{"id":269330,"date":"2026-04-15T17:03:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T17:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/269330\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T17:03:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T17:03:29","slug":"the-sf-giants-are-barreling-toward-a-major-dilemma-at-catcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/269330\/","title":{"rendered":"The SF Giants are barreling toward a major dilemma at catcher"},"content":{"rendered":"

The San Francisco Giants<\/a> haven\u2019t even completed three weeks of their six-month season, but there\u2019s already a dilemma brewing at one of the team\u2019s most important positions.<\/p>\n

Patrick Bailey has been the Giants\u2019 primary catcher for a few years now and is considered a renowned defender<\/a>, having won the last two National League Gold Glove Awards for catcher. The former first-round pick also has consistently<\/a> received a vote of confidence<\/a> from Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey \u2014 no small thing given Posey is the standard that all Giants catchers will forever be judged against.<\/p>\n

While Bailey\u2019s work behind the plate is not questioned, the switch-hitter has gone through some rather turbulent times with the bat in his hands. Entering 2026, Bailey had batted<\/a> .230 in his three MLB seasons and produced some highlight moments<\/a> at the plate. In each season, Bailey had a month or two where he caught fire and hit well above his career average, but he also had multiple months of struggles where he batted below that number, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This year, the streaky hitter has come out of the gates ice-cold, with just six hits\u00a0\u2014 all singles\u00a0\u2014 and three walks in 44 plate appearances. Out of the 250 hitters\u00a0who had at least 40 plate appearances<\/a> this season entering Sunday, Bailey\u2019s .351 OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage) ranks 247th. (It also doesn\u2019t help that one of the three players worse than Bailey is his Giants teammate Harrison\u00a0Bader, with a .338 OPS.) It\u2019s gotten so bad that Giants beat reporter John Shea of the San Francisco Standard wrote a story<\/a> contemplating whether Bailey should give up switch-hitting to focus on his left-handed swing only, even though Bailey has steadfastly said he won\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n

For the past few years, the Giants haven\u2019t seemed to find a backup to really challenge Bailey\u2019s status<\/a> as a starter. That\u2019s changed this spring, thanks to the blistering start from Daniel\u00a0Susac, whom the Giants traded for in the offseason. As a Rule 5 draft pick<\/a>, Susac\u00a0has to stay on the Giants\u2019 MLB roster all season long or else be offered back to his original team, the A\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The younger brother of a former Giants backup catcher,\u00a0Susac broke a franchise record<\/a> by getting a hit in each of his first five career at-bats. When that streak ended, the rookie followed up in his next at-bat with an RBI triple \u2014 the only extra-base hit from a Giants catcher so far this season.<\/p>\n

Susac bats right-handed and has been getting his starts when the Giants face left-handed pitchers, so he has only started three of the Giants\u2019 16 games so far. But he already has more hits (seven) than Bailey does this season. And he even had a standout defensive play<\/a> in his most recent start Sunday, throwing out a runner trying to steal second from his knees.<\/p>\n

As the Giants have otherwise limped to a 6-10 record so far, Susac is tied for second on the roster<\/a> with 0.5 WAR (wins above replacement) \u2014 even though he\u2019s only got 12 plate appearances and played just 30 of 141 defensive innings. That standout effort on a struggling team has led many fans,\u00a0sports radio hosts<\/a> and even Giants broadcasters<\/a> to call for more playing time for Susac at the expense of Bailey, who has a negative WAR so far (-0.4).\u00a0<\/p>\n

That might be trickier than anticipated. The Giants will likely face right-handers in every game this week \u2014 three in Cincinnati and three in Washington. When they return home next week, the Giants will surely face more right-handers given both the Dodgers and Marlins have\u00a0all-righty rotations.\u00a0Susac is certain to get a start or\u00a0two against right-handed pitchers, if only to give Bailey a break.<\/p>\n

For now, Bailey is starting Tuesday\u2019s game and is\u00a0still getting support<\/a> from manager Tony Vitello<\/a> as the main starter.\u00a0Still, the calls are already quite loud for the Giants to reconsider. If\u00a0Susac can keep performing anywhere close to the level he currently is \u2014 or if Bailey simply can\u2019t figure things out at the plate \u2014 then the\u00a0pressure will only increase<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Francisco Giants haven\u2019t even completed three weeks of their six-month season, but there\u2019s already a dilemma…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105,2225],"class_list":{"0":"post-269330","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-san-francisco","9":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","10":"tag-san-francisco-news","11":"tag-sf","12":"tag-sf-headlines","13":"tag-sf-news","14":"tag-sfgsports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}