San Francisco also seemed like the right fit<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cThe biggest thing was the opportunity for me,\u201d Bader told NBC Sports Bay Area’s Alex Pavlovic on Tuesday at MLB spring training.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody wants to talk about free agency contracts and money, and that\u2019s fine. I understand, but in order to get more money and get more years under your belt and be effective, you need opportunity.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need to be on the field. You need to be on the field as often as possible. It\u2019s always been my goal to play as many innings in center field and get as many at-bats as possible in a given season.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the 2025 MLB season, Bader started in 79 games with the Minnesota Twins and in 43 games with the Philadelphia Phillies after being traded. With plenty of experience under his belt, the 31-year-old veteran should be able to seamlessly plug into the Giants\u2019 outfield on a regular basis.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, the Giants made perfect sense because of the opportunity, and I imagine that being an intense role in center field where I\u2019m playing a lot more than I have in the past,\u201d Bader said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, I\u2019ve really been training for that my entire career. I think many organizations enjoy plugging and playing and platooning and whatnot, but I\u2019m gonna continue to prove that I don\u2019t need to be platooned or plugged in or out. I can really hold it down at center field, and I think just receiving that opportunity here is great.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bader won the Gold Glove award in 2021, proving his defensive prowess that can benefit San Francisco. Offensively, the Bronx native had a career high in batting average with .277, and home runs with 17 during the 2025 MLB season with the Twins and the Phillies.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just looking forward to proving that every single day and taking on that workload and being that center piece that the Giants are looking for, and I\u2019m just gonna play with the best of my abilities as often as I can,\u201d Bader added.<\/p>\n
\u201cOutside of the money and all that stuff that people love talking about with free agency, having a landing spot for an opportunity is most important.\u201d<\/p>\n
If he continues to be a defensive threat in the outfield and records similar numbers as his career year in 2025, Bader can turn out to be a massive acquisition for the Giants.<\/p>\n
Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Giants might have gotten themselves an \u201ceveryday guy.” San Francisco acquired veteran Harrison Bader this MLB offseason…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,162,365,4,378,66,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342],"class_list":{"0":"post-601977","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-giants","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-giants","10":"tag-harrison-bader","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-san-francisco","13":"tag-san-francisco-giants","14":"tag-sanfrancisco","15":"tag-sanfranciscogiants","16":"tag-sf","17":"tag-sf-giants","18":"tag-sfgiants"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116160886602310920","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}