Over the last four seasons, the Giants have been the textbook definition of mediocre — nothing more, nothing less.
San Francisco’s record is 321-327 since the start of the 2022 season. Twice during this past four seasons – 2022 and 2025 – the Giants finished exactly at .500. They haven’t eclipsed 81 wins since winning a franchise-record 107 games in 2021.
Buster Posey took real paradigm-shifting, headline-garnering, OMG-inducing swings to change that trend in his first season as president of baseball operations, adding Willy Adames in free agency and Rafael Devers via trade. The Giants had their stars. They still finished three wins short of the dance.
San Francisco Giants’ Heliot Ramos (17) can only watch as a ball hit by Los Angeles Dodgers’ Miguel Rojas (72) leaves the park for a solo home run in the fifth inning at Oracle Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, July 13, 2025. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
So, Posey took another swing by firing manager Bob Melvin and shocking the baseball industry by replacing him with the University of Tennessee’s Tony Vitello. When the Giants hosted the New York Yankees on March 25, it was Vitello’s first regular-season game in the professional ranks in any capacity.
San Francisco’s coaching staff underwent a massive transformation, but the roster remains fundamentally the same. Instead of making another splash à la Adames and Devers, the Giants’ brass added around the margins without putting significant money on the books. If San Francisco is going to compete for a playoff spot, it will be the product of internal development.
Maybe that will be enough for the Giants to snag a wild card spot. Maybe it will result in a fifth straight season of .500 or worse. Here are four keys for the Giants to be successful ahead of Posey’s second season in charge.
Welcome to the show
The Giants’ most important addition this offseason was not Tyler Mahle or Adrian Houser or Sam Hentges or Jason Foley or Daniel Susac or any non-roster invitees. Down the road, with retrospect, it might be shortstop Luis Hernandez, the top position player in this year’s international signing class. He’s also just 17.
At this moment, it’s Vitello.
Vitello brings roughly two decades of experience in the college game to San Francisco. He played three seasons at Missouri, was an assistant at three programs (Mizzou, Texas Christian University, and Arkansas) and then elevated Tennessee from the doldrums back to the limelight by stacking wins — and hurt feelings.
Major League Baseball is the same sport, but it’s a different animal.
San Francisco Giants manager Tony Vitello talks to players in the dugout before their MLB game against the Sultanes de Monterrey at Oracle Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Monday, March 23, 2026. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
In college, Vitello’s seasons ended at around 60 games. In the pros, that’s not even 40 percent of the schedule.
In college, Vitello’s players were in their late teens or early 20s. In the pros, the players are mostly full-fledged adults, some of whom have nine-figure contracts.
In Knoxville, Vitello was Tennessee baseball. In San Francisco, he’s a cog in the machine.
His coaching staff features a pair of former managers in Ron Washington and Jayce Tingler. Bruce Bochy rejoined the organization as a special advisor to baseball operations, giving Posey his seal of approval before the Giants officially hired Vitello. Dusty Baker and Ron Wotus will be invaluable sounding boards as well.
The onus of making the playoffs won’t fall on Vitello alone; players still have to play. But the baseball world will be watching very closely to see how Vitello’s tenure plays out.
Who’s on first?
Devers and Bryce Eldridge share some important similarities — similarities that leave the Giants with a bit of a conundrum.
They’re both left-handed hitters. They both have power. Most importantly, they’re both limited to first base and designated hitter.
The Giants knew they’d have to figure out the pairing of Devers and Eldridge when they traded for the former last summer. Would they both play first base? Would Devers be the DH and Eldridge the first baseman? Or vice versa?
There isn’t a clear picture who will be better defensively. But for at least the start of the season, the job is Devers’. But Eldridge is just a call away in Sacramento following his 10-game cup of coffee in September.
San Francisco Giants infielder Rafael Devers #16 takes infield practice during the San Francisco Giants spring training workout at Scottsdale Stadium on February 16, 2026 in Scottsdale, Arizona.
(John Medina/Special to Bay Area News Group)
Eldridge is eight years younger and boasts a 6-foot-7 frame with a rocket arm dating to his days as a pitcher in high school. Devers has more than 8,000 major-league innings at third base and showed some very respectable picking ability in 28 games last season at first base.
It’s an imperfect pairing, one that will make it difficult for other players to get the occasional DH day. But if Eldridge becomes the hitter the Giants think he can be, it’s an imperfect pairing worth balancing.
Pop, pop, pop
Even when accounting for ballpark and the league-wide run environment, the Giants have been a below-average offense over the last four seasons. This year’s lineup, however, has some serious pop potential.
Devers has averaged 32 homers over the past five seasons. Adames broke the Giants’ 30-homer drought, the third time in his career he’s touched that mark. Matt Chapman has at hit at least 21 homers in six of his nine seasons in the majors. Heliot Ramos has back-to-back seasons with at least 21 homers. Casey Schmitt had 12 homers over 95 games, a 20-homer pace. Eldridge has yet to hit his first major-league home run but possesses elite power.
On paper, this group has the potential to generate some thump. Can that translate into an above-average offense for the first time since 2021?
San Francisco Giants’ Willy Adames (2) follows his solo home run against the Baltimore Orioles in the first inning of their MLB game at Oracle Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
The Giants didn’t add an impact bat but hired Hunter Mense from the Toronto Blue Jays to replace Pat Burrell as hitting coach. Mense spent the past four seasons as an assistant hitting coach in Toronto, and the Blue Jays are coming off a season in which they posted the lowest strikeout rate and highest contact rate in the majors.
One of Mense’s big assignments will be squeezing more offense out of Jung Hoo Lee, who ended his first full season with a .266 batting average and .735 OPS, with eight homers and 10 steals. Lee boasts elite bat-to-ball skills but has only been a slightly above-average hitter (110 OPS+ in 2025), despite stretches of excellence.
The start of something new
The Giants telegraphed their offseason strategy for acquiring starting pitching early and often. They made it clear, even to the angst of the fanbase, that they were not going to spend big. They did not deviate from those plans.
Instead of throwing the bag at Dylan Cease or Framber Valdez or Ranger Suárez, the Giants added Houser (two years, $22 million, club option for 2028) and Mahle (one year, $10 million).
The best-case scenario is these deals pan out like those given to Kevin Gausman and Anthony DeSclafani, who both had career resurgences upon joining San Francisco. The projection models, however, are not particularly bullish on either. In fact, FanGraphs’ positional depth charts have the Giants’ rotation ranked 24th in the majors heading in to spring training.
Logan Webb stands to provide his usual production, but after him? There’s legitimate uncertainty.
Can Robbie Ray still be a viable No. 2 behind Webb after losing steam down the stretch last season? Is Landen Roupp capable of being an effective starter from wire-to-wire? Can their young arms — Hayden Birdsong, Blade Tidwell, Carson Whisenhunt, Trevor McDonald and Kai-Wei Teng — emerge as legitimate rotation options?
If so, the Giants just might return to the postseason.