The 2026 MLB All-Star Game was as forgettable for San Francisco Giants fans as any in recent memory. Luis Arraez struck out swinging on a pitch in the other batter’s box, and Logan Webb didn’t enter the game. That’s it; the franchise’s only contributions to the Midsummer Classic. Two other All-Stars among the remaining 75 had spent time in the Giants organization, Otto López and Tristan Peters. Both of them struck out, too.
It was the perfect All-Star Game for Giants fans to remember the 2026 season by, in other words. As in, don’t worry about remembering it because a better one will come along soon enough. Next season’s All-Star Game at Wrigley Field might be a fun one, of course, depending on where the Giants are in the standings. A year ago, nobody was expecting the White Sox to send a third of their lineup to the next All-Star Game, and they all seemed to have a pretty good time.
It’s the 2028 All-Star Game that should be on your calendar. Not only because it’s likely to be at Oracle Park — which it is — but also because that’s when the Giants hope to have a team fans actually like.
That’s hyperbolic and more than a little harsh, yet you probably understand the sentiment. Giants fans like this team, sure. When Jung Hoo Lee hits a stand-up double, the crowd chants his name with fervor, and when he hits a stand-up triple, they get even goofier. There are long-anticipated rookies on the roster, an affable homegrown All-Star ace on the roster and other delightful weirdos and miscreants. Fans line up for the bobbleheads and other promotional giveaways. The crowd gave Tyler Mahle a standing ovation for his seven strong innings on Saturday. Attendance is up for the second straight season, somehow, and they have a real chance to break 3 million fans for the first time in almost a decade.
It still feels like a component or secret ingredient is missing, though, something that can’t fully be explained by the lingering resentment over Pride Day. With the unlikely help of Phillies fans, I think I’ve figured it out.
The All-Star Game was in Philadelphia, and as you might already be aware, that’s where 60 percent of the internet is from. No, I don’t know why, either. But it’s great for the amateur sports sociologists among us. I don’t know what a Joel Embiid is, but, boy, do I have opinions about him.
A Phillies fan on the wider internet posted a picture they took of several of the team’s six all-stars together in the Citizens Bank Park outfield, and the caption was, “These are my best friends.” It took me back to the olden days, the days when it was possible to post a simple GIF on social media and get Giants fans excited about the players on the team.
The folks in that Academy Award-winning GIF are, I am going to imagine, a few of your best friends. There’s a sense of fan ownership that comes with the most successful Giants teams of the past, if only because it’s there with every successful team in every sport. But don’t tie it entirely to postseason success. It’s been a great time to be a Phillies fan, but also a painful time, especially in October. Why, the last season they won a World Series, the Giants drafted a fresh-faced high schooler named Zack Wheeler. Phillies fans still love their collection of scruffy galoots.
Imagine if this season’s All-Star Game had been in San Francisco, by contrast. The rosters would have been goosed to get an extra Giant or two on them — perhaps Lee, Casey Schmitt or Robbie Ray — but they definitely wouldn’t be sending six players. Pictures of Webb and Arraez doing All-Star things together made the rounds on the Giants internet, but it’s hard to see how the addition of any of the above players would have stirred feelings in the typical Giants fan. These are not your best friends. Not yet. This season, they’ve been a neighbor with a dog that sneaks into your yard to poop. There’s a lot of ice-breaking that needs to happen if you’re going to overcome that kind of start.
Winning is the less-than-secret ingredient that makes a fan base connect with a team, but the sense of fan ownership goes beyond that. Thinking back to Tim Lincecum or the fan-driven Belt Wars and the larger idea of the Brandons in general, you might get confused and think the recipe requires only homegrown players, but not a single one of those 2026 Phillies All-Stars was homegrown. They made four trades and spent a lot of money to get those All-Stars. The fans still identify with them, just the same.
OK, so the secret is that all of the mercenaries have to perform? Well, not exactly. There are style points involved, which means Schwarber helps release the baseball-go-boom chemicals in a fan’s brain. He gets more anecdotal credit from the fans at large than Matt Chapman might for running the bases well or playing a mean third base, even if Chapman has provided roughly twice the on-field value for his teams. Perception can’t explain it all, though. Even though Rafael Devers has a .926 OPS since the end of April — the old Devers, right in front of us — it’s hard to see him being a fan favorite until he does it for a lot longer.
So if the secret ingredient isn’t homegrown players or free agents, and if it isn’t limited to winning championships, what is it?
The secret ingredient is trust. It’s the conviction that the players temporarily wearing the Giants uniform will make you happy when you watch baseball. That sounds like another euphemism for “winning,” but it’s not. What the Phillies and their fans have going right now won’t be spoiled if they miss the postseason, at least not entirely. The fans can trust the players on the team because they’ve seen it work for several seasons in a row. They’ll occasionally be frustrating and miserable for long stretches, but they’ll always come back to baseball the heck out of a baseball.
Contrast that with what the Giants have offered up over the last couple years. Willy Adames was something like the worst player in baseball for a couple months last season, then he became a completely different player in the second half and had the first 30-homer season as a Giant since Barry Bonds. In the season-and-a-half Adames has been with the Giants, he’s posted the same WAR and OPS+ that he always has, but it’s been a roller coaster the entire time. I’m not even sure which phase of the Adames moon we’re in right now.
Devers has been around for just over a year, but he’s just starting to look like the version from Boston. Chapman’s value will always require extra context to unpack. Lee has been comically streaky throughout his career, which has tempered that fan fervor just a bit. Bryce Eldridge just got here, and everyone is trying to play it cool because they know he still isn’t established quite yet. Schmitt looked like an All-Star at his best this year, but he’s been more vintage Pedro Felíz since that peak. Even Webb, the steadiest pitcher in baseball coming into this season, entered the All-Star break with a meaningless controversy and a downward trajectory.
It’s the entire team, even if Webb is just a visitor in the lack-of-trust club. Can’t trust ’em. Not yet. Almost all of them — the free agents, the rookies, the journeymen — have been on their own winding paths. A lot of these players have shown off sustained stretches of brilliant play with the Giants, reminding everyone why they got paid in the first place, but they haven’t done it all together, and they certainly haven’t picked each other up. There wasn’t a prolonged period of time when Devers was hitting enough to ignore Chapman’s struggles, and vice versa. The same goes for Adames, Lee, Schmitt et al.
In two years, the Giants will likely host the All-Star Game, the reason being it’s almost their turn (it will have been more than 20 years since the last one) and Major League Baseball will want something on the West Coast to accommodate the players who will be in the Olympics … assuming all of that nonsense gets sorted out.
The 2028 Giants will have more All-Stars on the roster than they deserve, and that’s OK. That’s the perk of the host city. And here’s what I’m guessing you’ll see from the selections: At least one of the players on a big contract right now, if not two. A homegrown favorite or two, including players in the minors right now. An expensive free agent you aren’t even aware of yet, maybe. Logan Webb, with any luck.
The Giants hosted the All-Star Game in 1984, then they lost 100 games the following season. Two years after that All-Star Game, the You Gotta Like These Kids! movement started, and the city fell in love with the team all over again. It wasn’t always the kids, though. The mercenaries got plenty of love. The purest Giant of all-time (it’s a many-way tie, don’t worry) might be Mike Krukow, and when that ’84 All-Star Game was going on, he was just some old dude who came over in a trade.
The Giants hosted the game in 2007, and the team was so awful they couldn’t even get additional players on the roster. It was Bonds and only Bonds. Yet in a couple of years, the Golden Era would start, and Barry Zito would become a beloved part of franchise lore rather than a cautionary tale. If only the baseball-loving world could have focused on the franchise when the atmosphere was that inspiring.
Here’s a perfect chance for the franchise to reverse the order. In the years between this year’s All-Star Game and the next one the Giants host, something should happen. By 2028, the team should have a core of players you feel comfortable with. You should be used to the idea of them contributing to your overall baseball happiness. When one of the familiar players slumps, there will be other players hitting or pitching well enough to make up for it. They should be watchable. You should be able to point at a picture of them in the Oracle Park outfield and say, “Those are my best friends,” both tongue-in-cheek and dead serious at the same time.
That’s the plan, anyway. When you watch how well it’s worked for other teams — and how well it’s worked for the Giants in the past — it’s easy to feel jealous and wistful. They have a chance to get that all back. They just need all of the good players to be good at the same time, then to pile more good players on top of that. Then they need to stop being confusing.
If it happens when it’s supposed to, the world will be watching, with Eldridge becoming the first Home Run Derby contestant for the Giants since Bonds. You’ll point to him goofing around in the outfield with other Giants All-Stars during batting practice, and you’ll feel good about being a Giants fan. It seems distant because it is, and it’s absolutely not guaranteed. But if a daisy grows out of the 2026 manure, then a future All-Star Game would be the perfect place to show it off. Imagine how much you might like the team by then.