How the Giants are wild-card contenders — without a single star
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David Schoenfield, ESPN Senior Writer
This week, the San Francisco Giants entered the third game of their series against the Philadelphia Phillies attempting to avoid a sweep. The Giants had swept the series the two teams played back in May, but the Phillies’ season had transformed since then — they have a 44-28 record since June 1 — and they won the first two games of this series. By all accounts, the Giants should have lost that final game, too — but instead, their 8-6 win in extra innings perfectly encapsulates their 2023 season.
Their starting center fielder was Wade Meckler, an eighth-round pick in last year’s draft who started the season in High-A and was recently called up. Their All-Star closer, Camilo Doval, blew the save in the bottom of the ninth — his fourth appearance in a row with a blown save. And yet Paul DeJong, playing shortstop in his first game for San Francisco since being released by the Toronto Blue Jays, where he went 3-for-44 with 18 strikeouts, matched that hit total in only five at-bats, including a home run and four RBIs. Two of those RBIs came on a single in the top of the 10th as the Giants scored three runs to take back the lead and held on for the victory, using two relievers to finish it out.
The victory helped keep the Giants in the thick of the wild-card race — the Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, Arizona Diamondbacks and Giants are separated by half a game for the final two spots, with the Miami Marlins a couple games behind and the Phillies a couple games ahead. Somehow, some way, despite a roster devoid of stars or even non-stars having surprise seasons, the Giants are in the hunt, baseball’s Houdini act.
Okay, it’s not quite as impressive as two years ago when they pulled an elephant out of a hat by winning 107 games, but this team has a chance to make the postseason. And when you look at the roster, it’s hard not to think, “How is that even possible?”
This is a team we predicted to win 80 games and ranked 22nd in baseball in our preseason rankings. Their top-ranked position player in Baseball-Reference wins above replacement is Wilmer Flores with 2.5 bWAR — tied for 69th in the majors. Their next two best are LaMonte Wade and Thairo Estrada, ranked 81st and 98th. A decent enough trio of ballplayers, but not to be confused with Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith.
At crucial up-the-middle positions, the Giants have started six different shortstops and nine different center fielders. They’re one of just four teams in MLB without a 20-home run hitter. They’ve used 12 different starting pitchers, with only Logan Webb and Alex Cobb managing to stay in the rotation all season long. And their starting pitchers have thrown the fewest innings in the majors (to be fair, in part because they’ve used an opener more than any other team).
This is not how you want to construct a team. But president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi and manager Gabe Kapler are better at getting the most out of all 26 players on the roster than any other team. Flores is their top home run hitter with 18 — tied for 68th in the majors, but on pace for a career high. J.D. Davis leads the club with 57 RBIs — tied for 85th in the majors with, among others, Ezequiel Tovar and Whit Merrifield — but, again, already tying his career-best mark.
As we’ve watched rosters full of superstars — the San Diego Padres, New York Yankees and New York Mets — disappoint this year, the Giants have proven how depth helps cover for a lack of stars. They platoon, pinch hit and mix-and-match, which has helped them scrape across just enough runs despite the lack of any big individual threats. While they’re not really a good offensive team — they’re just 13th in the National League in runs scored, although Oracle Park decreases run scoring — they’ve hit well in high-leverage situations, increasing their OPS more than 40 points, which is one reason they’re 9-3 in extra-inning games.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the Giants do this. San Francisco won a shocking NL West championship in 2021 deploying a similar depth-focused strategy. But that year, they did have some stars — or at least players who had big years. Buster Posey went out in a blaze of glory in his final season. Brandon Crawford had his last good season, finishing fourth in the MVP voting. Brandon Belt had a .975 OPS and 29 home runs in just 97 games. The rotation featured two aces in Webb and Kevin Gausman, plus Anthony DeSclafani and Alex Wood had healthy seasons.
But this year has proven how tough it is to grind through a season this way — and the lack of manpower is perhaps finally starting to show. The series loss to the Phillies was the Giants’ sixth consecutive losing series after beginning the month with three straight wins over Arizona, and the schedule doesn’t get much easier down the stretch. The Reds, San Diego Padres and Cubs are up next, and seven of San Francisco’s final 10 games are against their division rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers.
If the Giants want to turn 2021’s success and this year’s surprise contention into long-term success, they know that eventually they’ll need to add some star power to the roster; it’s hard to keep winning with platoon players and waiver-wire castoffs. They certainly tried to add stars in the offseason, first pursuing Aaron Judge and then agreeing to a 13-year, $350 million contract with Carlos Correa, only to pull out at the last minute over concerns with Correa’s physical. (Given Correa’s subpar performance this season back with the Minnesota Twins, it looks like they escaped an albatross of a contract.)
The Giants will also need to get younger, which means the farm system needs to produce some talent. Patrick Bailey has impressed, especially on defense, and looks like the solution at catcher that Joey Bart wasn’t. Luis Matos was called up and has shown some good contact ability but not much power, and his defensive metrics in center are poor. He might be more of a fourth outfielder. Highly-touted shortstop Marco Luciano has hit just .231 in the minors, losing some shine off his prospect luster. Lefty Kyle Harrison just made his debut a few days after turning 22 despite struggling with his control in Triple-A (48 walks in 67⅔ innings). Still, he has top-of-the-rotation potential. Meckler has come out of nowhere, although calling him up after such little time in the minors seems to be a sign of the team’s problems in center field.
Throw in Casey Schmitt and Blake Sabol and the Giants are transitioning from one of the oldest teams in baseball the past couple of seasons to one suddenly relying on a slew of rookies as it battles for the wild card. I’d bet against the Giants this year, given their youth and remaining schedule, but they have already surprised us just being in this position.
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Heather Dinich, Senior College Football Insider
ATLANTA — No major decisions were made regarding the future format of the 12-team College Football Playoff on Sunday, but “tweaks” to the 2025 season haven’t been ruled out, CFP executive director Rich Clark said.
Sunday’s annual meeting of the FBS commissioners and the presidents and chancellors who control the playoff wasn’t expected to produce any immediate course of action, but it was the first time that people with the power to change the playoff met in person to begin a review of the historic expanded bracket.
Clark said the group talked about “a lot of really important issues,” but the meeting at the Signia by Hilton set the stage for bigger decisions that need to be made “very soon.”
Commissioners would have to unanimously agree upon any changes to the 12-team format to implement them for the 2025 season.
“I would say it’s possible, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen or not,” Clark said on the eve of the College Football Playoff National Championship game between Ohio State and Notre Dame. “There’s probably some things that could happen in short order that might be tweaks to the 2025 season, but we haven’t determined that yet.”
A source with knowledge of the conversations said nobody at this time was pushing hard for a 14-team bracket, and there wasn’t an in-depth discussion of the seeding process, but talks were held about the value of having the four highest-ranked conference champions earn first-round byes.
Ultimately, the 11 presidents and chancellors who comprise the CFP’s board of managers will vote on any changes, and some university leaders said they liked rewarding those conference champions with byes because of the emphasis it placed on conference title games.
Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, the chair of the board of managers, said they didn’t talk about “what-ifs,” but they have tasked the commissioners to produce a plan for future governance and the format for 2026 and beyond.
Starting in 2026, any changes will no longer require unanimous approval, and the Big Ten and the SEC will have the bulk of control over the format — a power that was granted during the past CFP contract negotiation. The commissioners will again meet in person at their annual April meeting in Las Colinas, Texas, and the presidents and chancellors will have a videoconference or phone call on May 6.
“We’re extremely happy with where we are now,” Keenum said. “We’re looking towards the new contract, which is already in place with ESPN, our media provider, for the next six years through 2032. We’ve got to make that transition from the current structure that we’re in to the new structure we’ll have.”
Following Sunday’s meeting, sources continued to express skepticism that there will be unanimous agreement to make any significant changes for the 2025 season, but a more thorough review will continue in the following months.
“The commissioners and our athletic director from Notre Dame will look at everything across the board,” Clark said. “We’re going to tee them up so that they could really have a thorough look at the playoff looking back after this championship game is done … and then look back and figure out what is it that we need.”
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Andrea Adelson, ESPN Senior Writer
ATLANTA — ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said Sunday that the league will have conversations among coaches and athletic directors about whether to make changes to its conference championship game format.
The conversations are a result of the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff, and ensuring conference champions and the teams that play in conference championship game remain important.
This past season, SMU entered the ACC championship game as the regular-season champion but lost to Clemson in the ACC title game and had to sweat it out before selection day before earning a spot in the 12-team field.
Phillips said the ACC could consider giving its regular-season champion a bye, and have the teams that finish second or third in the league standings play in the ACC championship game.
He said another possibility is having the top 4 teams play on the final weekend of the regular season: first place versus fourth place, and second place vs. third place, with the winners playing the following weekend in the ACC championship game.
Phillips said he will have conversations with league head coaches on a conference call next week to get their feedback on the plan — specifically pointing to comments SMU coach Rhett Lashlee made leading up to the game in which he indicated the Mustangs might be better off not playing to protect its spot in the field.
Phillips also said these conversations will continue at the league’s winter meetings next month in Charlotte, North Carolina, and he has mentioned this is a topic among league athletics directors.
“The conference championship games are important, as long as we make them important, right?” Phillips said. “Do you play two versus three? You go through the regular season and whoever wins the regular season, just park them to the side, and then you play the second-place team versus the third-place team in your championship game. So you have a regular-season champion, and then you have a conference tournament or postseason champion.
“That’s one of the options, depending on how you treat the conference champions, or that championship game, you may want to do it different.
“I have alluded to that in some of our every-other-week-AD calls, and these are some of the things moving forward. We want to have a recap of the regular season, postseason, and what do we think moving forward?”
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Alden Gonzalez, ESPN Staff Writer
The Los Angeles Dodgers have added left-hander Tanner Scott, arguably the best relief pitcher on the free agent market, agreeing to terms on a four-year, $72 million contract, sources told ESPN’s Jeff Passan on Sunday.
The addition of Scott likely puts the finishing touches on another busy offseason for the reigning World Series champions.
Before Scott, the Dodgers signed Blake Snell, one of the best starters on the market; brought back Teoscar Hernandez and signed Michael Conforto, solidifying the corner outfield; signed Korean second baseman Hyeseong Kim, freeing up a trade of Gavin Lux; extended Tommy Edman; and, in one of the winter’s biggest developments, lured phenom Roki Sasaki.
Now Scott, 30, will slot into the back end of a dominant bullpen alongside Michael Kopech, Blake Treinen, Evan Phillips, Alex Vesia and Ryan Brasier, among other high-leverage arms.
Originally a sixth-round pick in 2014, Scott has established himself as a dominant force over these past two years. With the Miami Marlins and San Diego Padres from 2023 to 2024, Scott posted a 2.04 ERA in 146 appearances, striking out 188 batters and issuing 60 walks in 150 innings.
With Scott, the Dodgers’ luxury tax payroll is estimated to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $375 million, about $70 million more than that of the second-place Philadelphia Phillies.
The New York Yankees are the only other team with a competitive balance tax payroll projected to be over $300 million.
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