The Giants' farm had the best record in baseball. Promotions decided who rose
San Francisco's seven affiliates went 413-303 while the big club lost 97. The clearest evidence of who actually rose came from the players who changed levels and kept their rates, and on July 17 three Eugene hitters played their first Double-A game and came out three different ways.
San Francisco's seven minor league affiliates finished 2026 with a combined record of 413-303, a .577 winning percentage, and outscored their opponents by 540 runs. Both were the best of any organization, and MLB Pipeline named San Francisco its Farm System of the Year. The major league club went 65-97.
A record belongs to a roster, and a minor league roster turns over all season. It does not say which players rose. The cleaner test for that is a promotion. The pitchers at the new level have not seen the hitter, the hitters at the new level have not seen the pitcher, and whatever rate a player carried up either survives the first two months or it does not. In 2026 the promotions sorted the Giants' prospects more sharply than the standings did.
Single-A to High-A#
Jhonny Level played 44 games at Single-A San Jose, hit .325/.392/.576 and struck out in 16.6 percent of his 217 plate appearances. On June 2 the Giants sent him to High-A Eugene at 19. He hit .302/.363/.473 there over 69 games and 331 plate appearances, an .836 OPS against a .764 mark for High-A hitters as a whole. The power came down, which is ordinary. The strikeout rate barely moved, from 16.6 percent to 18.1, at a level where hitters as a group struck out 24.2 percent of the time.
He was named the top prospect in the Northwest League, and MLB Pipeline picked him and Jacob Bresnahan as the Giants' prospects of the year. Level is fourth in the system on Pipeline's list and 43rd in the sport. The part of his line that has to grow is the walk rate, 7.9 percent at Eugene against 12.0 for the level.
Josuar Gonzalez made a smaller move with the same result. After 30 games in the Arizona Complex League he reached San Jose on July 25 and was better there: .357/.444/.566 in 153 plate appearances, with 21 walks and 30 strikeouts. Single-A hitters as a whole posted a .749 OPS. Pipeline moved him from 15th to 7th on its Top 100 in its October update. He turns 19 today, and 31 games is a month, so the climb rests on scouting as much as on the line.
High-A to Double-A, all on the same day#
On July 17, Double-A Richmond put three hitters from Eugene in its lineup for their first games at the level. All three had a full half-season of High-A behind them, so the comparison is as close to controlled as a farm system produces.
| Player | Eugene PA | Eugene OPS | Richmond PA | Richmond OPS | What moved |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gavin Kilen | 349 | .812 | 143 | .812 | Strikeouts, 13.8% to 15.4% |
| Trevor Cohen | 380 | .803 | 228 | .736 | Walks, 12.6% to 6.1% |
| Dakota Jordan | 355 | .879 | 88 | .697 | Home runs, 18 to 1 |
Double-A hitters as a whole posted a .755 OPS. Kilen's OPS did not change, to the third decimal, and the strikeouts barely did. A 22-year-old infielder whose numbers are indifferent to the level is what a riser looks like when the riser is not a teenager, and Pipeline has him sixth in the system.
Cohen kept hitting for average, .297 at Eugene and .300 at Richmond, and stopped walking. Forty-eight walks in 380 trips became 14 in 228. A hitter with 46 stolen bases and six home runs between the two stops is built on the on-base percentage, and his fell from .387 to .342.
Jordan's 88 plate appearances came in 21 games spread over two months, which is too few to call a verdict. What they show is that the 18 home runs did not travel and the strikeouts did, 29.5 percent at Richmond after 27.6 at Eugene. He is in the Arizona Fall League now. Jim Callis of MLB Pipeline wrote from Scottsdale that Jordan may be the most athletically gifted player in it, and also that he swings through fastball strikes and chases breaking balls more than he should.
Bresnahan reached Richmond on August 30, after 98 2/3 innings at Eugene with a 2.92 earned run average and 118 strikeouts among 397 batters, 29.7 percent. He was the Northwest League's pitcher of the year, his third league pitcher of the year award in three full seasons. At Richmond he made three starts and struck out 17 of 70. Three starts settle nothing, and he is 21.
Double-A to Triple-A#
Bo Davidson kept going. He hit 19 home runs in 73 games at Richmond with an .861 OPS and a 23.5 percent strikeout rate. At Triple-A Sacramento from July 17 he was better: .309/.389/.534 in 234 plate appearances, with the strikeout rate down to 18.8 percent and the walk rate up to 10.7. Triple-A hitters as a whole posted a .771 OPS. He made his major league debut on September 21 and had 22 plate appearances before the season ended, which is the start of a different test.
Joe Whitman moved the other way. The left-hander struck out 65 of 196 batters at Richmond, 33.2 percent, and was in Sacramento by June 5. In 84 1/3 innings there he struck out 69 of 367, 18.8 percent, with a 3.74 ERA and almost the same walk rate. The run prevention held and the bat-missing did not. That matters more for him than for anyone else here. Maria Guardado of MLB.com wrote that only two pitchers, Logan Webb and Landen Roupp, are locked into the 2027 rotation, and Whitman, 25, is one of four pitchers on Pipeline's Giants list with an estimated arrival of 2027 or earlier.
The fallers#
Luis Hernández is still second in the system and 25th in baseball, and the promotion went the wrong way for him. He posted a .917 OPS in 228 complex-league plate appearances at 17, then struck out 29 times in 98 at San Jose and finished with a .595 OPS there. Twenty games is not a year, and he will be 18 in December. Luis De La Torre, 25th on the Giants' list, stayed at Eugene all season and walked 82 of the 464 batters he faced over 100 2/3 innings, 17.7 percent, and in no month from April through August was the rate below 14.8.
The list that matters for 2027 is the one the promotions produced: Level, Gonzalez, Kilen and Davidson kept hitting at a new level, and Cohen, Jordan and Whitman each lost one specific thing. The first roster Richmond files in 2027 is where that list gets read again. Will Level, who turns 20 in March, open there, or repeat Eugene the way Marco Luciano did at 20 in 2022, after a first High-A summer that went worse than this one?
Sources: MLB Stats API (2026 regular-season lines by level and team, game logs for first and last game dates at each level, birth dates, team totals for all 30 clubs at Single-A, High-A, Double-A and Triple-A, the seven Giants affiliates' 2026 records and runs, Marco Luciano's 2021 and 2022 game logs); MLB Pipeline (Giants Top 30 and Top 100, October 2026; Sam Dykstra, October 2; Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo, October 8 and October 14; Jim Callis, October 6); MLB.com (Maria Guardado, October 13).
