SAN FRANCISCO — The Giants didn’t have the decency to maintain relevance until September.
They didn’t even come close.
Let Wednesday stand as the unofficial end of San Francisco’s season — the day the last bit of hope was extinguished. Even the most unabashed, removed-from-reality homer can no longer make the case that the Giants — 10 games back of the Padres in the National League West and three games under .500 after an 11-1 loss — have any shot of playing more than 162 games this season.
It’s done. It’s over. You almost feel indebted to the Giants for being expedient about it.
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Starter Kai-Wei Teng was bashed for seven runs in a second inning Padres onslaught that started with a ball bouncing off of second base with the bases loaded and was capped by left fielder Helios Ramos spiking a throw into the outfield grass.
The only thing missing was the Benny Hill theme song.
Do the Giants even need to play the final 41 games, or can we end the torture now?
To have a reasonable chance of making the playoffs, the Giants would need to reach 90 wins. That means winning three of every four games from here on out — 31-10.
It’s such a laughable premise that I feel bad even presenting it — I might have misled you, must for a moment, into thinking such an outcome was possible.
The shame is that, going into this season, it didn’t seem ridiculous to believe the Giants were capable of a 90-win campaign.
But six months after Spring Training camp in Arizona and amid a run in which the Giants have won only seven of their last 24 games, that optimism has been replaced with justified anger and confusion.
Here’s a question: What are — no, were — the 2025 San Francisco Giants good at?
A few weeks ago, you could have pointed to their bullpen as a point of pride. That’s (justly) no longer the case after a tactical sell-off at the trade deadline.
Starting pitching? Logan Webb has a 5 ERA over his last nine starts, Robbie Ray is at 4.34 over his last five starts, Justin Verlander is a high 4 ERA pitcher and hasn’t gone six innings in a month, and the final two spots are in flux on a start-to-start basis.
Oh, and we know for certain this team can’t hit.
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It turns out that the power of friendship upon which this team was built is a terrible foundation in Major League Baseball.
If there was a process with this organization coming into the season, it was in Posey’s belief that if he could create a good clubhouse, he would create a good team.
Yes, he decided to build a baseball team off vibes.
The plan looked genius early in the season, when the Giants were winning nail-biters, walking off games with Little League and inside-the-park home runs and Wilmer Flores’ clutch hitting.
Was any of this sustainable? Of course not. And heaven forbid you asked such a question when Buster Magic was clearly in place.
No, the logic posited by those in Posey’s Cult of Personality (which, to be fair to him, he does little publicly to foster) was that good times would compound into more good times. The machine was turning, and the momentum was unstoppable.
It was a baseball Ponzi scheme.
And I can pinpoint the moment the pyramid started collapsing.
When the Giants had lost a home series to the Royals in mid-May and I suggested in a column that the team’s magic might already be waning, the response from some Giants — on and off the field, and no, I won’t name the names here — came in waves.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion on what I write and say. That’s particularly true when you’re the subject of such takes. Being fair game goes both ways.
But, frankly, some folks in black and orange came off as double-ply soft in that moment. It was a relatively benign column.
Sure, it’s unfair to paint with a broad brush, but this was the team that was supposed to supplant the Dodgers?
The Giants have subsequently done little to undercut my suspicions. They tied the Dodgers in the standings two months ago — June 13 — and have been in a free fall ever since.
And as this season has spiraled, it’s failed to bring out any fire and brimstone. Heaven forbid manager Bob Melvin (who somehow received a contract extension off this mess) raise his voice or publicly call out his team’s effort.
Is it all Melvin’s fault?
Hardly.
Posey paid Matt Chapman and Willy Adames a third of a billion dollars in the past year to be two right-handed power-hitting stalwarts for the lineup.
Together, they’ve combined for a .326 slugging percentage against lefties. It’s as if the Giants had soft-hitting Cardinals speedster Victor Scott batting twice in the middle of the lineup.
That’s just a bit of an issue amid the team’s seemingly countless (and ever-growing) list of on-field deficiencies.
But it’s not inconsequential that this team, which has been theoretically fighting for its season for the last few weeks, doesn’t seem to have any fight in it.
Perhaps they’re just following the leader. Watching Melvin sit stone-faced and silent on the top step of the dugout on Wednesday as Dom Smith took four straight balls with the bases loaded in the bottom of the third, only for two of the pitches to be incorrectly called strikes, it’s easy to wonder if his even-keeled energy is the right approach for this and future Giants’ teams.
Is going with the flow — good or bad — the defining characteristic of Giants’ baseball?
It is right now. And I don’t see how that’s acceptable.
Does Posey see it the same way? More importantly, is he willing to do something about it if he does? It’s an important determination as he tries to avoid a fifth straight season of abject mediocrity — the kind that feels so much worse than just being plain awful — in 2026.
The three-time champion is trying to rebuild the Giants in his winning image.
As we reach the unofficial end of Posey’s first season in charge, it seems that standard isn’t in sight.
