The Giants Were 65 and 95, and I've Never Been More Excited About Next Year
The big league team was a mess. The kids underneath it are the best group this organization has had in my lifetime, and I'm letting myself hope.
Two games left. 65 and 95, fourth in the West, and Kruk's last broadcast on Sunday against the Dodgers with nothing riding on it. If you'd asked me in May how I'd feel on the last weekend of this season, I'd have said numb. I'd have said I was already thinking about football.
I'm not, though. I'm thinking about next year. And for the first time in a long time, that doesn't feel like a coping mechanism.
Let me get the bad news out of the way
Tony Vitello is back. Buster confirmed it in August, and I've said my piece about that, and I'll say it again every time he bunts in the seventh inning of a one run game. The bullpen was a disaster all year. The lineup went to sleep for weeks at a time. Nothing about the 2027 big league roster is fixed just because the calendar flips.
So no, I'm not here to tell you we're contending next year. I don't know that. Nobody does.
What I'm here to tell you is that the stuff underneath the big league team finally looks like something.
A farm system I actually want to talk about
I've spent my whole adult life getting burned by Giants prospects. I don't need to list the names. You already know them, and if you don't, you're lucky.
This year's different, and it's not just me saying it. One of the big prospect outfits gave the Giants system an A plus this month, and the only other team that got one was St. Louis. The other big list has us fifth in baseball. Five Giants are in the top 100 in the sport, and four of them are in the top 50. When's the last time you could say that? I honestly can't remember one.
Start with Josuar Gonzalez. Eighteen years old, a switch hitting shortstop, and he hit .351 at San Jose after they bumped him up in July. Buster called him one of the most dynamic young players he's seen in a long time, and Buster doesn't hand out compliments like that to sell tickets. I watched a few of his at bats on a stream on my phone during a work call, and I'm not proud of that, but I'd do it again.
Next to him at San Jose was Luis Hernandez, another shortstop, who is seventeen. Seventeen! Buster pointed out he should be a junior in high school and he's out there against guys up to five years older. San Jose made it all the way to the California League championship before losing, and Richmond made the postseason too. Winning in the minors doesn't guarantee anything. It's still a lot more fun than the alternative.
Then there's Jhonny Level, a middle infielder who's on the top 100 lists too, and Bo Davidson in the outfield. And Jackson Flora, the first round pick out of UC Santa Barbara who had a 1.06 ERA in his last college season, threw one inning in Single A and got sent straight to Double A. One inning. They didn't even let him unpack.
Guys like Drew Cavanaugh behind the plate, Jonah Cox in the outfield and Joe Whitman on the mound all took real steps this year too. That's depth. We haven't had depth. We've had one guy at a time, and we've watched that one guy stall out in Sacramento.
And Eldridge is already here
Bryce Eldridge is the part that makes this feel real instead of theoretical. He came up in May when the offense was at rock bottom and he stuck. .269 average, .364 on base, 17 homers in 107 games, and he's 21. Forget prospect. He's a middle of the order bat on a big league team, and we developed him ourselves, which is a sentence I'm going to need a minute with.
Picture 2027 with Eldridge in his first full season and a whole wave of kids behind him, some of them a year away and some of them two. That's the first time in years I can picture the Giants being good for a reason other than a big free agent check.
What I'm asking for
Don't blow it. That's the whole list.
Don't trade these kids for a 34 year old reliever in July because we're three games out. Don't rush Gonzalez because the ticket office wants a poster. Don't bury Hernandez at a level for two years because somebody in the front office decided he had to earn it. Let them play, let them fail at the right level, and let them come up when they're ready. Buster's the guy who came through this system and won three rings. He knows what it looks like when it's done right.
And fix the bullpen. Please. With actual pitchers. I can't do another summer of blown saves while the future is sitting in San Jose.
I'll be at Oracle on Sunday to say goodbye to Kruk and to a season I'd like to forget. Then I'm going to spend the winter checking box scores from the Arizona Fall League like a lunatic.
It feels good to have something to look forward to. I forgot what that was like. The rest of this year's mess is on the season page, if you want to relive it. I don't.
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