{"id":723102,"date":"2026-06-11T10:06:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T10:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/723102\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T10:06:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T10:06:21","slug":"bryce-eldridge-just-took-over-the-sf-giants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/723102\/","title":{"rendered":"Bryce Eldridge just took over the SF Giants"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the clubhouse after his improbable, incredible, pick-your-adjective walk-off grand slam, Bryce Eldridge dropped one of the best quotes a San Francisco Giants<\/a> rookie has ever given, a line that may have been nearly as memorable as the swing itself.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think about it every day,\u201d he said to the assembled press<\/a>. \u201cI want to be the face of this franchise. That\u2019s something that motivates me every day. \u2026 I want to be in that moment; I want to be that guy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

When a player says something like that \u2014 especially a 21-year-old, can\u2019t-miss prospect whom Giants fans have been hearing about for years now right after he became the youngest player in Major League Baseball\u00a0history to hit a walk-off grand slam \u2014 it\u2019s enough to inject some life into even the deadest of seasons.<\/p>\n

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Suddenly, Giants games aren\u2019t must-miss affairs anymore.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Suddenly, the Giants have a guy in their lineup who will cause fans to stop what they\u2019re doing and get in front of a TV to watch his at-bats.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Suddenly, this franchise belongs<\/a> to Bryce Eldridge.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Yes, the phenom, he of\u00a038 career big-league games<\/a>, is the face of the Giants. This is his team now.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a lot to put on the plate of a rookie, but when a season is this disappointing, this disastrous, fans need something to hold onto. They need a glimpse of better days ahead, and that\u2019s Eldridge. To use a very timely \u201cGame of Thrones” reference, he is the prince that was promised.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Giants, bless them, tried their hardest<\/a> to delay his arrival for as long as they could. They picked Jerar Encarnacion to make the opening day roster, leaving Eldridge to spend a month or so in Sacramento when he very clearly was the better option. When they finally called him up, manager Tony Vitello gave a very weird, nonsensical answer<\/a> as to why Eldridge wasn\u2019t starting, saying that pinch hitting can be important to his development. President Buster\u00a0Posey went on the radio<\/a> and implied there wasn\u2019t really a plan for Eldridge\u2019s usage. And then as recently as last week, Eldridge was being benched<\/a> in favor of someone named Buddy Kennedy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Eldridge was inevitable<\/a>. He\u2019s shown the power to all fields that the prospect writers promised. He\u2019s also shown far better plate discipline than anyone expected \u2014 he\u2019s cut down on his strikeouts dramatically, and he\u2019s got the highest walk-rate<\/a> of any of the regulars on this team. Oh, and he\u2019s a perfect 4-for-4 on his ABS challenges<\/a>, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Now that he\u2019s settled in, the Giants\u2019 lineup actually became dangerous. It\u2019s no mystery why they\u2019ve suddenly become a juggernaut \u2014 having Eldridge\u2019s bat in the lineup allows guys to breathe a little, hit in spots that are better fits for them, and see better pitches. He\u2019s the bat the Giants have been missing for years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t turn out to be Rafael Devers<\/a> or Willy Adames, two very good players who\u2019ve both struggled in their time here. The superstar the Giants have been waiting for, the one they\u2019ve spent more than a decade trying (and failing spectacularly) to find, was in their house all along.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s impossible to overstate how important that is to the fan base, who hold a special place for homegrown talent. Signing free agents or trading for stars is nice, but they don\u2019t have as long of a leash with the fans as a guy who comes through the system (look at the vitriol toward\u00a0Devers, Adames and Matt Chapman for proof of this). A new face of the franchise coming from within was always the best thing that could happen. Trouble is, the Giants have been so bad at drafting over the past decade-plus, it didn\u2019t look like one would ever emerge. Couple that with the organization\u2019s inability to sign a major free agent, and things were looking bleak. Eldridge arrived just in time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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For the Giants, the takeaway is obvious: everything moving forward should be built around him. They have the centerpiece every franchise covets, and one they\u2019ve been looking for since Posey retired. Eldridge is a player the team can pencil into the heart of the lineup for years, and construct the rest of the roster around.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

And if that leads to some hard questions, so be it. Devers<\/a> plays the same position as Eldridge, and chances are the Giants would rather their young star spend more time playing first base than DH. Sliding Devers to full-time DH makes the most sense, but that was, let\u2019s say<\/a>, an issue for him last year with the Red Sox<\/a>. He\u2019s said many times that he wants to play defense. And as\u00a0history has shown<\/a>, it doesn\u2019t take a lot to make him unhappy<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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If that leads to the Giants having to move Devers \u2014 and eat some of his salary in the process \u2014 those are the breaks. Trading for him was a worthy risk<\/a>, and I\u2019m sure the Giants would rather have both of their slugging first basemen in the lineup long-term. But whatever they do has to be right by Eldridge. Devers has the contract, but Eldridge has the juice. The Giants have plenty of money, but are very, very short on juice.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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But those are questions that can wait for another day. For now, the Giants have their cornerstone, the fans have their guy, and Eldridge is showing he should have been up here all along. He\u2019s a star. The Giants finally got one right.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And if his presence is enough to convince ownership to spend real money on pitching over the winter, they might as well start building the statue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the clubhouse after his improbable, incredible, pick-your-adjective walk-off grand slam, Bryce Eldridge dropped one of the best…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":723103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,88540,22816],"class_list":["post-723102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-sfgfreelance","tag-sfgsports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116730920099404313","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723102","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=723102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/723103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}