San Francisco Giants’ Luis Arraez speaks to members of the media during the MLB baseball All-Star Week, Monday, July 13, 2026, in Philadelphia.
Matt Rourke/Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA — This time last year, the San Francisco Giants might’ve surveyed the All-Star landscape for top free-agents-to-be and weighed acquiring them on the heels of landing Rafael Devers from Boston.
They wound up sellers, of course, and are again this year — with their own All-Star, Luis Arraez, the subject of all sorts of trade speculation. Arraez is resigned to it; he’s been traded twice before. “It’s tough, especially mentally, when you feel like a family, like Willy (Adames), Rafi (Devers), Heliot (Ramos), Logan (Webb), those guys received me like family and they opened the door for me. It’s hard to leave. It’s hard to leave, but this is a business.”
While his first choice would be to stay with the Giants, Arraez has one stipulation if the team sends him elsewhere.
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“This is a business, so whatever team wants to give me the opportunity to help, it’s going to be at second base. I don’t like to go back to first base; I prepared my mind, I prepared my body to only play second base,” Arraez said Monday at Citizens Bank Park during the All-Star Game media availability session. “One hundred percent, I’m staying at second.”
That might not be possible, of course. Arraez does not have a no-trade clause and the Giants will be looking for the best package possible. While they’d love to accommodate a player who’s worked harder than anyone else on the club this year, if the standout offer comes from a club that wishes Arraez to play first or DH, they’d have to take it.
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Arraez specifically was asked about Tampa Bay, a team he’s been linked to and said, “Whatever team wants to give me the opportunity to help, I’ll be listening.”
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The Rays would play Arraez at second base, so that’s a good start.
Arraez came to the Giants believing them to be a playoff team, and he said Monday he still thinks the club has the talent to be much better in the second half. Asked what went so wrong, he said, “We just need to be more together.” That, Arraez explained, meant that some injuries affected the team, players came and went from Triple-A Sacramento and the various units weren’t always playing well at the same time.
“If we can be more together, I think we can do a lot of good things,” he said. “We have a lot of the best players — Robbie Ray, Logan Webb, Willy Adames. I think we can turn the page and play baseball.”
Ray, an All-Star last year, is likely to be dealt before the Aug. 3 deadline. The team certainly would entertain offers for many others, too, including shortstop Adames and first baseman Devers, but one player who isn’t getting shopped is Webb, who is at his third All-Star Game but available only in an emergency, he said.
The fact president of baseball operations Buster Posey said Webb wouldn’t be traded is “encouraging,” Webb said. “I also think baseball is a business, so you never really know. I don’t think anyone’s really untouchable in this game. But when you hear something like that, obviously it means the organization cares about you.”
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Webb has zero wish to see anyone dealt. “You end up losing some lifelong friends that you’ve become very close with, and I hope it doesn’t happen,” he said. “We have a couple weeks left to prove that we should believe in this team, but it’s dwindling pretty fast. I hope we clean some things up and go full steam ahead so we don’t have to lose some great teammates.”
Webb can’t say with certainty where things have gone so wrong for the fourth-place team, 19½ games behind the Dodgers at the break. “Some weird things have happened,” he said, “but I can’t pinpoint one specific thing.
“Sometimes it’s all clicking and sometimes it isn’t. We still haven’t swept a team and we still haven’t won four games in a row. I think if we do want to turn things around, I think that’s something we’re going to have to do.”
This time last year and then again this winter, the Giants were connected with Twins All-Star Joe Ryan, a right-hander from Marin County who’s likely to be a free agent after this season (he and the Twins have a mutual option for next year but the best bet is that he explores the market). He grew up a Giants fan — he said Monday he had a pennant from one of the championship teams in his room in San Anselmo and one of his prized possessions is a signed Tim Lincecum jersey.
He’s not on the block now, with Minnesota in contention, nor would the Giants be in on him were he available. But the two-time All-Star would be a great addition to the rotation as a free agent. Does the team’s plunge this season give him pause?
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Ryan said he’s really only keeping tabs on friends like Arraez and Harrison Bader. “I don’t know too much about the inner workings,” he said of the Giants, “but I hope they right the ship at some point.”
For others at the All-Star Game this year, the Giants’ current plight is a head-scratcher. Max Muncy, starting at third for the National League on Tuesday, is an all-time Giants antagonist — and he’d like the team to be relevant.
“It’s good for baseball, not just the division,” Muncy said. “You always want the Yankees and Red Sox to be good when they play each other. You want the Cubs and Cardinals to be good when they play each other. It’s the same thing — you want the Dodgers and Giants to be good when they’re playing each other. It makes it fun.
“Those games are still always fun, it doesn’t matter what the records are — but when you’re both competing for the division it just makes it that much more special.”
Muncy said he wouldn’t have expected for San Francisco to be so far back at this point. “You look at the moves they made and the roster they came in with and the pitching seemed like it was going to be sound, the lineup seemed like it was going to be deep,” he said. “But that’s kind of the nature of baseball, it is super unpredictable.”
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Then there is Justin Verlander, the surefire Hall of Famer who spent last season with San Francisco. The results weren’t what he wanted, but Tuesday he said he cherished his time with the Giants and called them a classy organization because of the way they treat players and their families. He remains close to many of the players, including Webb.
Has he, then, followed the team’s fortunes? Verlander, who announced last week this will be his final season, provided a savvy veteran answer accompanied with a big smile.
“That’s the West Coast!” he said. “I don’t watch the West Coast. I can’t. I’m asleep by that time. I’m old.”