The Giants 2025 season was one of the odder ones in my memory characterized by a great start, several strong player performances, some bitter disappointments and several brutal losing streaks. In the end they finished 81-81, another mediocre, middling, lukewarm performance that left both fans and upper management frustrated culminating in Bob Melvin being fired as field manager. The reasons behind this outcome have already been hashed and rehashed. I am not sure I have anything left to add to all the shouting but I did piece together a timeline which I think sheds some light.
After getting off to a hot start despite early struggles by Matt Chapman 3B and Willy Adames SS, the Giants stood at 41-29, 12 games over .500 on June 13 after Logan Webb RHP outdueled Yoshinobu Yamamoto RHP to beat the Dodgers. 12 games over .500 on June 13. Let that sink in. It was disappointing but unsurprising they lost the next two games in LA but they went 4-11 over the last 15 games of June including a stretch where they went 1-6 against the Marlins, White Sox and D'Backs.
They recovered a bit in early July and defeated the Dodgers at home on July 8 behind Logan Webb. They again lost the last two games of that series and spiraled to a 2-12 record over the rest of the month including a brutal home series sweep to the Mets and Pirates leading up to the trade deadline. At that point, Buster Posey had seen enough and sold impending free agents Tyler Rogers RHP and Mike Yastrzemski OF as well as Camilo Doval RHP for a shipload of prospects.
The Giants went 5-2 immediately after the trades but then went on a 7-game losing streak, part of a 2-11 stretch. They were now 7 games below .500 and all but out of it. Inexplicably they then went on an 11-1 stretch to get 3 games over .500 and back in the wild card race. They reached another high-water mark when they beat LA 5-1 in extra innings on Patrick Bailey's walk-off grand slam. For the third time after a series-opening win against the Dodgers they faceplanted and went 2-9 before a 4-game win streak to end the season got them back to .500.
So whatheheck happened? Bob Melvin didn't have answers which probably contributed to him losing his job. Buster Posey struggled for words at his end-of-season press conference. The beat writers keep asking questions but offer few answers. I don't think it was any one thing but a series of confounding factors. Matt Chapman went on the IL with a hand injury on June 9 and was clearly limited by the hand until late in the season. By the timeline, his loss seems to be a huge factor. I think the June 16 trade came as a shock to Rafael Devers who needed time to get settled into his new situation. While Devers eventually made a major contribution, the trade initially seemed to destabilize the team(although the dark clouds had already gathered). The team seemed to struggle with the pressure of winning. Three times they went on prolonged losing streaks after reaching high-water marks in series-opening games against the Dodgers. Is that on Bob Melvin or a part of the basic mental makeup of the core players? That's kind of a scary question and one which may reveal itself next season.
It was odd indeed. The fact that it happened several times is probably the reason that Melvin got fired, but I feel that most of the heavy lifting needs to be put on the players. I certainly appreciate the HR's and defense by Chapman and Adames, but after watching Giants baseball for 55 years it is hard to wrap my head around an average in the 220's being acceptable, expecially for the dollars involved.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the information during the season, it s a lot of work but greatly appreciated once again.
I look forward to your comments doc. I became a Giants fan when they arrived in Frisco, mainly listening to them on the radio in the early years, became attached to the players and managers. I had a couple CROIX DE Candlestick evenings w/ dad. Boot camp I missed the world series with the Yankees and shortly there after, family life not so much raising my kids. Now I watch every game I can on TV in retirement and have that old connection with the players I had when I was a kid. I really enjoy seeing the old timers on TV when they come back for a day. These last few years have been hard watching. Hope we get a younger manager that can relate to all those young millionaire ballplayers. Looking forward to opening day on TV. Bob from Dixon.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing that. 2025 is the first season since I retired. Even when the games were boring and the losing streaks brutal, watching them and then writing up game wraps became a daily part of my life I looked forward to and enjoyed. I will very much miss them over the offseason. Fortunately there it still plenty to research and discuss until spring training.
DeleteShould the Giants try to fix their hitting, their defense, or their pitching for next year? Or combination.
ReplyDeleteIMHO, solidify the pitching entirely.
Pitching, pitching, pitching.
DeleteDoc, I love your summary of the season, and I am sure that's what the Posey, writers, and players are likely telling themselves. However, I want to also propose an alternate narrative, this was a team that was projected to be about .500, which finished with a record around there.
ReplyDeleteThe winning and loosing streaks were more likely to be random noise than any indication of the team's record. Flip a fair coin 162 times, and you will get long streaks of heads and tails. Thats what happened with this team.
To expect, significant deviation out of the bellcurve is mistaken, what the team needs to do is to push the mean of the bell curve to the winning side. The team needs to either find a manager who brings a coaching staff that can improve the players on the team -- a tough thing to bank on. Or it needs to have a decent infusion of talent from the farm or FA.
I am going to go on a slight tangent here, but we are nearing almost 10 years of mediocre play here on the Giants. Almost every major decision maker in the FO, coaching staff, and player pool has been turned over.
I really think at this point the ownership has to point the fingers at themselves from time to time. What is keeping the Giants from being ownership from being at the leading edge of winning. It's not just payroll but it also can be sometimes its culture, risk tolerance, willingness to experiment, desire to win. All of these matter greatly and I do think there needs to be some serious introspection -- if this organization wants to be more than an afterthought.
- Fan
I don't disagree with you. My only counterpoint is after they got out to a great start there was still enough of the season left to play their .500 or slightly better expected ball for the rest of the season plus they added Devers. Instead they played 12 games under .500 for the vast majority of the season with multiple brutal stretches. So I think something more than simple regression to the mean was going on. Now, I understand that even with a better team next year they might not get off to that blazing start again and could well end up with a similar record, but I still think they had a good enough team to capitalize on the great start even after factoring in the expected regression.
DeleteI agree with Fan that something seems off about the culture of the team. The goal of the organization year after year after 2012 was to have a good enough record to make the playoffs and then anything can happen. They point to the 2014 Giants wild card team as well as the 2023 Diamondbacks and 2025's Reds. For most of this season, the Giants were targeting the 6 seed and even after the season, some players and some Giants media types were saying that they were close that they missed the playoffs by a couple of games (actually three because of tiebreakers).
DeleteShooting to be an 83-84 win team, concede the NL West to the Dodgers, and anything can happen in the playoffs seems to be part of the culture. With the new playoff format, only the 4 seeds and higher get to play home games so seeds 5 and 6 are at a massive disadvantage. The number 4 seed should be the minimum goal and be somewhat competitive with all teams in the division so that means it will take 91 to 94 wins in the regular season and be around .500 or better with Dodgers, Padres, and Diamondbacks. I've heard people on the radio say that all they need to do is improve their W-L record by a couple of games and they will be playoff contenders. That is a mistake. They need to be aiming to be about 11 to 12 games better than this year's record.
Have you heard Buster Posey or Bob Melvin or any of the players say making the 6'th seed was all they were aiming for? If so, I would like to see a quote. Don't conflate what radio guys and podcasters say with organizational culture.
DeleteBuster and Melvin are careful not to say it but Larry Baer did.
Delete“The feeling is we go hard and anything can happen. Stranger things have happened. I mean, I remember, Markus, back in 2014, I'm sorry, 2010, we were six and a half back in like all of the wild card in August 25th, August 26th, and we just pushed hard and we ended up winning the division on the last day of the season.
So I think we push hard, we got a number of games at home, including these three with the Dodgers this weekend and then on the road for a week and then home series with St. Louis and Colorado. So if we push hard, anything can happen. So scoreboard watching, I know we were all watching the Phillies match last night, and the scoreboard watching is important and fun.
But if we go on a run here, we've been on these runs, it's doable, it's in there somewhere. Eleven out of 12, six out of seven, five out of six, we do that, we should have a shot.”
From The Executive Show: 9-11 Larry Baer joins Murph & Markus to share his perspective on Buster Posey's first season as President of Baseball Operations, the Dodgers series starting tomorrow, & all the cool giveaways!, Sep 11, 2025
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/9-11-larry-baer-joins-murph-markus-to-share-his-perspective/id1584814238?i=1000726382936&r=391
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Where in that quote does Baer say that say that making the last seed is the goal. Yes, it's obviously A GOAL for every team but where did Baer say they are satisfied with stopping at the final Wild Card? All he's saying here is he thought they still had a shot at the postseason as of Sept 11, 2025, which they did because that's the day we left on our cross country trip and they beat the Dodgers on Bailey's walk-off grand slam on 9/12. So please, if you are going to post quotes as proof of something here, don't misrepresent what they say.
DeleteKrukow: “So, you know, it's unfortunate to say goodbye to good people because they were really literally, you know, four or five games away from going to the playoffs, which was the goal.
DeleteBut I think that, you know, with the Giants, it's not just to get to the playoffs, it's to go deep in the playoffs. And I don't think that the Giants had that ability with this year's club.”
From KNBR Podcast: 10-1 Mike Krukow joins Murph & Markus to share his thoughts on Bob Melvin getting fired & why Buster Posey decided to move on, Oct 1, 2025
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/knbr-podcast/id967090792?i=1000729559226&r=270
This material may be protected by copyright.
The stated goal by the Giants is to win championships and it is in their mission statement. Krukow probably realized what he said and then tried to clarify. Every now and then the making the playoffs statements slip out so and I think Fan senses this also. The other quote went something like they were a couple of wins away from “getting the job done”. If I could put it another way, do you think they would have retained Bob Melvin if they made the playoffs and then got eliminated in the first round?
Once again, you misrepresent what Krukow said in your editorializing and no, I don't think Buster would have retained Melvin if they made the playoffs and then got blasted out like the Reds in the first round.
DeleteI am going to cut off this discussion here. I see no reason to doubt that Buster Posey and the Giants goal is to 1. Win the NL West which means finishing ahead of the Dodgers and 2. Win the World Series. Getting in the postseason is a minimum goal and why even thought they just missed, Buster found it unacceptable and fired the manager.
DeleteThe Giants were tied for first place on June 13. If Buster's goal was merely to make the last playoff spot, why would he have traded 3 prospects for one of the best hitters in baseball and taken on $300 M in salary obligations? And the rest of ownership obviously had to sign off on it.
DeleteGreat summary of the season. Enjoy your blog and look forward to getting my off season Giants fix here. Thank you. I remember Buster mentioning last offseason how excited he was about the Giants young pitching talent. What may have contributed negatively to the 2025 season was the young pitching except for Roupp didn't take a big step forward. What if Birdsong didn't regress at Harrison got them Devers Posey did briefly mention in his presser they need to be better at pitching development. Now they have to look to trade or sign pitching.
ReplyDeleteBuster overestimated his pitching depth last year. I'm guessing he won't make that mistake again.
DeleteBuster said last year the strength of the organization is their young pitching.. Do you agree? I'm not sure what to think, I expected ups and downs but a little more success also.
DeleteI agree but it has not developed as quickly as it could have and it thins out in the lower levels because the emphasis on the last few drafts and international signings has been on position players.
DeleteGavin kilan might develop into a good player but thought they would draft a high ceiling pitcher in 2025 draft.
DeleteI will follow Kilen's and Kruz Schoolcraft's development closely. Schoolcraft is who I wanted the Giants to draft and the too early returns on Kilen were not great.
Delete....Schoolcraft's one appearance in A ball didn't go so well either.
DeleteGiants were 41-31 after their last game without Devers, then went 40-50 with him (in every game).
ReplyDeleteIncluded were 4 ugly streaks: 2 of 6 games lost, 1 of 7 games lost, and 1 losing 9 of 11 games, combined losing 30 of 32 games.
The 3 or 4 good streaks could not overcome that.
The Big 3, Webb, Ray, and Verlander, were all part of the losing, and other than them, the Giants didn't have someone to stop the bleeding.
If Verlander will come back and another good, durable starter signed, the Giants might be able to avoid those lengthy losing streaks.
They "only" need to pick up 10 wins to be in the hunt. Pitching is the way to do it.
I think the Devers trade caught everybody by surprise, maybe him more than anyone. It seemed like there was an understandable adjustment period, both for him and the team which contributed to the down spiral. Other factors included Chapman's injury, Verlander's early struggles and bad luck, failure of some of the young pitchers to develop, particularly Birdsong, Walker's struggles with closing out games, Jung Hoo Lee trying to be something he isn't. After the trade deadline the depleted bullpen was a big factor in the August slump. So, many factors, some of which are correctable and some possibly already corrected.
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