The Giants’ lineup should be better next season with Willy Adames, who offers power and speed at a premium position. The lineup should also get a boost from a healthy Jung Hoo Lee, and it’s fair to assume that Patrick Bailey won’t have one of the worst months in baseball history again. It’s reasonable to expect improvements from a third of the lineup, then. So far, so good.
The Giants shouldn’t be done adding to the lineup, though. You’re nodding so hard that your neck is making sounds that no neck should make, and you need to stop. But the lineup was never just one hitter away from being a top-third offense in baseball, which is where most of the 2024 postseason teams finished. Adames helps, but more help is needed.
It won’t be easy. Here are a couple of the roadblocks in their way.
The problem the Giants are (mostly) thrilled to have
The Giants will give starting jobs to two homegrown players, as they should. Heliot Ramos broke the Curse of Chili, and he deserves a chance to break the Curse of Barry Bonds in 2026. Tyler Fitzgerald’s breakout was the best surprise of the 2024 season, and he’ll be the starting second baseman instead of playing the role of a nomadic super-utility player, according to Buster Posey.
These are both incredibly obvious and easy decisions to make for a team in the Giants’ position. Of course you let the 25-year-old outfielder start the season after he made the All-Star team. And of course you go with the young middle infielder who showed off his speed and power once he got a chance to start. The quickest path to the Giants making the postseason again is through Ramos and Fitzgerald building on what they did last season. It would be malpractice to do anything other than count on them for Opening Day.
That’s the quickest path to the postseason, yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s the likeliest path. At the risk of being a curmudgeon, worrywart, grumpus or all of the above, it’s my duty to remind you that the last bits of data provided by Ramos and Fitzgerald weren’t especially exciting. Ramos hit .242/.278/.417 in the second half, and he had his toughest month of the season in September. Fitzgerald’s absurd power display in July and early August disappeared almost entirely by the end of the season — he hit just one home run after Aug. 14. In the place of the homers were strikeouts. A lot of them. Enough to remind you that his strikeout total in 125 Double-A games — just two seasons ago — would have been the third-highest strikeout total in Giants history if he’d done it in the majors.
So the Giants are in something of a pickle. They’re counting on these two young players because that’s the obvious, necessary choice. But the last time they saw Ramos and Fitzgerald, it was clear that the rest of the league had adjusted to them, and they’ll need to make counter-adjustments if they want to remain everyday players. These counter-adjustments are only theoretical at this point.
In the meantime, that’s two spots the Giants absolutely can’t tinker with, and they’re running out of spots where they can tinker.
The problem the Giants are (entirely) thrilled to have
Bryce Eldridge is special. You’ve heard this before about different prospects, and you’re skeptical, which is fair. This is an article about the offensive potential of the 2025 Giants, and this is the only sentence in which Marco Luciano is mentioned. Baseball is hard, and development is rarely linear. If it makes you feel better, you definitely weren’t reading about Ramos and Fitzgerald in preseason discussions about the offensive potential of the 2024 Giants.
Eldridge is worth getting excited about, though. The Giants keep throwing challenges at him, and he keeps navigating them. He won’t be the Opening Day starter in 2025, and he might not be the Opening Day starter in 2026, but he’ll get there. He might get there by the end of next season.
The Giants can’t block the path for their top prospect Eldridge. (Norm Hall / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
This matters because the Giants could, in theory, make an instant offensive improvement at first base. All they’d have to do is sign Pete Alonso or Christian Walker. Even with LaMonte Wade Jr.’s keen eye and first-half success in 2024, an upgrade like that would be the easiest path to 750-800 runs.
But the free agents would block Eldridge for a couple more seasons. You shouldn’t count your chickens before they hatch, but Eldridge’s beak is definitely poking out of the shell. He’s much too tall to be in that egg. Someone please get him out of there.
Even if the Giants were willing to overpay for Alonso or Walker, the competition is likely to be intense for them. There’s a reason why Bob Melvin was talking about Wilmer Flores excitedly on Monday. The Giants will stick with Wade and Flores, which is sensible enough. But that’s another spot down.
The lessons learned from Jorge Soler
Having a full-time DH is kind of a drag. It limits lineup flexibility a ton, and it prevents teams from getting their best hitters extra rest while still keeping their bat in the lineup. It’s an inconvenience teams will gladly deal with if Shohei Ohtani or Yordan Alvarez is the DH, but it gets a lot tricker after that. The Giants could add a lot of dingers with Joc Pederson or J.D. Martinez, but they would lose flexibility, and there aren’t guarantees that they’d provide that kind of offense. As an example, consider Jorge Soler just last season.
It’s a new front office, but they’re probably just as wary of that kind of risk. As such, the DH will be a waystation for whichever veteran needs to skip leg day, or a place to stash someone whose hamstring is mostly fine, but not entirely fine. It’ll be reserved for a happy problem like Wade and Eldridge both having excellent seasons, or Jerar Encarnación bringing his gaudy Triple-A numbers to the majors. It’ll be the smiling face in the Rummikub hand, the Draw Four in the Uno deck, something to play with and keep open in the event of something unforeseen.
It’s not going to be how the Giants continue their quest to score more runs than the other guys. Not in the offseason, at least. And now we’re almost out of spots.
Boy, it’s a lousy market for outfielders right now
Even if you’re an ungrateful lout who wants to trade Mike Yastrzemski and free up payroll, you’re doing that to … give Teoscar Hernández or Anthony Santander a nine-figure contract? I could be talked into either one, but other teams are after them, too. It’s a fierce enough market out there that the Dodgers signed Michael Conforto just to make sure they weren’t caught without any outfield additions.
That’s the one remaining position, though. Right field. And, say, our own Chandler Rome is reporting that the Astros will listen on Kyle Tucker, who is a stellar right fielder in all respects. He’d also cost the Giants just about every remaining prospect you care about, including Eldridge, and at least a couple of the young pitchers on the major-league roster. And if you’re not willing to sign him for $300 million or $400 million, it would be a win-now acquisition for a team that’s not so sure it’s going to win now. It would be a lot of clams to give a left-handed hitter without 40-homer power to play at Oracle Park.
Tucker wouldn’t be the only outfielder available in trade, but there aren’t a lot of obvious options. Luis Robert Jr. deserves something better than the White Sox, but he also looked like a broken hitter last season.
The easiest, and possibly only, solution
The Giants would need to consider Yastrzemski and Ramos to be two parts of the same position. Not a platoon, necessarily, but complementary players who aren’t always going to be in the same lineup together. Which sounds like a platoon, but hear me out.
Yastrzemski has an .809 career OPS against right-handers and a .686 mark against left-handers.
Ramos had a 1.189 OPS against left-handers — second only to Aaron Judge in all of baseball — but a .673 OPS against right-handers.
You don’t want to slap Ramos with a platoon label just yet. Not only is he still quite young, but single-season samples are notoriously erratic. But you can be at least platoon-curious with him, especially with Yastrzemski on the roster.
If the Giants do this, now they have room for a guy. If it’s Santander, they’re filling the DH spot with Ramos, Flores, Yastrzemski or Santander himself depending on the day and the manager’s mood. If the Giants take Cody Bellinger off the Cubs’ hands, Bellinger could play all over the place as needed, including at DH occasionally.
The Giants don’t need another outfielder, per se. They just need another hitter. And the way to think of it is that the addition wouldn’t be replacing a player currently on the roster; he would be allowing other players to be the best versions of themselves.
OK, so it’s kind of a platoon. But more flexible! It could work, dang it.
Without creativity, the Giants’ lineup still doesn’t seem likely to give them a top-half offense next season. With a little creativity, they’ll have a shot at a lineup worthy of the postseason. With a little creativity and a little luck. With a little creativity and a little luck and maybe some internal developments. A little deus ex machina wouldn’t hurt, either. But there’s still a chance to add to a lineup that’s mostly spoken for.
(Top photo of Ramos: Lachlan Cunningham / Getty Images)
