{"id":641304,"date":"2026-05-13T20:48:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T20:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/641304\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T20:48:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T20:48:14","slug":"the-giants-problems-this-season-have-nothing-to-do-with-their-big-contracts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/641304\/","title":{"rendered":"The Giants\u2019 problems this season have nothing to do with their big contracts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The narrative of the 2026 San Francisco Giants can still shift without warning and head in a different direction. It takes only a couple of wins against the Los Angeles Dodgers to pull the Giants back into the land of the living and put thoughts in your head. What if the hitters who were supposed to produce actually produce? What if the pitchers who were supposed to prevent runs actually prevent runs? After all, the Giants are closer to the San Diego Padres and postseason position right now than they were on Aug. 25, 2010<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you need to cool off, the playoff odds are right there<\/a>. There\u2019s been so much damage done to those hopes already, and a very modest winning spree can\u2019t undo all of it. Still, a couple of convincing wins against the seemingly invincible Dodgers fill you with chemicals your body isn\u2019t used to. Let it ride.<\/p>\n

The timing is perfect because the Giants\u2019 ample and varied long-term contracts have entered the discourse. MLB Trade Rumors had a thoughtful article on it<\/a>, possibly inspired by a Bob Nightengale article that suggested the Giants want to trade their biggest contracts, quoting \u201crivals\u201d and \u201cone executive.\u201d It\u2019s a classic progression: Team wants to win with veterans, team can\u2019t win with veterans, team trades veterans.<\/p>\n

A general fixation on \u201cbad contracts\u201d is a particular pet peeve of mine, though, especially when they\u2019re used as evidence of incompetence or poor planning. As far as pet peeves go, it\u2019s below the Alex Avila Rule obsession<\/a>, but not by much. It misses the point of free agency and why teams need free agents. It forgets what teams expect from the free agents they sign, and how much of a player\u2019s decline is baked into the original thinking. And it completely ignores what the Giants would do without these long-term contracts, which is probably sign other players to long-term contracts.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s dig into what the Giants\u2019 long-term contracts really mean for the state of the franchise and how desperate they should really be to move any or all of them.<\/p>\n

The first and most important thing to remember is that free agents are a \u201cSo, You Didn\u2019t Develop a Player Tax,\u201d nothing more. A team that develops a third baseman will have an underpaid player in his prime, and if they develop another third baseman behind him, they\u2019ll keep the cycle going. When the cycle stops, well, now you have to make some painful trade-offs. You can trade prospects for a third baseman, further hurting your chances as a conveyor belt of underpaid young players. You can spend too much money on a third baseman, with the last third of his contract extremely likely to be a problem. Or you can make do with internal options and lesser free agents, with the lowered expectations that accompany them.<\/p>\n

Those are the options when a team doesn\u2019t develop a player, and those won\u2019t change. The Giants announced the Matt Chapman extension on Sept. 5, 2024, and it\u2019s not a coincidence that Casey Schmitt was hitting .209 at the time, with a .225 on-base percentage \u2014 video game numbers, but the wrong kind. The Giants figured Chapman was their best chance at third base production for a long time, and they\u2019ve only come to question this in the last month and a half, with Schmitt showing signs of a breakout season.<\/p>\n

\"Casey<\/p>\n

\n Casey Schmitt looks like he could be the Giants\u2019 long-term answer at third base now, but when Matt Chapman signed his extension, Schmitt didn\u2019t look like an everyday MLB player. (Thearon W. Henderson \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

And once a team has paid the \u201cSo, You Didn\u2019t Develop a Player Tax,\u201d they circle the calendar at a point a few years in the future and make plans for when they start to stink on that big contract. Because it\u2019s going to happen. Free agents have enough leverage to make teams pay them for their decline. This is the tax, and the only alternative is to search for different, cheaper and likely worse players. The Giants didn\u2019t rub their hands together in glee because they were excited to watch a 34-year-old Willy Adames play shortstop in 2031; they wanted the best version of Adames in 2026. That\u2019s true for everyone else, from the cornerstone contracts to the two-year deal they gave Adrian Houser. Anything positive that happens in the second half of the contract is a bonus. It\u2019s the first part they really want.<\/p>\n

Through the first seven weeks of the season, the Giants have been burned by an inexplicable hastening of the timeline. Chapman, Adames and Rafael Devers weren\u2019t supposed to be in the albatross phase of their contracts yet. Maybe in a couple of years, and maybe in 2027 if you\u2019re extra cynical, but not this season. That\u2019s what\u2019s so baffling about the 2026 Giants. It\u2019s like someone went into the settings and moved their ages up a few years.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take Jung Hoo Lee out of the long-term contract discussion for now \u2014 he\u2019s an outlier whose youth and possible development factored into his cost \u2014 and focus on the big three: Adames, Chapman and Devers. The Giants owe them something close to a combined $481 million, with Adames\u2019 contract running through 2031, Chapman\u2019s through 2030 and Devers\u2019 through 2033.<\/p>\n

Sounds bad, but all three players have been remarkably steady compared to the typical veterans. Their combined WARs from Baseball-Reference since the 2021 season, along with the average MLB rank among the three players in WAR:<\/p>\n

2021: 3.7 (average overall rank 58th)
2022: 4.2 (45th)
2023: 3.6 (60th)
2024: 4.7 (36th)
2025: 4.0 (45th)<\/p>\n

Out of all three players, the worst season was Adames\u2019 2023 campaign, when he was worth 2.9 WAR and was the 84th-most valuable player in baseball. That\u2019s the worst season out of 15 examples: a rock-solid, extremely helpful player who helps his team win.<\/p>\n

These players are still supposed to help. This shouldn\u2019t be the bad parts of the contracts yet. All three players have been among the most consistent in baseball for several seasons, and only Chapman is at an age where he should get extra scrutiny. A front office that panics and treats these players like ticking time bombs is a front office that\u2019s far too reactionary, because the organization needs to get these players to match their past and projected production.<\/p>\n

Getting back to the old normal is the extra-boring Manhattan Project for the Giants. There\u2019s been positive movement on that front, with Devers\u2019 strong May and Adames\u2019 improving at-bats, even if there\u2019s a long way to go. This isn\u2019t a story about bad contracts, though. This is a story about reliable players turning unreliable before they were supposed to. It can actually be a much scarier story than simply bad contracts if you have a good imagination (which I don\u2019t recommend).<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say the Giants wiped some of these contracts off the books with a wave of a wand. Poof, gone. There\u2019s a decent chance that Giants ownership would pocket the money and get you hyped for a You Gotta Like These (Underpaid) Kids! Revolution, but there\u2019s also a good chance they would reinvest the money into other free agents, hoping to win a few extra games and keep fans interested through the fall.<\/p>\n

If the Giants kept struggling offensively, they would want to sign a power bat in this offseason scenario. Someone with enough power to overcome Oracle Park. Someone who wasn\u2019t too old, but who had a strong offensive track record. Someone to hit dingers and keep the Giants in games until they develop more hitters to bolster the lineup.<\/p>\n

Congratulations: You just signed Devers again. As in, if the Giants have extra money, they\u2019ll just spend it on players like the ones they have now. And, again, the three biggest contracts were given to players who were as consistent and reliable as any players in baseball. If they can be unreliable, well, good luck with the free agents you\u2019re picking out of a hat.<\/p>\n

The biggest problem with the Giants is, was and will continue to be a lack of prospects and development. The money on the books isn\u2019t the problem, especially when it\u2019s absolutely a choice to keep the payroll around the 10th- to 15th-highest every season. Nobody will be talking about \u201cwhat the Dodgers have to do with Freddie Freeman\u2019s contract\u201d if he starts acting his age. He\u2019ll either keep hitting, or they\u2019ll find someone who will. It\u2019s not complicated if the money is infinite.<\/p>\n

You are, however, seeing the beginnings of an actual problem with the Giants\u2019 long-term contracts: opportunity cost. If Schmitt keeps hitting, and Chapman keeps flailing, there will be discussions about how the Giants can best allocate playing time. And if Schmitt, Adames, Chapman, Devers and Luis Arraez all keep producing, there won\u2019t be room for Bryce Eldridge in the lineup. This is a problem that will be fixed by Arraez leaving in the offseason or at the trade deadline, with Schmitt moving to second, but it\u2019s a glimpse of a more complicated situation in the future, perhaps.<\/p>\n

These are the Cepeda-McCovey kinds of dilemmas, where there are simply too many good players for too few spots, and they\u2019re real. The Giants aren\u2019t there yet. And while their farm system is ascending, it\u2019s spit out only a few players so far. It\u2019s a roster that still needs veterans. Veterans with a consistent track record, perhaps. Veterans like \u2026<\/p>\n

The other option is to become the Rays or the Brewers, which sounds like a lot of fun, but there would be growing pains. You\u2019d never get to keep a player you liked, either. It\u2019s perfect that those two teams are the current standard-bearers for winning on the cheap, because they\u2019re the ones that used to employ Adames. The Giants still might have a Willy Adames Day one of these years, and those teams likely won\u2019t. Yet those teams probably got the best versions of Adames, so it\u2019s not like their fans are too sad about it. Continuity has value too, though. There\u2019s no wrong answer, just different baseball experiences for different fan bases.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a rough season so far, but it hasn\u2019t been a rough season because the Giants spent their money on expensive free agents. It\u2019s been a rough season because those players forgot how to play baseball, at least temporarily. Pointing at the past doesn\u2019t make sense, especially when the Giants will (and should) continue to pay players too much money for their declining years. Freeing up money is only an invitation to start the process up again. The real answer is to develop prospects who are so good that they start asking for real money one day. That\u2019s a few years off, though. Until then, get the previously helpful players helping again, and keep developing. It\u2019s not complicated, even if the Giants spent the first few weeks of the season making it seem that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The narrative of the 2026 San Francisco Giants can still shift without warning and head in a different…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,2329,99],"class_list":["post-641304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}