SAN FRANCISCO — The Giants’ offseason might have started with some sort of record.\u00a0<\/p>\n
About an hour before Buster Posey, Zack Minasian and Tony Vitello did their end-of-season press conference, the organization put out an injury\u00a0report that gave updates on 23 different players.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The details themselves weren’t that relevant — the general summary was that everyone, other than the Tommy John rehabbers, will be ready whenever spring training starts — but the length of the update was a reminder of what the Giants just went through. Had the font on the update been any larger, they would have required two pages to sum up what’s ahead for all of the veterans who finished the season on the IL.<\/p>\n
There was one notable name, though. The second bullet point pertained to Harrison Bader<\/a>, with the Giants announcing that he will do a running and baseball progression for his left foot injury this winter and he “is expected to be fully ready by spring training.”<\/p>\n An obvious follow-up: Will that be for the Giants or someone else?<\/p>\n Asked later by NBC Sports Bay Area if he anticipated Bader playing another game for the organization, Posey referred back to his answer during the press conference. Because the Giants suspended payment to Bader and MLB and the MLBPA are involved, there’s only so much he can offer publicly.\u00a0<\/p>\n “That’s all I’ll say right now, is that he’s under contract for next year and there’s discussions going on between the commissioner’s office and the Players Association,” Posey said during an interview for the “Giants Talk” podcast.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bader ended up playing just 30 games for the Giants after signing last offseason, hitting .170 with a .557 OPS. He was on the IL with plantar fasciitis and set to see a specialist in Indianapolis in July, but a night before his flight, Bader had a scooter accident<\/a> in the Marina. The Giants subsequently announced that the accident had “changed the nature of his evaluation” for the previous foot injury and “complicated” the visit to a specialist.\u00a0<\/p>\n On July 31, the Giants announced that they were taking the rare step of suspending payment<\/a>, which cost Bader roughly $1.5 million for the rest of the 2026 MLB season. He is owed $10 million in 2027, and while there initially was some long-term concern because of the new injury, the medical update on Tuesday seemed to indicate that he will be able to continue playing.\u00a0<\/p>\n