .197/.240/.352 and Devers .207/.248/.289. And the season was essentially over.
22. Luis Matos has a big year … somewhere
I wrote this shortly after the Giants designated Matos for assignment. My thought was that a bad team would claim him and give him some run. I recognized there was little reason for optimism, admitting that, “This is not rooted in anything analytical: it’s really hard to look at Matos’ stats and underlying metrics and find a reason for optimism. Instead, it’s just a vibes and hope-based bold prediction, that the Matos who has shown flashes over the years finally puts it all together.”
Well friends, I regret to inform you that he did not. Matos was not claimed by a bad team that would give him some steady run, but instead by the playoff-bound Milwaukee Brewers, who gave him all of 21 plate appearance before designating him for assignment. This time he wasn’t claimed, and he was outrighted to Milwaukee’s AAA affiliate, where he posted a measly 77 wRC+ across the year.
Tier 5: No one ever accused me of being smart
These predictions are wrong. Incorrect. Inaccurate. Just plum not right.
But they’re not as brain-meltingly idiotic as the last batch was. Those first five are enough to bar me for life from applying to the BBWAA. These ones are just wrong, but less embarrassing.
21. Logan Webb throws multiple complete game shutouts
In hindsight, this was even bolder than I imagined. Webb entered the season having thrown just two complete game shutout in his career, and I thought he’d get to that mark multiple times this season alone. Not only did Webb not have multiple complete game shutouts, but no player in the Majors threw multiple complete games, period. Forget the shutout. No one even went nine innings on more than one occasion.
Webb did throw one complete game, but, hilariously, it was a loss in which he only had to pitch eight innings.
20. We get more bullpen heat
As I mentioned, I wrote the initial predictions article on Opening Day, which meant the Giants had already informed me of some of their thinking for the year. They had released the Opening Day roster, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that both Keaton Winn and Caleb Kilian had made the cut. With Joel Peguero rehabbing an injury and Santos tuning up in AAA, I thought this was the year that we see some modern gas from the Giants bullpen.
Instead, they traded Kilian and Erik Miller. They broke Winn by pitching him three games in a row, an atrocity from which he never recovered. Peguero made it through just 11.1 innings before suffering a season-ending injury. Santos never panned out. The closest heat in the Minors, Will Bednar, saw his velocity take a tumble as he was demoted down to AA. Blade Tidwell was used primarily as a starter.
And as such, only the late-late reunion with Camilo Doval left the Giants with any notable heat coming out of the bullpen at the end of the season.
19. Tony Vitello doesn’t get thrown out early on
Before the season began, there was a common thought that Vitello would be quick to get ejected, given the energy and fire that he brings to managing. I thought it would be the opposite: that Vitello would be so conscious of wanting to be in the fight with his players that he would view an ejection as an abandoment.
I’m still not sure I’m wrong, given the quotes he’s had after his ejections. But even if he views it that way, his actions suggest otherwise. Vitello was thrown out in just the 10th game of the season, and led the Majors with seven ejections on the year.
18. They have five 20-homer hitters
This one ended up looking tremendously dumb, as the Giants fifth-best home run hitter this year was Drew Gilbert, who had just 11 blasts. They had only six players clear the double-digit mark, and I thought five would get to 20?!?
You can see the vision. Devers and Adames were locks. Matt Chapman and Heliot Ramos were likely to get there with full, healthy seasons. All it would take was one player popping, be it a leap for Casey Schmitt or Jerar Encarnación, or an early promotion for Eldridge.
As it was, just three players hit the 20-homer barrier, and only just, as Adames and Schmitt both had 21.
17. We see Tim Lincecum
Can you blame a boy for hoping?
16. Someone plays 160 games
This one was trending towards accuracy. Only an out-of-the-blue Devers injury reveal kept him from getting to the mark for the second straight season. As such, he ended up 12 games shy of 160, and this prediction ended up looking dumb. The Giants only had six players who appeared in 100 games, which is pretty jarring.
Tier 4: Wrong, but not idiotically so
I had to make a new tier just to hide how many of these I got wrong. The incorrect predictions take us all the way into the top 10, so I’m hedging here the predictions where yes, I was wrong, but by a slim enough margin that I don’t look foolish. In a few instances, I’m even technically right, but spiritually wrong. It’s a purgatory of sorts.
15. Heliot Ramos rebounds in the right ways
I’ve always been a fan of Ramos, and I’ve always been a believer. One of the things about Ramos’ game that has inspired confidence from me has been his ability to make offseason adjustments.
When he was struggling to make an impact in the Majors, while going outside the zone and hitting balls straight into the dirt, he spent an offseason controlling the zone and lifting the ball. When he broke out as an All-Star on the back of hitting lefties at a historical pace, but struggling against righties, he spent the winter learning how to hit right-handers. And when he came back last year with a renewed ability to hit righties, it was accompanied by a huge step back in his slash line against southpaws, and an even larger step back in his defense.
So I thought this year he would address those things, and improve his defense while getting back to his lefty-mashing ways. And by the letter of the law, I think this prediction was right. He raised his Fielding Run Value from second percentile all the way to … third percentile. Although honestly even that is overselling it, since it’s probably just due to less playing time this year.
Ramos did rebound against southpaws, as he hit posted a 150 wRC+ against lefties. But the performance against same-handed pitchers suffered, and ultimately Ramos was not only a much worse player this year than last year, but he was also traded.
14. ABS has no impact on Patrick Bailey’s defense
ABS definitely impacted Bailey’s defense. After three consecutive seasons of being 100th percentile in both framing and fielding run value, Bailey dipped to 79th and 84th percentile, respectively. I don’t think the new technology hurt the Gold Glover as much as many people feared, and it seems there were other things going on that led to his defensive decline. But ABS certainly had some negative impact.
13. They have three All-Stars
The Giants had two All-Stars, which I guess makes this prediction 66.7% right. Or maybe it only makes it 50% right, since each team is guaranteed at least one All-Star. Luis Arráez was a lock for the team, and Webb made it even though he probably didn’t deserve it.
You can envision a world where they had three All-Stars, though. If Robbie Ray’s heater started a few weeks earlier he could have wiggled his way on. Schmitt and Jung Hoo Lee certainly warranted some consideration, and if Devers had played his season in reverse he would have easily made the team.
12. Rafael Devers is a Gold Glove finalist
MLB hasn’t announced the Gold Glove finalists yet, so technically this one isn’t wrong yet. But given that Devers didn’t grade out very well by any defensive metric, we can put this one in the “wrong” bin.
Still, I think in spirit this prediction had some accuracy to it. Devers had some bad moments, but he also had some excellent moments at first base, and looked like he could hold down the position for years to come (though it still remains to be seen how the Giants will handle time at first with both Devers and Eldridge). Perhaps I’m just desperate to find something to paint in a positive light, but I was impressed by Devers’ defense this season.
11. They figure out second base
On the surface, this one is very, very, very wrong. The Giants traded away their All-Star second baseman, and ended the year by cycling through a combination of five backups who risk being DFA’d this offseason, while mixing in a center fielder here and there.
And yet, no one expects the Giants to pursue a second baseman this offseason, because it does feel like they have all the options they need. Whether it will be Schmitt, Marcelo Mayer, or a rotating cast that includes Jonah Cox remains to be seen. The Giants are a long ways away from figuring out second base, but they surely think they have the answer. Now they just need to figure out what it is.
Tier 3: I’m right … kind of
This small tier has the predictions that I’m not really sure about. They’re kind of right, but they’re kind of wrong. We can debate them … hypothetically speaking, of course. Hopefully we all have better things to do than actually debate these.
10. They swing another big deadline deal
This one is technically correct, but I’m not sure it’s accurate in spirit. The Giants made a number of big deals at the deadline, to make nothing of the Bailey trade in May.
Here’s how I described the prediction: “I don’t expect the Giants to redo the Devers trade this summer, and take Bryce Harper or Fernando Tatis Jr. off someone’s hands, though I’d love to see that. But I still think they make a big trade. Likely that means giving up a few of their best prospects for a young, cost-controlled talent, but if they struggle in the standings, it could mean parting ways with some of their MLB-level players, and really re-upping the farm.”
If you squint they did the latter, but I don’t think the trades they made quite qualify. Ramos, Kilian, and Miller were the only players under contract in 2027 that they traded and, especially with the season Ramos was having, none of those names are particularly notable. I think to call this prediction accurate, the Giants needed to have traded one of their core players, or one of their core prospects, and Bailey was too early to be a deadline deal. We’re dealing with semantics here.
9. Daniel Susac survives the year, but…
I labeled this one as a double prediction: “I think Susac survives the year and plays well, but [Jesús] Rodríguez also becomes a huge part of the team at some point, be it as a second baseman, a third catcher, a fourth outfielder, or a super-utility player. There’s room at the table for both of them.”
Susac didn’t really survive the year in the literal sense, given that he was suffered a season-ending injury, but he survived the year in the baseball sense, in that he was not returned to the Athletics as a Rule 5 rejectee. And he even enters the offseason as the team’s starting catcher, though truthfully, I’m not entirely ready to declare that he played well.
Rodríguez, however, did not establish himself this year, in part because of his own injury. It’s a little bit hard to parse this prediction because I was assuming that Bailey would still be the franchise catcher, and Susac and Rodríguez would be battling for a backup role.
8. Adrian Houser is replaced
Houser was, indeed, replaced. In mid-June he was moved from the rotation to the bullpen. But, amid a slew of trades and injuries, he kind of returned to the rotation late in the year. In his fourth-to-last game of the season, he pitched five innings, but the Giants used an opener. In his third-to-last game of the season, he started and pitched six innings. In his second-to-last game of the season, he entered in the third inning and pitched five innings. And in his final game of the season, he started before leaving early with an injury.
So this one is kind of a shrug.
Tier 2: I’m right, but you’re not impressed
I only got seven of my 26 predictions right. That’s a pretty nice batting average though, so I can’t be too upset.
Still, it’s pretty easy to get predictions right if that’s your main goal. All you have to do is hug the trunk of the prediction tree, and never step out onto any limbs. Rafael Devers will hit a home run and Logan Webb won’t get traded and The federal government will intervene with the Giants over inclusive hats were all obvious things. I could have included them in my predictions post and upped my winning percentage.
Instead, I tried to at least be a tiny bit bold. But in a few cases, I took the easy way out. These are the correct predictions that probably elicit a “well, duh” from you.
7. There are more Tommy John surgeries coming down the line
This was my lone prediction that was unequivocally negative. And it brings me no joy that I was correct. It seemed that the Giants unparalleled luck with avoiding Tommy John surgeries couldn’t last forever, and when Hayden Birdsong kicked off the spring by needing TJ, I assumed it was just the first domino falling … or the second one, if you want to go back to Randy Rodríguez late last year.
It took awhile for the other dominoes to fall, but fall the most certainly did. First Trevor McDonald, and then Carson Whisenhunt, and finally Tidwell. You could see it coming a mile away, but it doesn’t make it any more enjoyable.
6. Kyle Harrison dominates them
For a while this year, it started to look like the Harrison-for-Devers trade was backfiring in a big way. Devers spent the start of the season looking like he forgot how to hit baseballs, while Harrison made a very strong bid for the All-Star game.
Their trajectories reversed as the season went on, with Devers being the third-best hitter in all of baseball from the start of May until the end of the season, while Harrison fell apart down the stretch (after his first August start, Harrison had a 2.84 ERA and a 2.91 FIP; he ended the season with a 4.20 ERA and a 4.03 FIP).
But along the way, the most predictable thing happened: Harrison dominated the team he grew up rooting for, and was drafted and developed by.
On June 2, the Brewers hosted the Giants. Harrison took the mound sporting a 6-1 record and a 1.57 ERA. He only pitched 5.2 innings in the game, but still struck out 12 batters, while allowing just six baserunners and one run. And you weren’t even mad.
5. The rotation looks worse entering the offseason than last year
This wasn’t exactly a bold prediction either, what with Ray and Tyler Mahle both set for free agency, even if the Giants hadn’t traded them. The hope was that some of the youngsters would become reliable enough options that San Francisco would have the bones of a solid rotation entering the offseason, but sadly that didn’t happen. Not only that, but Webb took quite a step backwards, while Landen Roupp struggled following a strong start to the year.
Last winter, the Giants entered the offseason with a rotation that had question marks. This winter, they enter it with a rotation in shambles.
4. The bullpen will look dramatically different at the end of the year
This was an obvious one, for two reasons: three key bullpen contributors (Jason Foley, Sam Hentges, and Joel Peguero) all began the year on the Injured List, and bullpens always have a lot of turnover.
But they don’t always have this much turnover. As evidence, I present a blurb from this original prediction: “I think the eight arms in the ‘pen for Game No. 162 will have more than 50% turnover from the octet that will be behind the outfield wall at Oracle Park tonight.”
I said that forgetting that the team gets an extra arm because of the September rules, and I still dramatically undersold it.
Of the eight bullpen arms the Giants started the year with, four ended the year injured (Winn, Brubaker, José Buttó, and Matt Gage); two were traded (Miller and Killian); one was released (Ryan Borucki), and one was in AAA (Ryan Walker). Exactly zero of the Opening Day relievers were available to pitch in the final series of the year.
Tier 1: Even a broken Brady is right three times a year
We’re left with just three predictions. Three out of 26 that make me actually look like I potentially know a thing or two.
And you know what? I’ll take it.
3. They have a top-five farm by the end of the year
This was one of the predictions I most wanted to get correct. And admittedly, it took a lot going right for me to get there. Had I been correct about my most egregious prediction — that the Giants would make the playoffs — then I probably would have been wrong about this prediction, because the Giants don’t climb to the elite ranks of farm systems if they trade away Jhonny Level and Bo Davidson instead of trading for Ramon Marquez, Henry Lalane, Joniel Hernandez, and so many others.
Despite graduating Eldridge, the Giants are widely viewed as a top-five farm system now, and there’s no shortage of reasons why. They’ve made excellent trades, they’ve signed big-name free agents, and they’ve developed players well. The future is exciting, which is good because the present sure ain’t.
2. Harrison Bader and Luis Arráez go in different directions
It’s hard to imagine a prediction being more right than this one, and I’m not even sure if the No. 1 prediction on this list is more right. The reason this one isn’t a spot higher is simply because I hedged my bets.
I didn’t say that Bader will be awful and Arráez will be great; I just said that one of them will struggle, and the other will excel.
My reasoning was fairly simple. There were reasons to be excited about both players (strong defense and an excellent offensive year in 2025 for Bader; preternatural contact skills for Arráez), and reasons to be exceedingly skeptical (poor underlying metrics with no history of sustained offensive success for Bader; awful defense and downward-trending offense for Arráez). There seemed to be a good chance that one of those gambles would work out, and one would not.
I had no idea how intensely that would be true. Bader’s first (and likely last) season with the Giants could not have been more of a disaster. He was one of the worst players in all of baseball when on the field, posting a 49 wRC+ with mediocre defense, while accruing a whopping -0.4 fWAR in just 30 games. He dealt with multiple injuries, and then officially lost his season when, while rehabbing a foot injury, crashed a scooter into a fire truck in the marina in the middle of the night. The Giants docked his pay for the second half of the season, and will almost certainly look to void his contract for 2027.
Arráez, on the other hand, did the opposite. He rejuvenated his defensive reputation, going from a tire fire at second base to someone who will almost surely be a Gold Glove finalist. His spiraling offensive production course corrected, as he posted a 121 wRC+ with the Giants (though that number went tumbling down the stairs with the Phillies). He led all Giants players in fWAR (3.8) despite playing in just 105 games before being traded. He represented the team at the All-Star Game and brought them back an impressive haul at the deadline.
Bader was the Giants worst player this year and Arráez their best. I’ll pat myself on the back for this one. But not as much as for the next one…
1. The Giants have more debuts this year than last year
In hindsight this doesn’t look like a particularly bold prediction. But if you go back to the start of the year, it was far from obvious. The Giants hadn’t protected a single player from the Rule 5 Draft, and as such had just two players on the 40-man roster — Susac and Jesús Rodríguez — who had yet to debut. Buster Posey had earned a bit of a reputation in his first year for being very cautious with promotions, not just in the lower levels of the Minors but from the Minors up to the Majors. And the bulk of the AAA talent that seemed ready to contribute — Eldridge, Gilbert, Whisenhunt, and Tidwell — had debuted the year prior.
So it wasn’t all that easy to see how the Giants would have more players debut than the six that played their first MLB game in 2025.
But my goodness did they. And I put this prediction at No. 1 on the list because they blew past my prediction entirely, and mocked it as they did so.
In all, the Giants had a hilarious 18 different players make their MLB debut this season (and that number should have been 19, but they did Zach Morgan dirty). 18!
For this year, this prediction made me look smart. Just don’t expect me to try it again next year.
