The Giants were considered a potential contender entering the season. Instead, led by an outside-the-box new manager, Tony Vitello, they sank immediately in April. With Sunday’s loss to the Dodgers on Mike Krukow Day, they finished 65-97, the third-most losses in any single season since the franchise moved to San Francisco.
Injuries played a role, certainly, as 17 men on the 60-day injured list and a record 71 players used indicate, but that’s not really the story. The Giants weren’t good enough well before the training room really started filling up. Things went south right from Opening Day on, losing to the Yankees 7-0, then getting swept in that series and never once getting over the .500 mark from there.
Among the key things to recall when looking back at 2026? The Giants were so consistently mediocre that in a franchise first, they never put together a four-game winning streak, something even truly awful teams usually manage. They never had a winning month. They were an MLB-worst 16-29 in one-run games.
Every component seemed off at different times, as the units never performed in sync. The best example came immediately: The Giants’ bullpen was excellent in April, with the second-best ERA in the game, but the offense was dreadful, scoring the fewest runs in the majors. From that point on, the hitting stats ticked upward, but the bullpen never performed particularly well again.
Among more specific issues, San Francisco didn’t walk enough from the get-go and finished last in the majors in that category, a major reason the club was second-last in the National League in runs. The pitching side struggled in the same area, with starters issuing the second-most walks in the league and finishing 24th in MLB with a 4.48 ERA.
With the Giants’ record cratering, fingers were pointed toward Vitello, who had no pro experience, especially after Rafael Devers appeared to show him up when being pinch-run for. The two both subsequently explained Devers had been indicating he was healthy enough to run for himself, but waiting two days to clarify enabled the hot take that the team’s veterans weren’t showing Vitello enough respect. Vitello’s MLB-leading seven ejections contributed to speculation that umpires also weren’t giving him much respect.
Vitello’s occasionally rambling interviews, sprinkled with non sequiturs, were loaded with folksy charm but didn’t always provide much in the way of cogent information, further creating an image of an inexperienced manager out of his depth. The game appeared to move too fast for him at times, especially in the early going. His coaching staff might have benefited from a touch more experience, given his newness to the pro ranks.
It’s easy to focus on the manager when a team underperforms, but that’s not the case here: Vitello was a risky hire, coming straight from the University of Tennessee. There were no guarantees he’d have a quick learning curve or that his skill set would translate immediately. If he, or his staff, is under fire, that probably should be redirected toward those who hired an unknown quantity for a club that the front office believed could make a run at contending.
Buster Posey, Zack Minasian and the rest of the baseball operations department also failed to shore up the bullpen, instead entering the season with no settled closer. The team blew 45 leads, and the Giants’ 30 saves were the fewest in the league.
San Francisco probably could have also used another solid starter to line up with Logan Webb and Landen Roupp. The new additions, Tyler Mahle and Adrian Houser, flopped initially before righting things; Mahle was traded away with five other big-leaguers at the deadline and the Giants’ pitching depth was further exposed when three more young starters – Trevor McDonald, Carson Whisenhunt and Blade Tidwell – joined Hayden Birdsong among the organization’s surprisingly large group of pitchers with torn UCLs at the age of 25, all lost to Tommy John surgery in the span of seven months.
As if the state of the ballclub wasn’t grim enough, there were too many tone-deaf fumbles, starting with the Giants’ non-response to three players scribbling Bible verses on their hats on Pride Night to Harrison Bader’s night out in the Marina ending up in a scooter collision with a fire truck and his subsequent suspension. A partnership with a gambling firm (or “prediction market”), Kalshi, aggravated much of the fan base when the team’s social media included a post about the team’s win probability and encouraged them to download Kalshi’s app.
In the final month and a half there were some encouraging developments, particularly with some exciting young outfielders coming up and an emphasis on the running game. But the final six weeks also included Krukow announcing his retirement and then his longtime partner, Duane Kuiper, announcing he’s undergoing treatment for throat cancer. The Baseball Hall of Fame’s intransigence over putting them in together as joint Frick Award winners continues to infuriate fans and observers alike.
After all of that, now there’s baseball’s labor strife ahead. Posey and Co. need to get Vitello a lot of help to vastly improve this team, but there is a good chance next season will start late to very late, with a lockout by the owners expected in November. Whenever a new collective bargaining agreement is reached, putting teams together will be a last-minute scramble. There are no guarantees any offseason that a team can add all it needs, but with those pursuits paused during labor negotiations, that’s even more of a risk.
Spring training is likely to be shortened somewhat, leaving less time to assign roles, integrate new players and any new coaches. Those CBA ramifications are true for all teams, but for a club such as the Giants, riddled with question marks, an abbreviated spring could be especially harmful.
On the flip side, Vitello will have more experience. So will the many, many young players who showed promise in the second half. The front office is still finding its feet, too, and just finishing its second full season on the job.
The Giants are a club with plenty of financial resources and a fan base that did an admirable job of sticking with the team most of the season. Ticket sales averaged 35,269, down from 36,121 the previous year but still the second most in the past seven seasons with paying customers.
Finishing near the bottom of the pack, painful as it is for fans and team alike, might in some ways be better than the mediocrity of .500-ish seasons the previous four years. Hitting rock bottom might be a catalyst to inspire real improvement. But even then, the Giants can’t pick higher than 10th in next summer’s MLB draft, which doesn’t do them any favors as far as helping fill up an improving farm system.
The many problem areas are clear. The Giants now just must address them.
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This article originally published at After 2026 disaster, Giants have to prove they learned from losing games, irking fans.
