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September 9, 2026
Sixteen Left

Every Team Left On The Giants' Schedule Has A Number. San Francisco Has A Letter.

Sixty-one wins, sixteen games to play, and a ceiling of seventy-seven that Philadelphia, the Cubs and Arizona have already passed with three wild-card places between them. The Cardinals, the Padres, the Twins and the Dodgers all still have a live number. The Giants do not.

GL
Grant LombardSep 9, 20264 min read
Every call on this site goes on a public ledger and gets graded. The misses stay up.
Matt Chapman at the plate in the Giants' cream home uniform, the black GIANTS wordmark outlined in orange across the chest and a navy helmet with the orange interlocking SF. An undated file photograph from a home game, not from this week's series with St. Louis.

San Francisco can win seventy-seven games this year. That is the ceiling and not a forecast: sixty-one wins already banked, sixteen games left, every one of the sixteen going the right way.

Philadelphia has eighty-one. The Cubs have eighty-one. Arizona has seventy-eight.

There are three wild-card places in the National League.

That is the whole proof, and the league's own standings feed has been printing the conclusion for days. The feed carried a wild-card elimination number of two for the Giants through Saturday's games. From Sunday's games onward it has read E, in the wild-card column and the division column both. Sunday itself was a 4-2 loss at Citi Field, and Arizona beat Houston 3-2 that same afternoon.

The Giants have won two straight since, which is how these things usually go. Monday ran eleven innings and ended on a Shay Whitcomb single. Tuesday was 2-1, Landen Roupp throwing six scoreless, Joel Kuhnel taking the last out with the tying run standing on second base. Both San Francisco runs were solo home runs, one from Bryce Eldridge and one from Christian Koss, and that was the entire offense, and it was enough.

Anyway. Here is what is left of the season.

Sixteen games against four opponents, and the first of them is tonight. St. Louis is at Oracle Park this evening and then hosts the Giants for three more next week, and the Cardinals are 72-74, six games out of the third wild card, elimination number ten. San Diego arrives Friday for three: 77-68, half a game behind Arizona for that same place, winners of three in a row. Minnesota comes in on the twenty-first for three, four and a half back of Cleveland for the American League's last spot. And six against the Dodgers, who are 88-57 and lead the West by ten and a half.

Every one of those four clubs still has a live number. San Francisco does not. Read the schedule from the other direction and the sentence gets shorter: the only eliminated team left on San Francisco's schedule is San Francisco.

The National League contains exactly two teams that are out. The other is Colorado, 55-89, and the Giants are finished playing Colorado. Whatever mercy the schedule had in it has already been spent.

The San Diego series is the one with teeth, and it is teeth pointed in a peculiar direction. The Padres are chasing Arizona for the last place in the field, the Giants play San Diego three times in three days, and Arizona does not appear on San Francisco's remaining schedule at all. So the Giants can push one of those two clubs and cannot touch the other. Three wins this weekend would be a real thing done to the National League standings by a team with no stake in them.

Then the Dodgers, six times, which is the part worth sitting with. Three at Dodger Stadium starting the eighteenth, then the last three games of the year at home, September 25 through 27. If Los Angeles has any business left to settle by that Friday, it gets settled in front of a Giants crowd.

What the sixteen are for, on this end, is a look at people. San Francisco has used sixty-four players in 2026, and fifteen of the sixty-four made their major league debut this season, which is a great many first days for one summer. September on a bad club is the month where the front office finds out which of those fifteen it wants to see again in April, and there is no way to find out except to play them.

None of which is consolation, and nobody should sell it as one. A club that finishes 70-92 and a club that finishes 66-96 are the same club in every way a person in the stands can feel. The difference between those two records is four games in the middle of September against teams that will remember them in October.

They are out of it and they are in everybody's way. There are worse jobs for the last three weeks.

Filed under Giants

More on Bryce Eldridge

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The Giants are building 2027 on seven players, and two of them held up
The 2027 Giants

The Giants are building 2027 on seven players, and two of them held up

Nothing the Giants announced at their season-end news conference moves any of the seven players the club is building 2027 on: Rafael Devers, Bryce Eldridge, Logan Webb, Landen Roupp, Willy Adames, Matt Chapman and Jung Hoo Lee. Measured against what next season asks of each, two of them delivered in 2026, and they are the two who split first base and designated hitter. Devers and Eldridge drew 128 walks in 1,081 plate appearances; every other Giant drew 321 in 4,980, a 6.4 percent rate against 8.9 for the majors. The other five each have to recover a specific thing from 2025: Webb's innings and strikeouts, Roupp's walk rate, Adames's defense at shortstop, Chapman's bat and Lee's walk rate. Adames went from +5 Outs Above Average to -17, and of 12 qualified shortstops since 2017 who fell to -10 or worse and stayed at the position, three got back to zero. Lee can opt out of his contract after 2027. One Called Shot filed.

Andie TownsendOct 23, 20266 min read
The Giants cannot lose 100 games. Their floor is one game better than 1985.
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
Every Run The Giants Scored On Saturday Left The Ballpark
Nine for nine

Every Run The Giants Scored On Saturday Left The Ballpark

San Francisco beat the Mets 9-5 at Citi Field on Saturday, and all nine of its runs scored on home runs. The Giants hit six: Rafael Devers in the first and the fifth, his 34th and 35th; Christian Koss in the third and the fifth, his second and third; Osleivis Basabe in the eighth; Grant McCray in the ninth. Every run-scoring play in the game was a home run. The Giants also had four hits that were not home runs, a Grant McCray single, a Jonah Cox single, a Bryce Eldridge double and a Shay Whitcomb single, and none of the four drove in a run. Three of the four men who homered are having bad seasons: Koss is hitting .211 with three home runs in 52 games, two of them Saturday and all three inside his last nine games after none in his first forty-two, McCray is hitting .143 with eight hits in 56 at-bats, and Basabe is hitting .216. Manager Tony Vitello was ejected by home-plate umpire Jeremie Rehak in the top of the second, after one of the nine runs had scored. Across 143 games this season the Giants have scored 601 runs, 259 of them on home runs, which is 43.1 percent, on 164 home runs. Sixteen times this season every Giants run in a game has come on a home run, and before Saturday the most they had scored in such a game was three. Only twice all year have they hit five or more home runs in a game, the other being seven on June 5. Friday night in the same ballpark they had twelve hits, one home run, and lost 10-6. San Francisco is 59-84, eliminated in the National League West, with a wild-card elimination number of four and 19 games left. Two takes filed.

Grant LombardSep 6, 20265 min read

More on Christian Koss

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Losing Willy Adames Costs The Giants A Third Baseman, Not A Shortstop
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
San Francisco's Active Roster Does Not List A Shortstop
What is left

San Francisco's Active Roster Does Not List A Shortstop

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

On the record

Called Shots →
OpenSep 12, 2026

Rafael Devers leads the San Francisco Giants in home runs in the 2027 regular season.

The against half first. Bryce Eldridge is 21 and turns 22 in October, and he hit 16 home runs in 102 games this season with an .822 on-base plus slugging, which is roughly 25 over a full year before any improvement at all, and hitters at that age usually improve rather than hold. Willy Adames hit 21 in 121 games before his elbow and the club lists him as returning in 2027, so the roster already contains two men with a path past 25. Devers will be 30 for most of next season and has finished above 33 home runs twice in nine years. For it, and it is a gap rather than an argument: he hit 36 this season and the next-best Giant hit 21, which is a margin of fifteen home runs, and the two men tied at 21 each lost more than forty games to injury while he lost one. Priced favoured but well short of a formality, because a fifteen-home-run gap is large and a 21-year-old closing it in one year is exactly the thing that happens to clubs that assume it will not. Filed against every open Giants row: none of them concerns Devers or Eldridge's home run totals.

Latest on the Giants

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The Giants cut 17 players to reach 40. Now Henry Lalane needs a spot by Nov. 17
The 2027 Giants

The Giants cut 17 players to reach 40. Now Henry Lalane needs a spot by Nov. 17

The Giants removed 17 players from their 40-man roster between Oct. 29 and Nov. 2 and now hold exactly 40. They must add any prospect they want to shield from the Rule 5 draft by Nov. 17, three days before the Nov. 20 tender deadline, with Henry Lalane first in line and three pitchers holding spots they are not expected to use before late 2027 at the earliest.

Andie TownsendNov 6, 20265 min read
Brian Sabean said he was not an idiot. Jeff Kent repeated it in Orlando
Brian Sabean

Brian Sabean said he was not an idiot. Jeff Kent repeated it in Orlando

On Wednesday, November 13, 1996, Brian Sabean, newly named general manager of a Giants club that had finished last at 68-94, traded Matt Williams to Cleveland for Jeff Kent, Jose Vizcaino and Julian Tavarez. Two days later he called an informal news conference and said, per the San Francisco Chronicle, \"Well, I'm not an idiot.\" Kent drove in at least 101 runs in each of his six seasons in San Francisco, won the 2000 MVP and was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee on December 7, 2025. At his introductory news conference the next day he said he would not be in the Hall without the trade and repeated Sabean's line. Sabean, the longest-serving general manager in franchise history, is on the Contemporary Baseball Era ballot the committee takes up on December 6, 2026.

Posey ThompsonNov 4, 20268 min read
Three Giants made the Hall of Fame ballot. Each voter gets three votes.
Cooperstown

Three Giants made the Hall of Fame ballot. Each voter gets three votes.

Three of the eight names on the Hall of Fame's Contemporary Baseball Era ballot, announced November 2, ran the Giants: Dusty Baker, Bruce Bochy and Brian Sabean. Each of the sixteen voters may name at most three candidates and election takes twelve, so electing all three Giants on December 6 would use 36 of the room's 48 votes.

Grant LombardNov 2, 20264 min read

Earlier on the Giants

A Giant Has Hit 35 Doubles And 35 Home Runs Seven Times Since 1883. Rafael Devers Just Made It Eight.
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
The Level Changed Luis Hernández And It Did Not Change Josuar Gonzalez
The farm

The Level Changed Luis Hernández And It Did Not Change Josuar Gonzalez

The Giants promoted shortstops Josuar Gonzalez and Luis Hernández from the Arizona Complex League to Low-A San Jose on July 24, and both debuted for San Jose on July 25. Through August 22, Gonzalez is hitting .379/.476/.609 in 21 games with 16 walks against 19 strikeouts. Through August 20, Hernández is hitting .231/.276/.319 in 20 games with 6 walks against 29 strikeouts. A .463 batting average on balls in play accounts for most of the difference in the batting averages and will not last. The plate-discipline gap will not regress the same way: Gonzalez walked and struck out at San Jose at almost exactly the rates he posted in the complex league, while Hernández's walk rate halved and his strikeout rate nearly doubled. Hernández is fourteen months younger, is in his first full-season league, and had the better strikeout rate of the two in the complex over a sample nearly twice as large. He is on San Jose's active roster and has not batted since August 20. MLB Pipeline moved the Giants from 19th to 5th in its refreshed farm system rankings on August 16, credited Gonzalez in part, and ranks Gonzalez 17th and Hernandez 27th among all prospects in baseball.

Grant LombardAug 23, 20265 min read
HOW TO READ A LINESixty-Two Percent Of TheTickets, Ten Percent Of TheMoneygrabsomepine.comgiants
How to read a line

Sixty-Two Percent Of The Tickets, Ten Percent Of The Money

The count of bets is the public and the weight of cash is the professionals, and the gap between them is most of what a betting market says out loud. Here is that gap across nine live markets this morning, the one price that moved against its own crowd, and the arithmetic that grades a bet against the close instead of against the result.

Casey MontgomeryJul 31, 20266 min read