After four consecutive years stuck at .500 or close to it, the San Francisco Giants entered 2026 with hopes of finally launching out of mediocrity and into the mix of National League contenders. Instead, they plummeted in the opposite direction, finding themselves much closer in the standings to perennial losers such as the Colorado Rockies than the downstate rival Los Angeles Dodgers.
With less than three weeks remaining in what has been a disjointed and disappointing campaign on and off the field, San Francisco is on pace for the franchise’s worst record since 2017. And on Sunday,the Giants became the secondteam mathematically eliminated from 2026 postseason contention, joining the aforementioned lowly Rockies.
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Since taking over baseball operations toward the end of the 2024 season, Giants president Buster Posey has made several bold maneuvers in an effort to restore his beloved franchise to the level of relevance and respectability it enjoyed during his playing days. This began before he took over in an official capacity, with Posey’s reported direct involvement in negotiations to extend third baseman Matt Chapman on a six-year, $151 million contract. During his first offseason in charge of baseball ops, Posey made a big splash in free agency by signing shortstop Willy Adames to a seven-year, $182 million deal to pair with Chapman on the left side of the infield.
Emboldened by the Giants’ strong start to 2025 — San Francisco was tied with the Dodgers atop the NL West at 41-29 on June 13 — Posey made another massive move by acquiring star slugger Rafael Devers from Boston in one of the most stunning midseason trades in recent memory. But the Giants failed to capitalize on their promising early positioning and sputtered over the next several months, finishing at the frustratingly familiar mark of 81-81, a couple of games behind the Cincinnati Reds for the final NL playoff spot.
With that, another round of shake-ups from Posey was in order, this time involving the coaching staff. Out went veteran skipper Bob Melvin after just two seasons at the helm; in came the audacious and charismatic Tony Vitello, with a brilliant track record at the University of Tennessee but absolutely zero professional experience. It was an ambitious and unprecedented hire intended to provide a jolt to a franchise in dire need of something different, something fresh. A handful of modest additions to the roster rounded out the winter — Tyler Mahle, Adrian Houser, Luis Arraez, Harrison Bader — but it was clear that the hiring of Vitello and the revamping of the coaching staff around him were the most consequential moves of Posey’s second offseason in charge.
In spring training this year, optimism was plentiful, with Vitello’s unwavering energy setting the tone for a squad featuring a number of accomplished players on both sides of the ball. But once the season began, the flaws in the roster Posey had constructed were exposed in a hurry. San Francisco scored just one run in its opening three-game series against the Yankees, setting an ominous tone for an offense that scuffled to a startling degree in the early going. The Giants hit just three home runs across their first 13 home games and 19 through their first 34 games overall — the fewest in MLB during that span.
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On an individual level, Devers endured one of the worst months of his career in April (.516 OPS). Adames wasn’t much better (.553 OPS). Chapman mustered one homer through the end of May and didn’t play after June due to an abdominal injury that required season-ending surgery. Arraez — a rare bright spot — enjoyed a resurgence with his new club en route to an All-Star invite, but his contributions were overshadowed in part by the negative impact of San Francisco’s other biggest winter addition to the lineup, Bader. The outfielder posted a .557 OPS across 30 games before suffering an injury in a scooter accident while on the injured list, prompting the Giants to suspend payment of his salary.
Run production improved somewhat as the season progressed — but not nearly enough to compensate for the ineffectiveness on the mound. San Francisco’s rotation was shaky beyond ace Logan Webb, and even Webb was uncharacteristically unreliable to begin the year, posting a 5.06 ERA across his first eight starts. The bullpen was undermanned from the get-go, forcing Vitello — amid the nuances and challenges of managing a major-league bullpen for the first time — to rely on ill-equipped personnel in high-leverage situations. Off the field, a group of Giants pitchers made headlines for all the wrong reasons on Pride Night, and Posey’s inadequate response added another cloud of dysfunction and disconnect to San Francisco’s season.
The team’s late-game horrors got worse when, after falling out of contention by midsummer, the Giants traded away their two most dependable relievers, Caleb Kilian and Erik Miller, at the deadline. Entering play on Sept. 8, San Francisco is 13-25 in one-run games — the worst record in MLB in such contests — and its 6.11 ERA in the ninth inning is the highest in franchise history by a mile. It’s one of the 20 highest marks by any team in the wild-card era.
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The most egregious example of San Francisco squandering a late lead came Aug. 26 against Cincinnati. The Giants led 9-3 entering the final frame, needing just three outs to complete their first series sweep of the season. Then seven straight Reds batters reached before the Giants could record the first out of the inning, and Cincinnati rallied to recapture the lead en route to a stunning 10-9 victory. That disaster unfolded in front of just 24,130 paid spectators, the lowest announced attendance at Oracle Park this season.
While the 2026 Giants’ season was lost long before that bullpen blowup against Cincinnati, the nature of that loss, plus missing out on a golden opportunity to finally sweep an opponent, was especially emblematic of this embarrassing campaign. It exemplified the Giants’ complete inability to capture any semblance of momentum, which doomed any chance they had of climbing up the standings. The Angels, A’s and Rockies have each completed at least one sweep this season — heck, Colorado has three! — but not the Giants, who have yet to win more than three games in a row and never against the same opponent.
If anything, this unique shortcoming in San Francisco’s season presents quite the contrast to Vitello’s tenure in Knoxville, which was largely spent steamrolling opponents. Across his eight seasons leading the Vols, Vitello’s teams completed 38 three-game sweeps, including 18 in SEC play. On the flip side, the Vols suffered only six sweeps under Vitello, all of them on the road. In his first year managing in the majors, Vitello’s club was swept at home three times before the end of May and eight times overall.
Perhaps there’s still a sweep in store for San Francisco — six series remain for them to make it happen — but it’d be minimal consolation in the grand scheme of things.
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Still, there are some positives to take away from this wayward Giants campaign. After his ice-cold first month, Devers has been one of the best hitters in baseball; his 158 wRC+ since May 1 ranks third in MLB behind only Pete Crow-Armstrong and Yordan Alvarez. His hefty contract might become burdensome down the road, but for now, Devers is still a game-changing hitter. Joining him in the middle of the lineup for years to come should be Bryce Eldridge, who has impressed immensely as a 21-year-old rookie after spending April in Triple-A. In Devers and Eldridge, the Giants have a terrific duo of left-handed sluggers to build the lineup around.
This has also been an exciting year for San Francisco’s farm system. A stroke of draft-lottery luck in December landed the Giants the fourth pick in the 2026 draft, which they used on UC Santa Barbara right-hander Jackson Flora, the consensus top arm in the class. That early selection, plus the first-round pick acquired from Cleveland for Patrick Bailey, enabled the Giants to reel in quite the draft haul this summer, especially on the pitching side. A busy trade deadline spent offloading the likes of Arraez, Miller, Kilian, Heliot Ramos, Robbie Ray and Tyler Mahle netted the Giants six more promising prospects, plus a young infielder with upside in Marcelo Mayer. Meanwhile, a trio of teenage infielders — Josuar Gonzalez, Luis Hernandez and Jhonny Level — established themselves as top-100 prospects, with Gonzalez trending toward the inner circle of prospects in the entire minor leagues.
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All together, San Francisco’s farm system — widely regarded as one of the weakest in the league as recently as 18 months ago — now rates among MLB’s best. But these organizational strides carry only so much weight for a marquee franchise that should be delivering annually in the majors, not selling its fan base on a far-off future burgeoning in the minors. It is now on Posey to make the necessary alterations and upgrades to the big-league roster to get the Giants back to a baseline of competence before we can even begin to think about legitimate championship contention.
For everyone involved, from ownership and Posey’s front office to the players and coaches in Vitello’s clubhouse, there’s a whole lot to prove in San Francisco moving forward.
