What a bad season would look like for the 2026 San Francisco Giants

Apologies to anyone who was looking forward to a worst-case, best-case and likeliest scenario for the upcoming San Francisco Giants season. The format has been retired, in part because the Giants have been the spiritual manifestation of a .500 team over the last several seasons. It’s impossible to find new ways to describe a best-case scenario for a team that’s been the take-a-penny, leave-a-penny tray of the National League.

This year, let’s ignore the likeliest scenario. It’s just another .500 team, and you knew that already. That doesn’t mean they’ll finish 81-81, necessarily. The Giants could win 84 games and still be a .500 team, spiritually. It’s more of a mindset.

Without the likeliest scenario, that leaves us with the best-case and the worst-case scenarios. Except, those have also grown stale over the years. It’s harder and harder to reach for the outliers and stay grounded in reality when every season the Giants finish 80-something and 80-something.

Instead, let’s try something new. Let’s talk about what a good season would look like for the 2026 Giants. Before we can get there, though, we have to stare into the abyss and define what a bad season would look like. What kind of year would make you reminisce about the ol’ ’26 Giants and think, “Yuck. What a terrible season”?

A lot of losses would make you think that, of course. But that’s too obvious. A rash of injuries, which in turn leads to a lot of losses, would be just as obvious, if not more so.

No, it’s both simpler and more layered than that. It’s something simple enough to explain in two words, while opening up any number of possible scenarios. The Giants will have an unambiguously bad season in 2026 if you’re saying these two words at the end of it:

Now what?

There cannot be a shift in identity after this season. There cannot be more arguments about the organization’s direction. There cannot be a drawing board to go back to. There cannot be a shift in priorities, a new angle to try. If the plans after this season are anything other than “More of that, but with even better players,” then the 2026 Giants had a Bad Season™. There cannot be “Now what?”.

There are a lot of reasons one might ask that question after the upcoming season. Start with the new manager, Tony Vitello. Between the buyout of former manager Bob Melvin’s contract, the money sent to the University of Tennessee to buy out Vitello’s contract and the salary the new manager is making, the Giants are committing close to $10 million on the managerial position. While the strong (and quiet!) spring has been encouraging on that front, there’s still a possibility that by the end of the season, the organization and its fans will be asking “Now what?” about the managerial position.

The Giants have a lot invested in Tony Vitello being the right answer as manager. (Suzanna Mitchell / San Francisco Giants / Getty Images)

If this happened, it would mean you had just watched a Bad Season™. It’s far from a likely scenario, to be sure, but Vitello is still an unknown quantity. And if he’s a bust, that would certainly call into question the architects of the whole operation. And if you’re wondering “Now what?” about the front office, you’ve seen a very, very bad season.

It doesn’t have to be the front office, the coaches or the new manager making the organization and fans ask the cursed question. It could come from the players. Here are the players I loosely consider to be the core of the Giants, along with their age and how long they’re signed for:

That’s sorted by how long the player is under contract, which also works as a way to sort them in order of importance. If you’re asking “Now what?” about Heliot Ramos, it wouldn’t be fun, but it wouldn’t be franchise-altering. Work your way up, though, and if you’re asking the cursed question about each player, something has gone terribly wrong.

Because that’s not a table meant to scare you. Not for a couple years, at least. Every one of those players, to a man, should be a helpful part of the 2027 team. This is not a team of grizzled bank robbers looking for one final score before retirement. This is a core with a chance to be around for at least another season. The Giants have a definite window, but nobody knows when it’s going to slam shut. It doesn’t have to be this season or the next. It’s not ridiculous to think they’ll be around for even more, with fresh faces like Bryce Eldridge and Jesús Rodríguez slotting in perfectly around them. It could be a lot of fun.

If the Giants can’t develop a next generation of everyday players, though, the window will eventually slam shut on them. One second, they’ll be sniffing the blueberry pie on the windowsill, and the next, wham. The guys in their 20s will be close to or in their 30s, and the guys in their early 30s will be in their mid 30s. If you’re asking “Now what?” at any point before age becomes the obvious factor, then that’s a problem. And if you’re asking it about the 2026 Giants, they must have had an absolute stinker of a season on multiple fronts.

Because there are ways for the Giants to fall far short of expectations without forcing you to ask that question. Say one of the Giants’ All-Stars falls off his truck while washing it, except this time he’s out for the season. The prognosis isn’t scary, but it’ll take time to heal. In the meantime, the Giants don’t make the postseason.

That wouldn’t describe a good season, but it still falls under that earlier description of a team that feels like it can reload, not rebuild. The Giants could still feel good about an organizational philosophy of “more of that, but with even better players (and better health)” entering the offseason. It would be a disappointing season, but one with a clear path forward, which is different from an objective disaster.

Beyond the lineup, there’s the rotation, which has one long-term fixture and a whole lotta now-what. That shouldn’t bother you as much. The organizational philosophy has been to attack the rotation every offseason, and it worked out well for a while. It would be much easier for everyone involved, of course, if the Giants could develop a couple of All-Star pitchers on their own, but last year’s vanishing rotation depth was an outlier. They (or any other enterprising team) can rebuild a rotation in a single offseason if they need to.

Sometimes teams say “Now what?” about the bullpen after winning the World Series. They will give you peaceful and restless sleeps all season, but they will not be an existential threat to the organization. Bullpens never are. They just shorten your life expectancy.

It’s mostly the organization and the new manager, along with the aging-but-still-mostly-prime core. There can’t be open-ended questions about too many of them without calling the whole operation into question.

Once the whole operation is called into question, well, you start asking questions that a team with this kind of payroll — for the players and the manager — shouldn’t be asking. Then you start talking about tear-downs and rebuilds, while the Dodgers sign Dr. Manhattan’s kid (0.00 ERA on Mars) to a $2 billion contract.

And that would be a Bad Season™.

This isn’t the likeliest path, to be clear. I’m oddly optimistic and looking forward to writing the sequel to this article. But it feels like this Giants season could go in any number of directions, more so than most, even. Some of those paths lead into some dark, wooded areas. There might be wolves. Be careful.

There might also be wolf cubs. And maybe the mom’s so tired, she’s fine with you playing with them, and it’s not like she can just give them an iPad.

This is the article with wolves, though. Sometimes baseball seasons have them. Be careful out there.