NL Silver Slugger Award<\/a> at first base and formed a one-two punch with Bryce Eldridge, who had one of the better rookie seasons in franchise history. There was also Casey Schmitt, who broke out before sustaining a season-ending injury.<\/p>\nStill, San Francisco will need more production out of its big-money players such as Matt Chapman (97 OPS+), Willy Adames (100 OPS+) and Jung Hoo Lee (105 OPS+), all of whom took a step back offensively.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is him talking, and I\u2019ll paraphrase: \u2018You can\u2019t go in and say this is going to be our identity. You have to go in and give the guys a chance to show you what their identity is going to be, and then mold that identity based on who they are,\u2019\u201d Posey said when asked about Rowson\u2019s offensive philosophy.<\/p>\n
The Giants\u2019 offensive identity in 2026 was that of a team with decent-ish slug but finished last in the majors in walk rate (7.4%). That low walk rate was partially the product of having hitters such as Schmitt, Lee and Luis Arraez, but even the likes of Devers, Chapman and Adames saw year-to-year drops in walk rate.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome personnel, some general mindset of trying to dig out of a hole. Like, \u2018Hey, we\u2019ve got to hit our way out of this,\u2019\u201d Posey said. \u201cI think some of it, too, could be having a guy like Arraez in the lineup who has the most elite contact ability in the world. \u2026 That\u2019s kind of been his way of being productive, but that\u2019s not going to work for many people at all. So, I do think it\u2019s a combination of that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Regarding the baserunning element, Posey said he would like to see the Giants be more aggressive on the bases.<\/p>\n
Rookie outfielder Jonah Cox was a late-season revelation and led the Giants with 16 steals in just 62 games, but San Francisco still lacks high-volume baserunners. One of their best baserunners, ironically enough, is Devers, who excelled at going from first to third despite being in the 18th percentile of sprint speed.<\/p>\n
Pettis will continue to oversee baserunning after sharing that responsibility with last year\u2019s first base coach Shane Robinson (who transitioned to the minor league side), and Posey believes Pettis\u2019 \u201cwealth of knowledge\u201d will be useful.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it starts from a place of not being fearful,\u201d Posey said. \u201cIn anything you do on the baseball field, whether it\u2019s trying to steal a base or hit a 100-mile-an-hour fastball, if there\u2019s fear of failure \u2014 and we all experience it. As much as anything, that\u2019s the hope is that our group of guys gets to that place. Even though I say to them that there\u2019s not going to be repercussions if you get thrown out, there\u2019s still hesitancy there, and we\u2019ve got to get over that hurdle.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 2027 season will mark Rowson\u2019s 26th season coaching in the pros. Before his latest position with the Yankees, Rowson was a hitting coach with the Chicago Cubs (2012-13) and Minnesota Twins (2017-19), as well as an assistant hitting coach with the Detroit Tigers (2023). Rowson was also the Miami Marlins\u2019 bench coach for three seasons (2020-22).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Giants officially have a new man to lead their offense \u2014 and he\u2019s got a title typically…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":852408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,162,4,378,66,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342,185],"class_list":["post-852426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco-giants","tag-baseball","tag-giants","tag-mlb","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-sanfrancisco","tag-sanfranciscogiants","tag-sf","tag-sf-giants","tag-sfgiants","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117608094338868964","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852426","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=852426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/852408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}