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Sep 21, 2026
Giants
Left versus right

Remove Rafael Devers and the Giants are still 25th against left-handed pitching

San Francisco finished 28th of thirty in OPS against left-handed pitching. Subtract every plate appearance Rafael Devers took against a left-hander and the club is 25th, which means the man with the worst platoon split in baseball is not the reason his team has one.

GL
Grant LombardSep 21, 20266 min read
Every call on this site goes on a public ledger and gets graded. The misses stay up.
Willy Adames photographed from the front in the right-handed batter's box at the finish of a swing, head up and watching the ball, bat held out in his left hand. He wears San Francisco's orange alternate jersey with the Giants script across the chest in black and the number 2 below it, purple batting gloves and a black helmet with the orange interlocking SF. The top of an opposing catcher's mask is in the lower right corner and the crowd behind him is out of focus. The date of the photograph is not established.

Here is an experiment you can run at home, assuming your home contains a spreadsheet and a grudge.

Start with the suspect. Rafael Devers hit left-handed pitching this season to the tune of a .573 OPS across 220 plate appearances. Against right-handed pitching he posted a 1.027 OPS across 413. The gap is 454 points, and it is the largest of any qualified left-handed hitter in Major League Baseball. Second place is not close: Alec Burleson of St. Louis at 382. Devers played his last game of the year on September 12.

So he is the guy. Obviously he is the guy. Take him out.

Subtract his 220 plate appearances from the 1,740 the Giants took against left-handed pitching, recompute the whole thing from the raw components, and San Francisco goes from a .669 OPS to a .684 OPS. The league median is .706. The club moves from 28th of thirty to 25th.

The suspect has an alibi, is what I am telling you. The room is still guilty.

What a platoon split is supposed to look like#

This is the number that makes every other number in this article readable, so here it is before anything else. Take all 135 hitters who qualified for the batting title in 2026 and compute each man's own OPS against left-handed pitching minus his OPS against right-handed pitching. The median left-handed hitter comes in at minus 88 points. The median right-handed hitter comes in at plus 36.

That is not a curiosity. That is the entire architecture of a lineup card. Left-handed hitters are worse against left-handed pitching, so you carry right-handed hitters, whose job on the days a left-hander starts is to be the reason you are not in trouble. Sixty-five of the 135 bat left-handed, 57 bat right-handed and the other thirteen switch, which is close enough to a balance that you can see the design in it.

One precision note, because it is easy to get backwards. League-wide, the aggregate OPS against left-handed pitching is .711 on 52,808 plate appearances and against right-handed pitching it is .723 on 124,298. Twelve points. That is not the platoon effect; that is the two effects cancelling, because both kinds of hitter are in both buckets. The per-hitter medians are the platoon effect.

San Francisco put three men on that list of 135. Devers at minus 454, Jung Hoo Lee at minus 162 on 178 and 401 plate appearances, and Willy Adames at minus 82 on 137 and 368.

Read that last one again.

The right-handed bat, whose entire job this was#

Adames is the club's primary right-handed hitter and his platoon split runs backwards. He was worse against left-handed pitching than against right-handed pitching, in a season where the median right-handed hitter was 36 points better.

Now the honest part, because the sentence above is the kind that gets written and then never checked. How unusual is a backwards split for a right-handed hitter? I went and counted: 18 of the 57 qualified right-handed hitters finished negative. Nearly a third of them. Adames ranks 8th worst among the 57. He is bad at the thing, not a freak of nature, and the piece that tells you otherwise is inflating.

What is genuinely absent is the other end. The right-handed hitters who actually punish left-handed pitching this year were Jo Adell at plus 388 on 174 plate appearances against left-handers, Chase Meidroth at plus 299 on 178, and Jake Burger at plus 254 on 163. No Giant is in that neighborhood, in the next neighborhood, or on the same bus route.

The two right-handed bats on the roster with a real sample and the normal shape are Matt Chapman, plus 104 on 95 and 257 plate appearances, and Casey Schmitt, plus 49 on 106 and 303. Against a median of plus 36, that is one man comfortably above the line and one man just over it. Both finished the season on the 60-day injured list.

The shape underneath, and the four clubs that share it#

The 40-man roster holds 18 position players: nine who bat right, nine who bat left, and nobody who switches. Add the sixteen men on the 60-day injured list, who do not count against the 40 today but will be back on it in the spring, and it becomes 24 position players, fourteen right and ten left, and still nobody who switches.

Before anyone builds a monument to that: I checked all thirty clubs the same morning, off the same roster endpoint, and four of them carry no switch-hitter at all. Houston with 21 position players, San Diego with 20, San Francisco with 18, Texas with 17. The median club has one or two. Fifty-eight of the 550 position players on major league rosters switch-hit. So it is uncommon, not unique, and anybody selling it as a Giants pathology is selling you Houston's too (and Texas's, and San Diego's, at a discount for volume).

The system holds seven switch-hitters among 125 position players across the seven affiliates, and I went and pulled all seven. Six of them hit worse against left-handed pitching than against right-handed pitching at every level they played in 2026, which is the wrong direction for this particular problem. The seventh is Dalton Wentz, who was better, on 19 plate appearances at High-A, which is not a finding. Josuar Gonzalez, the 18-year-old shortstop, is the tidiest illustration: .773 against left-handed pitching at Single-A San Jose, 1.116 against right-handed pitching. The switch-hitting is real. The half of it this organization needs is not the half that works.

Somebody in the system can do this, and he is very far away#

Yes, there is an answer. Lorenzo Meola is 22, a shortstop at Single-A San Jose, and he hit left-handed pitching for a 1.072 OPS across 139 plate appearances against a Single-A league average of .753 on 20,787 plate appearances. That is 319 points above his level. Exactly one right-handed bat in this system saw more left-handed pitching than he did, Sabin Ceballos with 152 plate appearances at Double-A Richmond, and Ceballos hit .762 against it, which is the Double-A average with a rounding error stapled to it. Dakota Jordan, 23, put up a .984 across 97 plate appearances at High-A Eugene, and Lisbel Diaz, 21, a .930 across 102 at the same level, both against a .756 baseline. Diaz then went to Double-A Richmond and hit .413 against left-handers across 32 plate appearances, which is a promotion doing what promotions do.

The two best Triple-A lines belong to Buddy Kennedy, 27, and Brett Harris, 28: a 1.131 OPS on 83 plate appearances and a 1.082 on 93. At those ages a Triple-A platoon number describes a role, not a future. Harris is already on the 40-man, claimed off waivers from Boston on September 3, and his major league work against left-handers this season runs to 19 plate appearances spread across three organizations.

The counterweight, which is real#

Two seasons ago this club finished 9th of thirty against left-handed pitching. In 2023 it was 28th, in 2024 it was 9th, in 2025 it was 30th and this year 28th. A team's handedness profile is not a personality trait, it is a roster, and rosters get rebuilt in December by men who have access to the same splits I do.

But 2025 and 2026 are the only two of those years that came back to back, and the thing that would fix it is not currently in the building. It is a 22-year-old shortstop in San Jose, three levels and at least two Novembers away from being anybody's answer to a left-hander at Oracle Park.

Sources#

All figures come from the MLB Stats API (statsapi.mlb.com), MLB's own feed, on the morning of September 21, 2026: the 40-man rosters of all thirty clubs, the 2026 platoon splits of every qualified hitter and every San Francisco position player, team-level splits for all thirty clubs in 2019 through 2026, the seven San Francisco affiliate rosters, league-wide OPS baselines by minor league level, and the league's transaction log for San Francisco, which is the source for Brett Harris's waiver claim. Team totals excluding Devers were recomputed from raw at-bats, hits, walks, hit-by-pitches, sacrifice flies and total bases rather than by averaging rates, and player totals for men who changed organizations use the feed's own multi-team line rather than a sum of its per-team rows, which the feed also returns.

Called Shot#

San Francisco finishes the 2027 regular season in the bottom ten of the thirty major league clubs in team OPS against left-handed pitching. Since 2019, 18 of the 35 clubs that finished a season in the bottom five against left-handed pitching were still in the bottom ten the following year, which is 51.4 percent and roughly a coin flip. San Francisco has finished 28th or worse in three of the last four seasons, its three best right-handed bats this year were one backwards split and two men who ended the season on the injured list, and the best right-handed answer in the system spent 2026 at Single-A. I will take a small lean over the base rate and not a large one.

Filed under Giants

More on Rafael Devers

His page →
Feature

The last time Rafael Devers played third base, an umpire put him there

Rafael Devers played third base in every one of his first eight major league seasons, 951 games in all, and has played nine innings there since. All nine came on September 2, 2025 at Coors Field, after home plate umpire Phil Cuzzi ejected Matt Chapman in the top of the first and Devers moved across the infield. He handled three chances, threw all three to first base and has not played the position again. In February 2025 he told reporters at Red Sox spring training that third base was his position. In March, Alex Cora announced on WEEI that Alex Bregman would play there and Devers would be the designated hitter. In May, after Triston Casas was lost for the season, Devers declined a request to play first base and said Boston had told him to put his glove away. Boston traded him to San Francisco on June 15, 2025. He made his first career start at first base on July 22 at Atlanta, wearing a glove he said he had ordered on his second day with the Giants. He played 100 games at first base in 2026 and was the designated hitter in 48, carrying a core muscle injury the club says he chose to keep playing through, and finished with 37 home runs and 98 RBIs in 148 games. One take filed.

Posey ThompsonSep 16, 20267 min read
The last time Rafael Devers played third base, an umpire put him there
The arithmetic

The Giants cannot lose 100 games. Their floor is one game better than 1985.

San Francisco is 63-89 with ten games to play, so the worst record it can finish with is 63-99 and a second hundred-loss season is off the table. The league's year-by-year record for this franchise runs 144 seasons and contains exactly one hundred-loss year: 1985, at 62-100. The distance between that team and this year's floor is one game. Four seasons in the 144 have a worse winning percentage than a 63-99 finish, three of them played in New York. Across the 69 seasons the Giants have played in San Francisco, the best available outcome, winning all ten, is 73-89 and the eleventh-worst season in that span; losing seven of the ten produces 66-96, which is the 1984 club's record exactly. Tuesday's nine starters were Cox, Eldridge, Gilbert, Lee, Basabe, Hill, Cavanaugh, McCray and Koss. Turner Hill drove in three on a single, a groundout and the first home run of his major league life. Seven of the ten runs scored without a home run. Rafael Devers had core-muscle surgery in Philadelphia the same day. One take filed.

Grant LombardSep 16, 20265 min read
The Giants cannot lose 100 games. Their floor is one game better than 1985.
The first baseman

Rafael Devers Is Done For The Year, And The Paperwork That Says So Is Also A Call-Up

San Francisco placed Rafael Devers on the 60-day injured list on Sunday with a core muscle injury, and the league's roster system carries his status as Injured 60-Day. With 13 games left on the schedule the designation ends his season by the calendar, whatever Monday's consultation with a Philadelphia specialist recommends. The club's 40-man roster held 40 of 40 before the move and 40 of 40 after it: the transaction that closed Devers's year is the transaction that made room for Scott Bandura, whose contract was selected from Sacramento the same day. Devers hit .258 with a .340 on-base percentage and a .525 slugging percentage across 148 games, with 37 home runs, 98 RBI and 36 doubles, which ties him with three other hitters for the major league lead. He homered in each of his last two games. He is the 16th man on this club's 60-day list and the second infielder it has moved there to end a season, after Matt Chapman in August. Seven contract years remain. One take filed at -160.

Andie TownsendSep 13, 20265 min read
Rafael Devers Is Done For The Year, And The Paperwork That Says So Is Also A Call-Up

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The eighth time

A Giant Has Hit 35 Doubles And 35 Home Runs Seven Times Since 1883. Rafael Devers Just Made It Eight.

Rafael Devers has 36 doubles and 36 home runs in 147 games for San Francisco, which is the eighth time a player has reached 35 of each in a season for this franchise and the first since Jeff Kent in 2002. Devers is the seventh man to do it, because Barry Bonds did it twice. Counted across every season the league's records hold for the club, 1883 through 2026, the other seven seasons belong to Mel Ott in 1929, Willie Mays in 1962, Willie McCovey in 1970, Barry Bonds in 1993 and 1998, Rich Aurilia in 2001 and Kent. Devers is also the only player in the major leagues at 35 and 35 in 2026: four men have 35 doubles and eight have 35 home runs, and he is the only name on both lists. He reached 35 home runs on September 5 at New York and 35 and 36 doubles on September 7 against St. Louis. He was the National League's player of the week for the week dated September 6. Tony Vitello rested him on September 9, ending a consecutive-games streak at 309, which Susan Slusser reported as the third-longest active streak in the majors behind Matt Olson's 927 and Pete Alonso's 562. The next-best home run total on the roster is 21, shared by Willy Adames and Casey Schmitt, and both men are on the 60-day injured list with returns the club lists as 2027. Devers has 36 of San Francisco's 167 home runs and 36 of its 246 doubles. The club is 62-86 and eliminated with 14 games left. Two takes filed.

Grant LombardSep 12, 20264 min read
A Giant Has Hit 35 Doubles And 35 Home Runs Seven Times Since 1883. Rafael Devers Just Made It Eight.
The left side

Losing Willy Adames Costs The Giants A Third Baseman, Not A Shortstop

Six men have started a game at third base for San Francisco in 2026. Matt Chapman made 82 of those starts and has not played since June 30; Casey Schmitt made 24 and has not played since July 27. Both had surgery in the following days and MLB's injury page gives both an expected return of 2027. Christian Koss has held the job since July 28, but he has also started nine games at shortstop since July 1, and on every one of those days somebody else played third: Schmitt once, Buddy Kennedy five times, Shay Whitcomb three. Kennedy and Whitcomb were both claimed off waivers this month, from Seattle on August 2 and Houston on August 13, and Kennedy was designated for assignment on Thursday after going 4 for 33 with four singles. Willy Adames received a PRP injection in his sprained left elbow on Thursday; Tony Vitello said three or four weeks of rest and the club's injury page says a four-week minimum, which lands on September 24 against a last scheduled game of September 27. Koss and Whitcomb have drawn six walks in 159 plate appearances between them this season, against 74 in 857 for Chapman and Adames. Three takes filed, on Adames, on Koss at shortstop and on a seventh third baseman.

Andie TownsendAug 28, 20266 min read
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What is left

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San Francisco placed Willy Adames (left elbow sprain on the transaction log; MLB.com reported an MRI showing a moderate strain of the non-throwing elbow, and the two wordings are recorded here as published rather than blended) and Victor Bericoto (right knee bone bruise) on the 10-day injured list on August 24 and JT Brubaker (bruised ribs) on the 15-day, all three hurt in Sunday's 5-4 loss at Boston. Bryce Eldridge went on the bereavement list and Matt Wilkinson was optioned. The Giants recalled five men from Triple-A Sacramento the same day: Nate Furman, Grant McCray, Anthony Molina, Ryan Walker and Shay Whitcomb. Adames had started 121 games at shortstop and played 1,046.1 innings there; MLB's active-roster page now lists no shortstop among the 26. Christian Koss, a third baseman with 71 innings at short this year and two innings pitched, played the position Monday while Whitcomb made his Giants debut at third. San Francisco won 5-0 behind six pitchers after losing starter Carson Whisenhunt in the third inning to left elbow pain. Whisenhunt was scheduled for an MRI on Tuesday morning and no result has been published. The Giants have used 58 players this season, tied with the Angels and the Athletics for fifth-most in the majors against a league median of 52, and seven of them made their San Francisco debut in August.

Grant LombardAug 25, 20264 min read
San Francisco's Active Roster Does Not List A Shortstop

On the record

Called Shots →
Held upAug 2, 2026

None of Willy Adames, Matt Chapman or Rafael Devers is traded by the August 3, 2026 deadline.

Resolved 2026-08-03: CORRECT. None of the three moved. Adames, Chapman and Devers are all still on the 40-man. This is the call that carries the day's real finding: the club sold everything that was not the expensive core and moved none of the core itself. Scored 2026-08-05 by CP against the league's official transaction feed for teamId 137 (statsapi.mlb.com/api/v1/transactions, 08/02-08/04) and the club's live 40-man roster. Two days late, and the lateness is the desk's, not the writer's: the site published nothing from 2026-08-02 through 2026-08-04 and nobody scored the ledger on the night it resolved. The five deadline trades of record: Mahle to Atlanta for Anthony Molina (Aug 2); Arraez and Caleb Kilian to Philadelphia for Marty Gair and Ramon Marquez; Erik Miller and Carlos Gutierrez to Boston for Marcelo Mayer; Robbie Ray to San Diego for Miguel Mendez and Joniel Hernandez; Heliot Ramos to the Yankees for Henry Lalane and Kaeden Kent (all Aug 3). PRIOR NOTE FOLLOWS. Agrees with Silva's July 26 take on Adames and Chapman and extends it to Devers, who has not previously been on this desk's board and is the only one of the three with no trade protection at all. Adames and Chapman both hold full no-trade clauses per Cot's, and Chapman has been on the injured list throughout the deadline window. Devers is signed through 2033 for $313.5 million with $75 million deferred, and the reason he is not moving is the money rather than the paperwork, which is the reverse of how he gets described. Any one of the three moving is a MISS.

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Thirteen pitchers started a game for San Francisco in 2026. Seven of them are unavailable for the final homestand: Tyler Mahle was traded to Atlanta on August 2 and Robbie Ray to San Diego on August 3, while Trevor McDonald, JT Brubaker, Carson Whisenhunt, Adrian Houser and Logan Webb are all on the injured list. Those seven made 105 of the club's 156 starts, or 67.3 percent. Measured the same way on the same morning, with all thirty clubs carrying 28-man active rosters, that is the highest figure in the major leagues; the league median is 27.2 percent and Toronto is second at 50.0. The six starters still standing are Landen Roupp (29 starts), Blade Tidwell (8), Matt Wilkinson (5), Anthony Molina (4), Cesar Perdomo (3) and Yunior Marte (2), for six games in seven days. Wilkinson threw five scoreless innings at Dodger Stadium on Sunday with a career-high six strikeouts in a 3-1 loss. Tidwell starts against Minnesota tonight. One take filed.

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San Francisco placed Logan Webb on the 15-day injured list on September 18 with a right middle finger blister and shut him down for the season, ending a year in which he made 27 starts and threw 160 2/3 innings at a 4.31 earned run average. It is his second injured list stint of 2026; he did not start for 20 San Francisco games in May with right knee bursitis. The 160 2/3 innings end a run of three straight seasons above 200, and two more starts at this year's rate would have left him near 172. His innings per start has fallen in each of the three seasons since 2023: 6.55, 6.20, 6.09, 5.95. Over his last five starts he allowed 23 earned runs in 21 2/3 innings. Landen Roupp has already made more starts than Webb this season, the first time anyone on the club has since 2021, and needs six innings across his remaining turns to pass him in innings as well. Hayden Birdsong, Trevor McDonald and Carson Whisenhunt are all on the club's injured list rehabbing from Tommy John surgery. One take filed.

Grant LombardSep 19, 20266 min read
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Five innings

Flora was lined up to start a championship game, until the Giants moved him up

Jackson Flora's entire professional record is five innings across three starts, and the assignments around them are the part worth reading. San Francisco signed the fourth overall pick on July 18 and assigned him to the Arizona Complex League the same day. He was activated there on July 29 and never pitched in a game. He was sent to Single-A San Jose on September 1, debuted on September 4, and started Game 2 of the California League Division Series on September 10, telling reporters that night he was lined up for Game 3 of the championship series if it was needed. It was needed. On September 13, the day San Jose opened that series, the league's transaction feed records Flora assigned to Double-A Richmond. San Jose lost the deciding game on September 16 without him. He started for Richmond on September 17 in a game the Flying Squirrels had to win, retired all six men he faced on 28 pitches with four strikeouts, and Richmond lost 5-3 and was eliminated. He has never pitched at High-A. Of the thirty players taken in the first round of the 2026 draft, he is the only one to appear in a game above that level. Two takes filed.

Andie TownsendSep 18, 20265 min read
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Earlier on the Giants

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The Giants Have Ended Up With What Atlanta Paid For Joey Bart

San Francisco claimed right-handed pitcher Duncan Davitt off waivers from Atlanta on Wednesday, September 9, and designated right-hander Spencer Bivens for assignment the same day, with the 40-man roster already full. Atlanta had acquired Davitt from the Chicago White Sox on August 3 in exchange for catcher Joey Bart, whom San Francisco drafted second overall in 2018 and signed for $7,025,000. The Giants designated Bart for assignment on March 31, 2024 and traded him to Pittsburgh two days later for right-hander Austin Strickland, who never reached the major leagues and was released by High-A Eugene on August 3, 2026, the same day Atlanta traded Bart for Davitt. Davitt is 26, debuted with the White Sox on April 10, 2026, and has thrown two major league innings this season across two appearances. He has been on three organizations' paperwork in 2026. Bivens went undrafted in 2018, pitched in France, the Czech Republic and two independent leagues before the Giants signed him in May 2022, debuted at 29 in June 2024 and threw 81 innings for San Francisco in 2025; this year he has a 14.40 earned run average in five innings. San Francisco's 40-man roster reads 40 of 40 once the 15 players on the 60-day injured list are set aside. Atlanta is 85-61 and put him on waivers. San Francisco is 62-85 and eliminated, with 15 games left. Two takes filed.

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Civic memory

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MLB awarded the 2028 All-Star Game to Oracle Park on August 14, the fourth San Francisco has been given and the first since 2007. Mayor Daniel Lurie's statement received it as a verdict on the city. San Francisco has hosted three of these games, and on two of the three the memory that stuck belongs to the ballpark rather than to the baseball: the wind at Candlestick in 1961, and a ball off a sign in right field in 2007. A city does not get to choose what a national event will say about it.

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