As a former coach, I know what happens during the first practice of the season. You introduce yourselves, talk about the school you go to and maybe your favorite food. Then you line up and play catch, which is a helpful way to figure out who your more polished players are.
However, if that happens at Giants camp, it happens behind closed doors. On the field, it’s a bunch of baseball men doing baseball things, and you’re happy to see it. Spring has sprung, and the baseball season has officially unofficially begun.
Now it’s time to analyze this team into the ground.
Ha, just a little February humor, folks. Except there’s plenty of truth to it, too. With the full squad in camp, the players move from internet abstractions back to baseball players, and the reason they’re in this specific camp is that the Giants think they can help them win.
So let’s look at the four players in spring training you should be watching extra carefully. These aren’t prospects you’ll want to watch early before they’re reassigned to minor-league camp. These are the players with the best chance to have an outsized impact on the 2026 season.
Landen Roupp
Because every baseball season is five years long, it can be easy to forget where Roupp left off his 2025 season. His last two starts were rough (10 ER, 5 1/3 innings), but from May through July, he made 14 starts, with a 2.27 ERA (3.49 FIP). It wasn’t just the effectiveness and run prevention that were helping, but his ability to pitch into the sixth and seventh innings regularly. That means plenty in the modern game.
This is why Roupp is pencilled into the Opening Day rotation. Before his season ended on a comebacker to his right knee, and ignoring the hiccups of his last two starts, he looked like one of the better stories of last season. And with the benefit of hindsight and the passage of time, it probably was.
That written, it’s hard to claim that Roupp has a better grip on his position than Kyle Harrison had in camp last year, and Harrison went from the fifth starter to a minor leaguer to the Boston Red Sox to the Milwaukee Brewers. It wasn’t like he threw one too many uncompetitive pitches and a trap door opened underneath him, but relative certainty gave way to relative uncertainty, and things got out of hand from there.
Which is all to suggest that Roupp’s grip on the spot is only as strong as the grip on his curveball. As in, he’ll have to pitch as he did toward the end of last season to be a pitcher you’re thinking much about. And if you’re not thinking much about Roupp, that’s probably a good thing for the Giants, and it’s probably a great thing for his chances to keep his rotation spot.
JT Brubaker
It’s not an accident that Brubaker is the 1b to Roupp’s 1a on this list, even though he’s someone you probably haven’t thought much about since last season, when he appeared in five games for the Giants. The 32-year-old right-hander has made 62 major-league starts in his career, with a 5.06 ERA and a 9-28 record. Those are not statistics that make you order a jersey.
However, there is context for those numbers. The first is that his initial major-league experience came with the Pittsburgh Pirates at their most chaotic, a 100-loss team in spirit and practice the entire time he was there. It wasn’t a place where pitchers were set up for success, and there’s a reason the New York Yankees traded for him before spring training in 2024. They figured there was still potential to unlock, but injuries got in the way, and he didn’t do much for them when he debuted the following season.
What gives Brubaker a chance is that he re-signed with the Giants on a major-league contract this offseason. That doesn’t mean that if the Giants cut him, they’ll owe the entire $1.8 million on his deal, but they’ll still have to pay him either 30 or 45 days of prorated pay, depending on how deep into spring training they are. It’s an easy tiebreaker if there’s a young pitcher like Carson Whisenhunt or Trevor McDonald, who might also be capable of handling a hybrid role but would have options.
You’re not excited, but sometimes these are the moves that matter. Think of Yusmeiro Petit in his Giants prime, doing just about everything the team needed, whenever it asked, all the way to a near-perfect game and an iconic postseason appearance. A more optimistic way to look at it is that the Giants signed up for a 30-day trial of Brubaker last season, and it’s not like he’s on the team again because the auto-renewal kicked in. They liked what they saw, and for his part (although I’m not sure how picky he could be), he liked what the organization had to offer.
Maybe this excites me, a weirdo who still has fond memories of Joe Roa and Keiichi Yabu and their innings-absorbing magic. Here’s someone with a chance to fill that role. (Hey, it matters. Sometimes, a lot.)
Jerar Encarnacion
Jerar Encarnacion hit two homers in 19 games last season. (Darren Yamashita / Imagn Images)
As of right now, the DH on the Giants’ depth chart at Roster Resource is Bryce Eldridge, and that makes sense from a distance. He’s the Giants’ best prospect, he finished last season in the majors, and if he can make a quick adjustment to major-league pitching, the Giants’ lineup could move from interesting to terrifying. With Rafael Devers, Willy Adames and Matt Chapman, the Giants already have three players they’re hoping can hit 30 home runs. Eldridge could give them another one.
And though this is probably a standalone article that fits better closer toward the end of March, it seems like it would be slightly ludicrous to make Eldridge the Opening Day DH.
Hey, if he hits .400 with bomb after bomb in the Cactus League, I’ll have an open mind. I might be riding shotgun on the bandwagon. But from here, he looks like a still-young prospect who doesn’t need to be rushed. He’s surprisingly advanced for a hitter with a strike zone as big as his, but think of how long it took Aaron Judge — one of the best players in the game at telling a ball from a strike — to put everything together. Even if Eldridge is three years ahead of where Judge was as a youngster, that timeline would still establish him in the big leagues next season. The Giants can afford to let Eldridge make the decision for them.
Until then, here’s Encarnacion, who is currently enrolled in the Ron Washington Boot Camp for Wayward Infielders and taking groundballs at first base. Washington told reporters yesterday: “I just brought Encarnacion out there, and if you’d seen him the first day, you’d think he couldn’t catch a groundball. Went out there (Sunday), and he missed zero. Threw everything (well). … He did the right thing, took the right angles, was downhill, centering the ball. … Oh, he was awesome. He left there today with a grin from ear to ear. That’s confidence. Tomorrow, he’ll be more confident.”
The Giants clearly want Encarnación to take over Wilmer Flores’ role, getting plenty of time at first and being the big power bat off the bench. But don’t be surprised if he starts getting everyday at-bats at DH, even when a right-hander is pitching.
Even though Encarnacion’s promising 2025 was derailed by a hard-to-watch succession of injuries right as he was starting to establish himself, all of the ingredients are still there for him to be an impact player. You know how the Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays always seem to find random players on the cheap, and then you look up and they’re having a monster season, with 15 or 20 homers and a strong OBP? The tools are there. Now it’s up to the health (and the bat).
Heliot Ramos
I refuse to believe Ramos is as bad in the outfield as he was last year. At least, I’m not entirely sold it’s an immutable reality that we’ll just have to get used to. My evidence for this is that 2024 also happened, and he was merely a struggling defensive outfielder, and his defensive numbers took a hit because he started 57 games in center field.
Another reason I refuse to believe Ramos was this bad is that a team was willing to start him 57 times in center freaking field. Not because of his talent. Not because of anything other than need or roster complications, but it’s still relevant to point out. No matter how bad things get on the depth chart or IL this season, the Giants aren’t going to put Luis Arraez or Casey Schmitt in center field. They aren’t an option for the most important defensive outfield spot. Everyone has a pretty good idea of how it would go.
Ramos, though? He was already an outfielder with almost two innings of center-field experience in the minors for every inning in left field. He was never going to be an everyday center fielder, but in a roster pinch, he could be. That was the thought in 2024, at least, and it certainly didn’t make the organization look silly. He wasn’t good, but the advanced metrics didn’t loathe him, either. They only sneered at him in passing.
In 2025, though, the statistics loathed him. More than the stats, though, the eyeballs hated him. Ramos’ defensive season was filled with bad breaks, poor decisions and strange routes. Sometimes they all happened on the same play.
The good news is that Ramos knows this is the easiest part of his game to improve. His ability to make contact used to be the bigger concern, but he went from a 28.4 percent strikeout rate in Triple A as a 22-year-old to a 22.7 percent strikeout rate in the majors as a 25-year-old. He’s shown an ability to work on specific parts of his game, and the effort and athleticism aren’t the problem. Ramos could be athletic enough to be a solid defensive left fielder, but right now the Giants are looking for “not appalling.”
I’d look at Ramos’ defensive season the same way I’d look at a .550 OPS preceded by several .700 OPS seasons. I’m not saying he’ll be great out there, but there’s also a chance that last year was a blip, not the new normal.