The Best Giants At Oracle Park In July 2028 May Be In The Futures Game

July 11, 2028 is a Tuesday. The date is not final. Everything around it is.

Rob Manfred announced Friday that Oracle Park will host the 2028 All-Star Game. The whole week comes with it, which is the part worth reading twice: the Home Run Derby, and the Futures Game. San Francisco has done this three times since it stopped being New York, twice at Candlestick, in 1961 and 1984, and once in this building in 2007, when there was a different corporate name bolted to the front of it. (AT&T. It was AT&T.)

"With its passionate fanbase, world-class ballpark, and rich baseball history, San Francisco will be an outstanding host for All-Star Week," Manfred said. Larry Baer said the Giants were thrilled to welcome the baseball world. Mayor Daniel Lurie called San Francisco the sports capital of the world, which is what a mayor says on a day the commissioner is standing near him.

Nobody handed this over because the Giants are good.

The 2028 Summer Olympics are in Los Angeles, and major leaguers are expected to play in them for the first time. Put the All-Star Game on the West Coast a couple of weeks earlier and the entire sport is already most of the way there. Wrigley Field has 2027. San Francisco has the flight time.

So the date is a gift, and a gift is still a date. That is the whole point of one. Not quite twenty-three months from Saturday, this club has to put a team on its own field in front of everybody, and the interesting question is which team that is, because two very different answers are currently sitting in the same organization.

Start with the one that is already signed. Rafael Devers is under contract through 2033 and will be 31 that July. Willy Adames runs through 2031 and will be 32. Matt Chapman runs through 2030 and will be 35. (Both of those carry full no-trade clauses, which makes them less a projection about the 2028 roster than a description of it.) Logan Webb will be 31, and 2028 is the last year of his deal, which is a nice piece of scheduling: the ace's contract runs out the same summer the party arrives. Those four carry $98,319,353 of competitive-balance-tax average annual value between them, which is a tax figure rather than a 2028 payroll, and it is the closest thing the Giants have to a promise about that season. Jung Hoo Lee is signed through 2029 and can opt out after 2027, so he is a maybe.

That is four certainties and a maybe, and all four certainties are men San Francisco already had.

Now the other answer. Baseball America published its post-deadline organization rankings on August 12 and moved the Giants to fourth in baseball, up from 14th before the season and 10th at midseason. Five San Francisco players are on its current Top 100. That is a real jump and the club earned it honestly, mostly by trading Luis Arraez, Robbie Ray, Tyler Mahle and Heliot Ramos inside two days at the beginning of the month and taking back players nobody has heard of yet.

Here is where those five are working right now.

Josuar Gonzalez, ranked 18th, is a shortstop who spent 30 games in the Arizona Complex League this year and has since played 14 at Single-A San Jose. Luis Hernandez, 36th, is a shortstop who played 54 in the complex league and 16 at San Jose. Jhonny Level, 50th, has moved up to High-A Eugene. Jackson Flora, 51st, is the right-hander the Giants took fourth overall this year out of UC Santa Barbara for $7,997,500, and he is at the complex league in Arizona, which is the bottom rung of the whole thing. Bo Davidson, 84th, is the only one of the five above Double-A, hitting .240 with two home runs in 24 games at Sacramento after 19 homers in 73 at Richmond.

Four of those five are below Double-A. Count them: Gonzalez, Hernandez, Level, Flora.

Baseball America said this itself, in the sentence directly under the ranking. The system, it wrote, "is very much stacked in the lower levels of the minors, so there's a lot of runway left for the team's top talent."

Runway is a generous word for it. On July 11, 2028, Josuar Gonzalez will be 20 years old and Luis Hernandez will be 19. Jhonny Level will be 21. Flora will be 23, the only one of the four whose age is not itself the answer. The rest of it is arithmetic nobody can argue with: a 17-year-old shortstop in the California League in August 2026 is not an All-Star in July 2028, and no amount of ranking him 36th in baseball changes the number of birthdays in between.

Which is why the Futures Game is the detail that actually matters. It is played during the same week, in the same park, for prospects who have not graduated yet. If the last two weeks of Giants transactions mean what the front office says they mean, the club's most exciting players that summer will be in the wrong one, and the correct reaction to that is relief rather than embarrassment. A 19-year-old in the Futures Game at Oracle Park is a rebuild running on schedule. A 19-year-old in the All-Star Game would mean something went strange.

The same night, the Giants lost 5-2 to Colorado, a team one game worse than they are. They started Jonah Cox in center field, having recalled him from Sacramento that afternoon. Turner Hill, the 27-year-old outfielder they had promoted with some fanfare two days earlier, a Division III undrafted free agent who broke a River Cats franchise record on his way up, sat on the bench and did not get in.

That is what August 2026 looks like from field level.

Six hundred and ninety-six days, if the Tuesday holds. The bunting is ordered.

Sources#

• MLB announcement of the 2028 All-Star Game, August 14, 2026, carried by CBS Sports and The San Francisco Standard, including the Manfred, Baer and Lurie quotations, the reported July 11 date, the Home Run Derby and Futures Game, and the 1961, 1984 and 2007 host history.
• Baseball America, "MLB Farm System Midseason Talent Rankings," staff, published August 12, 2026, for the fourth-place ranking, the preseason and midseason placements, the five Top 100 entries and the quoted note on the system's distribution.
• MLB Stats API, retrieved August 15, 2026, for the standings, the August 14 box score, the transaction log, the 40-man roster, the affiliate classifications and every minor league statistical line above.
• MLB draft records for the 2026 first round, for the fourth overall selection and the signing bonus.
• Cot's Baseball Contracts for contract terms, cross-checked against Spotrac for the average annual values.