{"id":631379,"date":"2026-03-19T06:35:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T06:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/631379\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T06:35:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T06:35:17","slug":"san-francisco-giants-offseason-review-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/631379\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco Giants Offseason Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continuing our NL West offseason reviews, having already looked at the Colorado Rockies<\/a>, Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a>, and San Diego Padres<\/a> in prior weeks, we turn our attention today to the San Francisco Giants.<\/p>\n

2025 Season Overview\/Recap<\/p>\n

On June 13th, the San Francisco Giants were 41-29 and tied for first place in the NL West with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Two days later, GM Buster Posey swung a trade with the Boston Red Sox for the disgruntled Rafael Devers to bolster their roster. However, the Giants would do so badly over the course of the next month and half that they\u2019d pivot to being sellers at the trade deadline. Ultimately the Giants would finish with an 81-81 record in 2025, finishing third in the NL West. Although they got off to a promising start through the first half of the season, this proved to be a very mediocre Giants squad, especially compared to the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres. They weren\u2019t as bad the last place Colorado Rockies, but they also weren\u2019t particularly good either, much like the 2025 Arizona Diamondbacks, who they finished two games ahead of.<\/p>\n

Notable acquisitions:
OF Harrison Bader<\/a> (2 yr, $20.5M)
1B\/2B Luis Arraez<\/a> (1 yr, $12M)
SP Tyler Mahle<\/a> (1 yr, $10M)
SP Adrian Houser<\/a> (2 yr, $22M, 2028 option)
RP Sam Hentges<\/a> (1 yr, $1.4M)
RP Jason Foley<\/a> (1 yr, $2M)
OF Will Brennan<\/a> (Split Contract 400k in MILB, 900k in MLB. )<\/p>\n

Notable subtractions:
SP Justin Verlander<\/a> (Tigers)
C Andrew Knizner<\/a> (Mariners)<\/p>\n

Offseason Summary and Review<\/p>\n

Let me put this as politely as possible, I am not a fan of the Giants offseason. This was a mediocre roster to begin with entering the offseason, and I don\u2019t think any of these moves improve the team enough to push them into serious contention. Harrison Bader has only been an above average hitter in four out of the nine seasons he\u2019s played at the MLB level. His baserunning has declined into the negative the last two season, while his defense is only slightly above average at best.<\/p>\n

Luis Arraez may have once won the batting title back in 2023 his .354 batting average, but that appears to have been the peak of his career. The career high 3.4 fWAR he posted that season fell to 1.1 fWAR in 2024, and then fell even further down to just 0.9 fWAR in 2025. Arraez has never brought much else to the table other than an empty batting average, and that lofty .354 average from 2023 fell to .324 in 2024, then it catered even further to a career low of .289 in 2025. $12m would be a great deal for a 3.5 WAR player, but Arraez clearly isn\u2019t that guy and he\u2019s unlikely to replicate that success again. (There\u2019s also the question of how good of a fit Arraez is for Oracle Park, but I digress…)<\/p>\n

I like the Tyler Mahle signing the most out of all the deals the Giants made over the winter. Mahle seems to be healthy for the first time in years after having his 2023 season end in Tommy John Surgery. While I don\u2019t think he\u2019s going to return to form and match the 180 IP and 4.9 bWAR he put up in 2021, I do think he is a definite upgrade to the Giants rotation if he can stay healthy.<\/p>\n

Adrian Houser is coming off a career best 3.3 bWAR, with his previous career high being the 2.0 bWAR back in 2019. In between those two seasons Houser has been maddeningly inconsistent, putting up negative WAR just as often as he has been able to provide positive WAR. Needless to say, I like this signing a lot less than I like the Mahle signing<\/p>\n

Neither Sam Hentges nor Jason Foley have pitched in the Major Leagues since 2024, and both are currently on the Giants Injured List. Hentges is currently working his way back and has just now began throwing against live batters, while Foley likely won\u2019t be coming off the IL until June at the earliest. Both are low risk deals with decent upside, though I think Foley is unlikely to provide much value to the Giants at all.<\/p>\n

Will Brennan is coming off of TJ surgery AND a groin surgery, with the latter being a lingering issue apparently. Brennan hasn\u2019t proven himself to be an everyday player, but if he manages to figure it out and breakout with the Giants, he\u2019s under team control until the 2030 season.<\/p>\n

This may not seem that different from what the Padres or Dodgers did, but neither the Dodgers nor Padres needed to move the needle as much as the Giants this offseason. The upside offered by each of these players seems very limited even in the best case scenarios, though there is some upside with all of these players. The two things that keeps this slipping any lower than a D+ grade is that these are all reasonable contracts, with no egregious overpays, and at least they did something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Continuing our NL West offseason reviews, having already looked at the Colorado Rockies, Los Angeles Dodgers, and San…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,162,4,3537,378,66,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342],"class_list":{"0":"post-631379","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-mlb","11":"tag-mlb-news","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\/116254457385601502","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631379","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=631379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}