Kurtenbach: There’s only one way to measure SF Giants success in 2025

Only one thing will make the San Francisco Giants’ 2025 season a success.

And it’s not a certain number of wins, a push of the Dodgers in the National League West, or even a playoff berth.

Of course, a winning season and the team’s first trip to the playoffs since 2021 would be nice, but this Giants’ season will be appropriately judged strictly by the conversation around the team.

If in two, four, and six months we’re talking about the Giants on the field—and not the former player at the helm of the front office or the future players in the farm system—you can consider this season a victory.

Perhaps Thursday’s season opener in Cincinnati is a step in the right direction towards that. It was undoubtedly a buzzy start. Down 3-2 with two outs in the top of the ninth inning, the Giants rallied to win behind a game-tying RBI single from Patrick Bailey and a go-ahead three-run home run from Wilmer Flores.

The Giants, who won 6-4, might not enter this season expecting to be world-beaters like their blue-clad archrivals, but being clutch can make up for a lot of deficiencies.

Belief is the hardest thing to earn in baseball; the Giants earned a bit of it Thursday.

Then again, the White Sox, who are expected to lose 110 games this season, also won their season opener on Thursday, too.

This is just one of 162.

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But at least the conversation coming out of Thursday’s game isn’t about the $182 million man Willy Adames’ questionable play at shortstop, which nearly handed the Reds the win. Adames was the only big-money free-agent pickup in new director of baseball operations Buster Posey’s first offseason. However, maintaining the same roster didn’t detract from the cult of personality around the new boss.

Posey has justly built up immense trust with the fan base from his days as a player — those credits have transferred over to team-building, something he had never done before he gave himself the job in September.

How long can “In Buster We Trust” satiate? A long time. Longer than I initially thought. But surely it can’t last an entire season, right?

Either way, it brings us to the second prong of the look-over-here strategy: References to Giants’ 20-year-old prospect Bryce Eldridge. They were an incessant refrain in recent months.

Alas, calls for Eldridge, who has played 17 games above Single-A, will have to wait a few days to return, as the Giants blasted two big-time homers, the first from Heliot Ramos on the 11th pitch of an at-bat against Reds’ ace Hunter Greene, and then Flores’ game-winning blast.

As it stands, we have no idea what “Busterball” is supposed to be, and one game — even one like Thursday’s — isn’t going to define it.

But so long as it doesn’t require us to put more blind faith into to Posey and his lightly defined “vision” (which, to date, is only to be “prepared” and play “fundamental baseball” — as if other teams are winging it), or, worse yet, a 20-year-old prospect, that should be considered a win.

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There’s plenty to like about the 2025 San Francisco Giants. They’re certainly not the hapless White Sox or Marlins. (Miami also won Thursday.) This team shouldn’t need us to project deep into the future when discussing them.

While every game won’t be as engaging as Thursday’s, this team should prove interesting enough to keep us in the moment and focused on the field in front of us. That would be a win.

Becasue the time to talk about this team in the abstract ended with the first pitch in Cincinnati. Let’s see what kind of (hopefully) winning reality the Giants can cook up in 2025.