The deadline to submit reserve lists is an important event on Major League Baseball’s offseason calendar, albeit one of the quieter ones.
For the San Francisco Giants on Tuesday, it was a little too quiet.
Players who are not on the 40-man roster are eligible to be taken in the Rule 5 draft after spending four years in an organization if they signed a minor-league contract when they were at least 19 or older, or five years if they signed before their 19th birthday. Even in seasons when the Giants had a fallow farm system, they’ve had an intriguing prospect or three worth protecting in the final (and sometimes dramatic) rush to submit rosters. In recent years, the Giants protected minor-league pitchers Camilo Doval and Randy Rodriguez, both of whom became All-Star relievers. But a prospect doesn’t have to profile as a future All-Star to warrant protecting. They just have to be a useful player who has some value within the industry and stands a ghost of a chance of sticking on someone’s major-league roster for the duration of the season.
This time, the Giants had no players who met that criteria. They did not make any roster additions before Tuesday’s deadline.
Their 40-man roster is full but includes several players who seemingly would be candidates to designate for assignment. The bigger issue: They’ve either graduated players from their 2022 draft class (Carson Whisenhunt, Hayden Birdsong, Wade Meckler) or players haven’t developed to be viewed as anything approaching the cusp of the major leagues.
That includes their first-round pick in that draft class, left-hander Reggie Crawford, who is recovering from another shoulder surgery and has thrown just 37 1/3 professional innings. Their first-round picks in the previous two years, right-hander Will Bednar and outfielder Hunter Bishop, are not viewed as candidates to be snatched away by a rival club, either.
The Giants have an emerging wave of young talent in the lower rungs of the organization, and they moved up in most of the industry’s best-known system rankings this season. But the healthiest player development systems are often the ones bursting at the seams with players to shield at the Rule 5 protection deadline. For the first time in a long time, the Giants had nobody worth protecting.
Right-hander Spencer Miles, their fourth-round pick in 2022, is coming off a nice showing in the Arizona Fall League and might entice a team seeking a reliever. Hard-throwing right-hander Gerelmi Maldonado, who returned from arm surgery last year and whose fastball touches 100 mph, likely would have been protected if he hadn’t walked 44 in 59 innings at Low-A San Jose. Infielder Nate Furman, a player to be named in the deal that sent right-hander Alex Cobb to the Cleveland Guardians, is also eligible to be taken.
The Giants are hiring a pitching coach who worked in Tennessee last year, but not on the Vols staff. They are in agreement with Justin Meccage, according to Robert Murray of FanSided.
Meccage, 47, served as the Triple-A pitching coach for the Milwaukee Brewers’ Triple-A club in Nashville last year. Before that, he had spent 14 years in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization as a pitching coach and minor-league pitching coordinator, then served on Pittsburgh’s major-league staff from 2018 to 2024 as assistant pitching coach and then bullpen coach.
It was widely speculated manager Tony Vitello could bring his highly respected pitching coach with the Vols, Frank Anderson, with him to San Francisco. It’s unclear whether that possibility still exists now that Meccage is on board. It’s also possible the Giants can’t afford to poach Anderson, given that some college pitching coaches are earning more than their major-league counterparts.
Incidentally, Meccage’s last name is pronounced like “message.”
As of last week, Giants president Buster Posey hadn’t received formal requests from any World Baseball Classic officials seeking the participation of Giants players. But the Giants front office knew it was a matter of time — and it knew Team USA would come asking for Logan Webb.
Sure enough, USA manager Mark DeRosa told The San Francisco Standard that Webb is high on his wish list and Giants officials are resigned to the fact the pitcher who has thrown the most innings in the National League in each of the last three seasons is about to shoulder an even heavier workload in the spring.
The bigger potential downside, as some Giants officials view it, is that the WBC will take place at a critical time for an organization that needs to create new chemistry under Vitello, who had no professional playing or coaching experience when Posey hired him from the University of Tennessee. It’s not an ideal time to loan out a respected team leader like Webb. Outfielder Jung Hoo Lee could spend the most time away from the Giants because Korea’s Pool C bracket will play at Tokyo Dome March 5-10. Shortstop Willy Adames and first baseman Rafael Devers played for the Dominican Republic in 2023.
Webb wanted to participate in the WBC last time but backed out, saying it was more important to spend the time creating chemistry with his Giants teammates in spring training. The part Webb left out: He also was negotiating the five-year, $90 million extension he signed in April 2023.
Every time @LoganWebb1053 struck out 10+ in 2025: pic.twitter.com/hi1Fl8iEFl
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) November 18, 2025
Vitello is taking at least one member of his Tennessee staff to San Francisco. Vols player performance coach Quentin Eberhardt is joining the Giants staff, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel.
Eberhardt has been with Vitello since 2018 with the exception of the 2022 season, when he left to become the head strength and conditioning coach for the Chicago Cubs. Before joining the Vols, Eberhardt spent eight years as a minor-league strength and conditioning coach, including four seasons with the Miami Marlins’ Triple-A affiliate.
In an interview with Rocky Top Insider in 2023, Vitello joked that Eberhardt was his “executioner and the bad guy.”
“He’s as big into team chemistry and personal growth as he is muscle growth, which is really rare for that position,” Vitello said. “He took upon himself to put in a little extra work with those guys and also just kind of talk about how they need to approach things.”