Plenty of baseball fans are not romantic about baseball, but for the rest of us, there’s a romance in every season. And what’s romance but hopes and dreams? A week before the start of the regular season,
I listed out my hopes and dreams for the San Francisco Giants in 2025 and did a check-in at the All-Star Break where I added a few more of both to the list. Let’s take a look at them and see just how much heartache I created for myself over those six months. You should check what you wrote down in the comments, too.
[For reference: “hope” means the speaker believes their statement is possible. “Wish” expresses an outcome the speaker doesn’t believe is possible right now.]
Hopes
The Spring Training results transfer over to the regular season for the most part
DASHED, THOUGH BRIEFLY FULFILLED. The Giants ended April with a 19-12 record but went 62-69 the rest of the way. Their 21-6 Cactus League mark was their second-best winning percentage (.778) in San Francisco history. They were 25-6 (.806) in 1964. 2025 marks the first time ever that they’ve won 20+ games in the Spring and failed to have a winning record in the regular season. They had a winning spring in 2017, too — but also, they were 11-12 in 2021; so, that’s why there’s an adage that Spring Training numbers are meaningless, right? For more proof, just look at what happened with the Grapefuit League champion Toronto Blue Jays.
Landen Roupp’s spring carries over
FULFILLED. The injury-shortened nature of his season might make what he did less impressive, but I think that’s a consideration for 2026 projections. Otherwise, he made 22 starts (106.2 IP or about 5 IP per start) and posted a 3.80 ERA (3.91 FIP). In Spring, he pitched 12 innings with a 3.75 ERA.
Hayden Birdsong is That Guy
DASHED. My player review painted a portrait of disappointment about a would-be starter, but I retained a residue of optimism about his chances as a reliever going forward. On the latest There R Giants podcast, where friend of the site Roger Munter interviews Giants broadcaster David B. Flemming, Flemming suggests that the team is sanguine about his chances as a starter in the future — at least, that’s the role they still see him in. So, optimistically, this might be a dream that’s been deferred a year.
Logan Webb stays healthy
FULFILLED. 207 innings pitched, fourth in Cy Young voting. A career-best 2.60 FIP and career-high 224 strikeouts, which led the National League. Now let me never spotlight Webb’s health again.
Ryan Walker regresses to an awesome mean
DASHED. Sorry, this sort of undersells what happened here.
DASHED.
It wasn’t looking good there for the first few months, but then he made a mechanical fix that had him throwing 97+ mph again. That lasted a few months and what we got was a rollercoaster of a year that looked like this:
ERA by month
March/April (10.2 IP): 5.91
May (9.2): 3.72
June (12.2): 4.26
July (10.2): 2.53
August (9.2): 0.93
September (8): 7.88
In the final Bullpen Trust Power Ranking of the season, he ranked 10th out of 10. He regressed to below the mean and that’s a troubling development for next year’s squad and certainly felt worse than a hope that was simply dashed. He’s a reliever. It was probably foolish to pin any hopes to him.
The roster is Melvin-proof
DASHED. At the midway point I remarked, “He has Buster Posey’s vote of confidence for 2026 and there hasn’t been any weird lineup or position player controversy. Quite the opposite. The players are thrilled to have consistent roles in a predictable setting.”
If you’ve read my work for a while now, then you know I’ve got a streak in me to gas up ideas or concepts I don’t agree with to see if it’s possible to build something up in order to tear it down. I had done this with the hiring of Farhan Zaidi but then forgot I did that over the years, which led me to only admitting that I got it wrong when he was finally let go; but, far less time has passed since I wrote that about BoMel and the Humm Baby coaching staff that I remember that I was simply regurgitating the execrable party line that’s been dumped down our throats over the years about how great he is because the players love him.
Buster Posey made a mistake in renewing his contract as a vote of confidence and probably erred in the roster’s construction, depth-wise, but it’s highly unlikely that coaching and strategy played no part in the team’s many valleys and few peaks over the course of the season. The Giants were 40-50 (.444) after trading for Rafael Devers!
The Giants win at least 82 games
DASHED. Yes, in my mind, it’s possible to hope for the Giants to carry over the momentum of Spring Training yet still hope that it leads to an 82-80 record. This wasn’t even a hopeful hope. It was me thinking that, “Well, since the team has been bad for a decade — as 2021 was a completely meaningless fluke — a winning season is probably asking a lot, but okay, Bob Melvin has won that many games recently.”
From my halfway point post: “They could still miss the mark, but if that comes to pass, I think it’d be because something unexpectedly negative happened.” I’m going to say the Bad Thing was a combination of two situations: the 5-16 stretch at home during July and August and the lack of pitching depth once injuries and setbacks occurred.
Heliot Ramos and Tyler Fitzgerald don’t crater
DASHED. Ramos had a 119 wRC+ at the midway point, but ended the season at 106. This hope was already dashed because of the Tyler Fitzgerald component. He seems like a player very close to being bounced out of the majors. Heliot Ramos, meanwhile, has so much work to do on his defense that he might be better off as a fourth outfielder or designated hitter on another team (Cleveland?). He didn’t exactly crater, but because I had attached him to Tyler Fitzgerald, he was still a part of said crater for the purposes of this hope.
Willy Adames and Matt Chapman are the anchors
FULFILLED. I had no way of knowing that Buster Posey would go and trade for Rafael Devers, not only because I didn’t believe that Posey would be capable of such a big swing in his first season but also because I refused to believe that the Red Sox would dump a player like that once again. Having said that!
Despite checking in with just a 108 wRC+ (85th in MLB — minimum 500 PA), Willy Adames did break the team’s ignominious distinction of lacking a 30 home run hitter for over 20 years. Chapman was much more productive despite missing time with injury. His 118 wRC+ ranked 55th in MLB (min. 500 PA). Ultimately, it’s Devers plus these two that anchor the lineup and you can see how just the two of them alone wouldn’t have been enough for the lineup to threaten most days.
Wilmer Flores torments major league pitching again
DASHED, THOUGH BRIEFLY FULFILLED. Look, that’s exactly what he did coming out of Spring Training. He was 5th in RBI through May. After that, he hit himself closer to retirement, slashing .245/.315/.365 (.680 OPS) over his final 346 plate appearances. His Giants career was defined by memorable swings, and it was his big swings in the early season that helped keep afloat our hopes and dreams for this 2025 squad.
Bryce Eldridge is a luxury
FULFILLED. The Giants called him up at the end of the season and got some loud contact and interesting under the hood results, but little else. They certainly need the projected offense scouts and minor league models see from him in the future, but they’re not yet putting the weight of the franchise on his shoulders and they’ve done enough elsewhere on the roster to avoid that being even a fallback plan.
Jung Hoo Lee is a necessity
FULFILLED. He could’ve been an expensive player who produced little for the club, and there was a moment during the season — even as team and media acknowledged and pushed the idea that 2025 was his first full season after missing most of 2024 from injury — where it looked like that was happening, but over the final two months of the season, he hit .306/.351/.439 (.791 OPS) with 15 extra base hits in 173 at bats and a very reasonable 13.5 K%. Is this the player we should expect going forward? Not necessarily, but he did more than end the season on a high note, he finished very strong.
Patrick Bailey keeps it up
FULFILLED. Previously: “I don’t think Patrick Bailey is a .730 OPS guy, but a .690/.700 guy feels plausible once again and in a way that it hasn’t since 2023?” After the All-Star break, he hit just .219/.268/.272, which was worse than his season line to that point. Did I really geek out over a miniscule sample size that was blotted out quickly by the next month and a half? No. Over the season’s final month, when a primary catcher who is already really bad at hitting should be even worse because of the fatigue that accompanies all those innings in a crouch, Bailey was at his best as a hitter, slashing .288/.321/.493 (.814 OPS) over his final 24 games (78 PA).
Randy Rodriguez saves the bullpen
DASHED. See him in 2027, maybe?
Dreams
Kyle Harrison regains his velocity
FULFILLED. “In fact, he did such a good job [of adding velocity] that he was a useful part of a massive trade.” He pitched 12 innings for the Red Sox (2 starts) and struck out 13 in with just 5 walks and 4 earned runs allowed (0 HR). He averaged 94.6 with his four-seamer on the season, according to Statcast — a 2 mph increase over last season.
At least one Giant hits 30 home runs this year
FULFILLED. Boy… did I get it wrong!! From my midpoint post:
DASHED. I’m calling it. The Giants will go another season without a 30-home run guy. Heliot Ramos is at 14 with 65 to go. Rafael Devers has hit 17, but he has a disc injury in his lower back and he’s already experienced the Oracle Park effect in some of his plate appearances.
Erik Miller is enough
DASHED. I don’t know why I was ready to accept that the Giants would carry one left-handed reliever in their bullpen all season long. Hmm, maybe I was thinking that it was such a bad idea that I needed to mock it in some way. Yeah, that’s probably what was going on here.
Anyway, the Giants dipped into the minors to add Joey Lucchesi and the waiver wire to bring in Matt Gage and Scott Alexander (briefly), and I would say that this primary combo produced mixed-positive results. Gage’s story is a bit more compelling than his performance, but they didn’t find a Miller replacement once he went down.
A zombie form of the Giants-Dodgers rivalry appears
DASHED, THOUGH BRIEFLY FULFILLED. A couple of weeks ago, I declared this rivalry dead.
The Giants clinch a Wild Card spot
DASHED. Now, did I think it was possible for a team to win “at least 82 games” and make the postseason? No. This is the DREAMS section. In that scenario, the Giants would’ve probably had to win more games — though it would’ve been fun if 82 had been enough. In reality, 84 would’ve gotten it done.
The Giants trade for Kris Bubic
DASHED. As a sharp commenter was quick to point out, Bubic was being converted from reliever to starter (after having been a starter 2020-2022), so was going to hit an innings wall just when the Giants would’ve needed more out of him. To that point, he’d make just two more starts after I posted this dream before hitting the injured list with a rotator cuff strain.
Because the Giants have been regrettable and forgettable for the past 10 years, I kept my expectations low and limited my imagination and still the season caused pain. The third Wild Card feels like such a low bar that rooting for it borders on beneath human dignity, yet there I went dreaming big on a quick playoffs exit just to say this long-running bad franchise finally got over the hump. On the other hand, by thinking so little of them, Buster Posey was able to pull off a massive surprise in trading for Rafael Devers.
Baseball is romantic because it’s a beautiful game that’s easy to love. It presents us with epic performance, memorable episodes, and mysteries that lead to pain and delight. We can’t help but dream about it or get our hopes up. And that’s usually the moment when it breaks our hearts.
