The season isn\u2019t over, so take this with a grain of salt, but the San Francisco Giants\u2019 season ended over the weekend. Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs have different methodologies for their postseason odds, which leads to discrepancies and wide gaps in the middle of a season, but they slowly converge toward the end of every season. The Giants\u2019 postseason odds are 0.3 percent at the former site and 0.2 percent at the latter. You can rummage around for the Jim Carrey GIF if you\u2019d like, but you have better things to do.<\/p>\n
As the Giants faced this scenario in the weekend series against the Los Angeles Dodgers \u2014 not exactly do-or-die, win or go home, but close enough \u2014 they started Kai-Wei Teng and Trevor McDonald in two of the three games. This isn\u2019t a complaint directed toward Bob Melvin or Buster Posey. Them\u2019s the options. And it\u2019s not where the Giants expected to be.<\/p>\n
To his credit, McDonald pitched like someone who belongs. There\u2019s a half-baked article in my head about how someone like him needs to get away from the automated ball-strike system in Triple A and pitch to a catcher who can frame the heck out of his sinkers, with a major-league defense behind him. He\u2019s not getting this kind of defensive help in Sacramento:<\/p>\n
Teng struck out six of the 15 batters he faced, but he also hit three batters and walked two. He has some of the nastiest, weirdest movement on his pitches you\u2019ve ever seen, with absolutely zero guarantees that they will go where he wants them to. At this point, it\u2019s probably healthier to think of him like a knuckleballer. Could win the Cy Young when he\u2019s 37<\/a>, could be pitching for Fortitudo Bologna<\/a> by this time next season, with an infinite number of possibilities in between. You tell me.<\/p>\n Regardless of each pitcher\u2019s future, which is still very much in question, one thing that\u2019s certain is that neither pitcher was supposed to be a part of the present. Teng was designated for assignment over the offseason and re-signed as a minor-league free agent. McDonald was somewhere between 10th and 15th on the depth chart on Opening Day, depending on your personal rankings. They started games the Giants absolutely needed to win, and it wasn\u2019t anyone\u2019s fault, necessarily. Just one of those baseball things.<\/p>\n We can learn from this. \u201cA team can never have too much starting pitching,\u201d is an old baseball truism, except it doesn\u2019t apply to the first two or three weeks of the season. When the 2025 Giants began their season roughly 70 years ago, they had too much starting pitching. They had so much starting pitching that it was going to force young players into unfamiliar roles, and some of those roles might not be ideal for their individual development. What else could the team do, though? It was a good problem to have.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t take much for a team to go from that description to the September realities the Giants are facing. Here\u2019s what happened to the starting pitchers who were on the 40-man roster when the season started:<\/p>\n Performed as expected<\/p>\n \u2022 Logan Webb Traded<\/p>\n \u2022 Kyle Harrison<\/p>\n Hurt<\/p>\n \u2022 Landen Roupp Ineffective in majors but some success in minors<\/p>\n \u2022 Carson Seymour Ineffective in minors but some success in majors\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2022 Trevor McDonald<\/p>\n Ineffective in majors\u00a0and minors<\/p>\n \u2022 Mason Black Effective in majors until he wasn\u2019t, currently ineffective in minors \u2014 look, it\u2019s complicated (don\u2019t forget that his development was accelerated)<\/p>\n \u2022 Hayden Birdsong<\/p>\n Since then, the Giants have added Carson Whisenhunt to the 40-man roster, so feel free to add him to the \u201churt\u201d section. They\u2019ve also removed Ragsdale, who was claimed off waivers by the Baltimore Orioles (since lost to the Atlanta Braves), but Teng was added back to the roster as a nice, clean replacement for the \u201cineffective\u201d section.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Robbie Ray
\u2022 Justin Verlander<\/p>\n
\u2022 Keaton Winn<\/p>\n
\u2022 Tristan Beck<\/p>\n
\u2022 Carson Ragsdale<\/p>\n