Evaluating baseball seasons requires some context. More than a few three-finger pinches of your salt of choice (I’m a Diamond Crystal kosher man, myself) are necessary seasoning when doing an autopsy on a team. But if you insist on reducing seasons to the two basic outcomes — success and failure — then there can be no debate as to which label should be slapped on the 2025 San Francisco Giants. If those are our only options — and sports do tend to dabble in absolutes — then the season was, without
question or hesitation, an abject failure.
They ousted their President of Baseball Operations, convinced that Farhan Zaidi’s floor-raising churn factory wasn’t working, and replaced him with a franchise legend who carried a bit more of a traditional approach in Buster Posey. They doled out the largest contract in franchise history to Willy Adames and then, halfway through the season, made Adames only the second-highest paid player on the team with a trade for Rafael Devers.
And then they proceeded to win exactly one more game than the year prior, while giving you little reason to think the results will be any different next year without some significant offseason changes.
But the best seasons have plenty of poor developments, and the worst seasons have plenty of good ones. And so, while the Giants body is still warm, we should take a look at each.
These lists will hardly be comprehensive — especially the negative. We could talk for hours about the developments of the 162-game season, both encouraging and discouraging. For now, though, we’ll focus on the latter; the happier bits will come tomorrow.
Here then, are the worst developments of the Giants season, as I see them.
There was no infusion of youth talent
My general feeling is that there are two ways that an organization can have a successful season: they can be a contending team, or they can highlight a corps of young players that establish themselves as part of the next contending team.
The Giants quite clearly failed at the first point, but I’d aver that they failed even more dramatically — and more disappointingly — at the second. When all was said and done, this stood as the biggest failure of the Giants season, and the one that breeds pessimism ahead of 2026.
San Francisco opened the year with Luis Matos platooning in right field with Mike Yastrzemski, hoping the former could eventually take over the reins; instead, he ended the year in AAA Sacramento. That’s still better than his fellow young outfielders on the 40-man roster, as Grant McCray had just 26 plate appearances all year, while Marco Luciano and. Wade Meckler spent the entire season in the Minor Leagues.
Tyler Fitzgerald was given the everyday job at second base, lost it by early July, and spent the second half of the season struggling to hit in Sacramento. Casey Schmitt replaced him and, while offering plenty of reasons for optimism, left no reason to view future success as a certainty.
The Giants had a three-way camp battle for the fifth rotation spot, and when the year ended Kyle Harrison was in Boston, Hayden Birdsong was broken, and Landen Roupp was injured. Carson Ragsdale, added to the roster over the offseason, was released before debuting, while Carson Seymour gave up nine home runs in just 36 innings. Mason Black made just one appearance in the Majors, and Trevor McDonald’s success came too late in the year to earn him a role next season. Carson Whisenhunt debuted but didn’t look ready, and Kai-Wei Teng had a walk and a hit batter for every flash he showed.
They added youngsters at the deadline, but those players are covered in uncertainty as well. Blade Tidwell’s injury kept him from making his Giants debut, while Jesús Rodríguez will have to wait until 2026 to don a Major League jersey for the first time. Drew Gilbert was given significant run, but finished the year with an OPS lower than Patrick Bailey’s.
And then there’s the hopeful savior. It was a good year of development for Bryce Eldridge, but his baseball card reads 3-28 with 13 strikeouts and just 34 innings in the field. His future is bright, but also unknown.
In all, only three of the Giants unproven young players ended the year as known (positive) commodities: Roupp, who should open next year as the fourth or fifth starter; Christian Koss, who is a seldomly-used backup infielder; and Randy Rodríguez, who will miss the entirety of the 2026 season with Tommy John surgery. Add in the fact that Heliot Ramos took a step backwards and Patrick Bailey didn’t rebound offensively, and the Giants are almost entirely lacking a young core. Many of the above names could end up being exactly that, but it sure would have been nice to have ended 2025 having actually seen it.
More rotation questions were posed than answered
This is perhaps a subsection of the prior point. The Giants entered 2025 with a highly compelling rotation. Logan Webb, Robbie Ray, and Justin Verlander sat, star-studded, at the top. Jordan Hicks, with all his dynamism, was an intriguing and affordable fourth starter, and it was easy to envision him shining in the role. Meanwhile Harrison (so recently the top left-handed prospect in all of baseball) and Birdsong (arguably an even more electric prospect) were battling with Roupp for the final spot.
At the time, it felt like all three young arms deserved to start, and there was real optimism that at least two of the trio could end the year as a high-end starter. Instead, you know what happened. Harrison was sent to the Red Sox in the Rafael Devers trade, while Birdsong forgot how to throw strikes. He walked at least four batters in each of his final four MLB starts, and ceded five runs without recording an out in his final game of the year. That booked him a trip to AAA, where he walked 30 batters in just 39 innings. Roupp was the success story of the group, but with a 3.80 ERA, a 3.91 FIP, yet another injury in a long list of of them, and a lack of upside due to his older (for a young player) age (27), he looks far more like a back-end starter than the co-ace heir apparent.
And along the way, Hicks struggled, was demoted, and joined Harrison on the flight to Boston. And suddenly a rotation seven deep turned into one with just four arms, one of which is 42 and headed for free agency.
Worse yet, the Giants don’t have the same battle that they did last Spring Training. In February, the battle for the fifth spot was riveting because Harrison, Birdsong, and Roupp had all spent 2024 looking like players who deserved to be in the 2025 rotation. It wasn’t a battle to see who could prove ready; it was a battle to see who looked the best.
This coming spring will be a stark comparison. Birdsong, Whisenhunt, McDonald, Teng, and Seymour all showed signs this year, and any could emerge as a viable starter in 2026. But none look like arms the Giants can rely on to start 2026 in the rotation; so much so, in fact, that it would border on organizational malpractice to assume that any one arm can emerge from that pack as a quality starter when Opening Day rolls around.
As such, the Giants have not one, but two holes in the rotation to fill this offseason. And if I had told you back in February that Ray would be healthy, not be traded, and be an All-Star, and yet the Giants would still be in the market for two starters this winter, you would be very disappointed. So … be disappointed.
The bullpen is in shambles
The Giants bullpen was excellent for a while. They had the best ERA of any team through the end of June, with a glistening 2.93.
And then they traded Camilo Doval and Tyler Rogers, while Randy Rodríguez underwent a surgery that ended not just his 2025, but also his 2026. So where does that leave them for next year?
Ryan Walker rebounded after a brutal year, but still looked more like a decent option than a weapon. Erik Miller, who missed much of the year with an injury, should be healthy by Spring Training, but he walked 20 batters in 30 innings this season.
Don’t expect the Giants to spend big to fix the bullpen. Many will point to the team’s lack of success when spending on relievers in the past, but a more pertinent point is to look at the tire-fire that is the Dodgers’ bullpen after they hoarded large relief contracts a winter ago. Instead, this will probably be addressed with Minor League free agents, some of the previously mentioned starter prospects shifting to bullpen roles, and yes, probably the re-signing of Rogers.
That could work, but it’s not the most comforting plan.
Heliot Ramos’ lapses in power and judgement
I remain very high on Ramos, and he’ll even be featured in the optimistic follow-up to this article. But his season was defined by blunders both confusing and unforgivable.
Most notable were the mistakes in the outfield and on the bases. Ramos made highlight plays in both of those phases of the game, but could rarely go a week without an awful lowlight as well. He gave back nearly all of his hitting value with his defense, which was legitimately some of the worst in all of baseball, regardless of position. And he had countless baserunning mistakes that made you wonder what in the world was going on.
The focus on those foibles took attention away from another troubling trend: a dip in power. Ramos hit one fewer home run in 177 more plate appearances, which saw his isolated slugging percentage dip from .200 (37th out of 129 qualified hitters) all the way to .144 (103rd out of 145). Ramos has 30-homer, 30-double power, and if he displays it, the defense and baserunning mistakes are more forgivable. But he can’t be a 20-homer, 20-double bat who is leaking oil in the other phases of the game.
Concerning outfield defense
Despite Ramos’ struggles in the field, he’s firmly entrenched as the team’s left fielder. And next to him, Jung Hoo Lee had a defensive season that can only be described as pedestrian. It wasn’t problematic, but it wasn’t particularly good, either. The Giants intend to win with pitching and defense, the outfield contingency of that equation stood out like a sore thumb when they played teams like the Diamondbacks, who chased down every fly ball like Jerry Rice running routes against high schoolers.
It sure looks like the Giants will enter 2026 with an outfield alignment of Ramos, Lee, and some combination of Gilbert, Matos, and Jerar Encarnación, and there’s really no reason to feel good about that.
Where are the stolen bases?
Let me save Buster Posey and the incoming new manager some words when they’re interviewed by KNBR at the start of Spring Training: they’re going to run more. It’s a statement we’ve heard every year for ages with the Giants, and it keeps struggling to come to fruition. The Giants finished with 68 stolen bases, which was second-fewest in baseball … and 126 thefts off of the leading Rays.
If you’re wondering how that compares to 2024, well … they also had 68 stolen bases, which was also second-fewest. At some point the Giants will finally come through on their promise to run. I just hope we don’t have to wait for 17-year old Josuar González to debut for that time to come.
There were, of course, plenty more disappointments this year. Plenty, plenty more.
But we have to stop somewhere.
