97 Losses, Zero Firings, One Promoted Pitching Coach: The Giants' Quiet Winter

The San Francisco Giants finished 65-97, allowed 91 more runs than they scored, and were one of the worst teams in the league by their own front office's admission. Their response, so far, has been a roster purge and an internal title change.

That's the story of the week in San Francisco, and it's a revealing one. The Giants spent the first days of November trimming their 40-man roster down to exactly 40, and the cuts were not ceremonial. José Buttó was claimed off waivers by the Rangers. Duncan Davitt went to the Reds. Brett Harris and Shay Whitcomb were claimed by the Phillies, who also grabbed two more off waivers later in the week. Tristan Beck was released outright. Reiver Sanmartin was designated for assignment to close out cut day. Nate Furman was traded to Washington for minor league arm Tony Neubeck. JT Brubaker became the first Giant to elect free agency — and notably, he's slated to be the club's only unrestricted free agent this winter, which means the roster crunch isn't going away just because the season is.

Then came the coaching news, and it's the part worth watching. Christian Wonders, previously an assistant pitching coach, is now the club's Director of Pitching. Frank Anderson, the man who held the pitching coach title, was moved down to assistant. It's a modest reshuffle dressed up as a promotion — and it lands against reporting from FanSided's Around the Foghorn that the Giants run one of the smaller analytics departments in baseball, per Zack Scott of Four Rings Consulting.

Stack those two items together and you get the central question of San Francisco's winter: can this organization fix a pitching staff that finished 23rd in ERA (4.25), 25th in walk rate, and got a 4.55 ERA with a 1.502 WHIP out of its bullpen, using the same infrastructure that produced those numbers?

The personnel data doesn't flatter the group. The Giants used 25 pitchers. Logan Webb was the one stabilizing force — 160.2 innings, a 1.17 WHIP, 4.31 ERA — and he still finished 8-9. Ryan Walker, counted on as a leverage arm, posted a 7.16 ERA and a 1.81 WHIP across 33 appearances. The walk problem is structural, not cosmetic, and it's exactly the kind of thing that a properly staffed pitching department is supposed to solve. FanSided noted that the playoff teams still standing — Cleveland, Tampa Bay, Milwaukee — separated themselves through pitching development, an area where the Giants have visibly lagged.

None of this is to say the cupboard is bare. Bryce Eldridge, at 21, put up a .269/.364/.461 line with 17 homers and 2.12 WAR in 107 games, with a 93rd-percentile walk rate and 96th-percentile hard-hit rate. Jung Hoo Lee played 143 games and hit .276. The underlying power rating has San Francisco 23rd at -0.51 runs versus an average team, but climbing — a +0.705 weekly swing off a -0.487 prior-season baseline, with the model suggesting the 65-97 record undersells them. That gap is the argument for patience.

But patience is easier to sell when you can point to a change. The Giants have added nobody of consequence from outside the organization, haven't replaced a manager or a front office head, and are reportedly not planning major staff changes. Meanwhile the pitching market is moving: Japanese starters Kaima Taira and Hiromi Itoh have been posted, and San Francisco has already been linked to both. The starting rotation, bullpen, and a right-handed outfield bat are the listed priorities.

Championship futures list the Giants at 125-to-1 and longer, which is roughly what you'd expect from a team that just lost 97 games and spent November cutting players rather than acquiring them. The odds aren't the interesting part. The interesting part is whether a reorganized pitching department, staffed from within, constitutes an actual plan — or just a new letterhead on the same problem.