I made this absurd graphic during the playoffs when I thought Weiss would be put to a tough decision in game 3 of the NLDS, but it never materialized. You can figure it out.  

Despite commenting heavily, I’ve never written anything for this weblog because I never thought I had much to say, and I still don’t.  But this isn’t about being original or intelligent.  It’s about every schlub who wants a crack putting in their two cents.  It’s a long offseason, and if we waited for the ghost of Bill James to pen a jeremiad about our team’s misused resources in 2026, we’d be waiting a long time.  Also, I have it on good authority Bill James is still living.  He’d roll over in his grave if he knew I’d already counted him dead, if he knew I existed, that is.  

Anyhow, we had an expensively offensive offense in 2026.   Austin Riley, Sean Murphy, Swan-Seong Kim and Jurickson Profar were budgeted for $72 million and produced roughly as much as 4 replacement players.  Acuna produced maybe a third of what we were hoping for another $17 million.   The 2025 Giants were not a good offensive team, but we threw caution to the wind and gave two of their semi-regulars prominent roles (Yastrzemski and Dom Smith), and they performed about as well as you would expect based on career norms.

The sum-total of this malfeasance was an offense that flashed briefly for a fun couple of months and then fizzled from early June through the end of the season.  Thanks to 3 lefties (Baldwin, Olson, and Harris), we scored enough to win enough, but we struggled against lefty pitchers for that same reason.  The team was mostly carried to the playoffs by a shrewdly assembled pitching staff.  AA and Hefner deserve credit for that.

We played like a .500 team for 4 months, and I believe that is what we should expect to be without some changes and some luck.  Many are expecting to trade Profar.  I would love to, but I don’t expect that because AA doesn’t just dump maligned players that might have value (see Ozuna).  He might still be a decent bat, and you’re going to have to pay someone to take him.  Riley, I don’t believe is washed up.  He still has terrific bat speed, but his swing needs some tweaking.  His attack angle gets too steep and that makes his margin for error razor thin.  If he can flatten it out just a bit, he might bounce back to half of what he was, and we’re going to need that.  Murphy was ghastly, but if I peer through a slit lamp at his August, I see a .796 OPS for the month and think maybe he can still hit enough to make a difference if his health is finally 100%.  We need some combo of those three to bounce back. 

Our 2026 pitching staff was something of a miracle, and you can’t expect to just find a Martin Perez to pitch 3 WAR baseball for a league-minimum type salary.  Mahle was another great find, but his brilliance means he’ll get some multi-year offers and he’s at an age where he really needs to maximize this next contract.  Raisel Churches was great again, and he will be expensive to retain for another season, so maybe we shouldn’t.

So what should we do?  As it stands we have a gaping hole at SS that is best filled by Dubon in the short term.  He will get a pay raise, but it doesn’t seem like anyone is going to go crazy for a career utility man (Dubon, $9 million AAV/2 years).  Hoping for bounce backs is great, but it seems like we really need another bat.  Arozarena or Seiya Suzuki are similar players, righty batting outfielders with pop and strong on-base skills.  Either would go a long way to helping us right the ship.  Our top minor league outfield talent is lefty outside of Essenburg, so RH help is years away, and this is our chance to add it.  I expect RA and SS to get big deals that will likely price us out, but this is about what we should do, not what we will do (Arozarena, the more complete player with postseason batting chops, $25 million AAV/4 years).  We cannot rely on our young pitchers to step into our rotation, so I would retain Mahle ($14 million AAV/3 years).  Perez will probably get paid more elsewhere, but of course I’d love to have him back for cheap.  I would let Raisel Churches walk and try to backfill the bullpen with some of our younger arms (AJSS and Strider if he’s healthy—big if).  That may be more money than we have to spend, so we may need to find a taker for Yaz or Lopez or just bite the bullet and spend a few million for a change.