We\u2019re not out of April yet, but there\u2019s been a month of the MLB season, so let\u2019s call it: The first month of the season is over, and we finally have some kind of idea of what the 2026 San Francisco Giants\u2019 identity might be. That identity is \u201cconfusing as heck,\u201d apparently, but it\u2019s still a kind of identity. It\u2019s information we can work with.<\/p>\n
And right now, \u201cconfusing as heck\u201d would look really, really, really good to some teams. The Giants are in Philadelphia to play a Phillies team that ended a 10-game losing streak over the weekend<\/a>. When the Phillies beat the Giants 6-4 on April 6, they moved to two games over .500, and the Giants fell to 3-8. It looked like a playoff-bound team giving a wedgie to an also-ran. Since then, the Phillies have gone 3-15, and the Giants have crept back into the land of the living.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just the Phillies, either. The New York Mets have also gone 3-15 since April 6. If you weren\u2019t impressed with Harrison Bader\u2019s first month with the Giants, now imagine an entire roster of it at twice the price. The Boston Red Sox just fired a coaching staff that was apparently beloved by the players<\/a>, and the front office\u2019s response was apparently \u201cshut up and play.\u201d Now remember that they don\u2019t have their version of Buster Posey delivering that message; they have their version of an Extremely Irritable George Kontos delivering it. The message is landing about as well as you\u2019d expect.<\/p>\n The Giants, though, allow you to be optimistic if you play fast and loose with your starts and endpoints. They\u2019re over .500 since the New York Yankees series. They\u2019ve won each of their last three series, including one against the Los Angeles Dodgers. They\u2019ve scored six runs or more in back-to-back games just twice this season, and all four of those games have been within the team\u2019s last nine. They also somehow lost four in a row to the Mets and Phillies teams that were described up there with a flashlight under my chin. The Giants contain multitudes, and they\u2019re capable of out-stinking any team in baseball, even the ones that are about to fall into a bottomless pit.<\/p>\n Over the last month, I\u2019ve been asked a few dozen questions about the Giants. What\u2019s wrong with them? Are they going to contend this year? Why aren\u2019t they hitting? Can they turn it around? The answers were always couched in \u201cit\u2019s early\u201d disclaimers, and they usually involved me talking out of both sides of my mouth. Maybe they\u2019re good, maybe they\u2019re bad; it\u2019s not looking great right now, but who\u2019s to say? You read my columns, apparently, so you know the routine.<\/p>\n Underneath, though, I was strangely forgiving of the team. It reminded me of the 2000 Giants, another team that started with more questions than answers but kept me going back to the roster and thinking, \u201cMmm, no, they\u2019re good, actually. This team should be good. Run the numbers again.\u201d The 2026 Giants won\u2019t have a pair of future Hall of Famers finishing 1-2 in the MVP race, most likely, but they still never completely lost me in the first month, even during their dullest stretches.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a simple reason for this: The Giants\u2019 current problems aren\u2019t the ones they were supposed to have. The problems they were supposed to have haven\u2019t been much of a problem at all. Out of all the possible permutations, this isn\u2019t a bad one to have. This is one the team can work with.<\/p>\n Before the season, my biggest concerns were:<\/p>\n \u2022 The bullpen Some of these concerns remain, and they\u2019ll probably remain throughout the season, but they\u2019ve all been addressed in some ways. The bullpen was always going to be a work in progress, a slow, painstaking experiment, with two flameouts for every late-inning success \u2026 except they seem to have landed on a reasonable arrangement just a month into the season. Every bullpen is a blown save away from you putting your boot through the drywall, but the Giants aren\u2019t getting late-inning outs from pitchers throwing 93 mph four-seamers down the middle and hoping for the best. They\u2019re getting leverage outs from relievers who look the part.<\/p>\n The back end of the rotation is still very much an open question, but Tyler Mahle\u2019s last start was encouraging, and even if Adrian Houser can\u2019t get unstuck, his struggles are much easier to take with the emergence of Landen Roupp. It wasn\u2019t the best-case scenario for the rotation, but a reasonable preseason goal would be to have one rock-solid starter behind Logan Webb and Robbie Ray and one pretty solid starter after that. If the fifth starter pitched like a sixth starter (or a 16th starter, as it turns out), that was always something that could be addressed internally or at the trade deadline.<\/p>\n The defense on the right side of the infield was going to be the biggest issue of April, I was sure of it. I was so primed to look for it that I initially blamed Luis Arraez for not making this play, which couldn\u2019t have been made by Bill Mazeroski wearing a jetpack:<\/p>\n Yes, it was just a matter of time until \u2026 he was one of the best defenders in baseball<\/a>? OK. Sure. I\u2019m not certain what kind of award Ron Washington deserves for this, but it should be rarer and more impressive than an EGOT. And after a shaky start that included all sorts of calamity and broken glass over at first base, Rafael Devers has looked much, much better in recent weeks after returning to the field.<\/p>\n As for the last concern, though there\u2019s still a \u201c_ Days Since You\u2019re Keenly Aware of the Rookie Manager\u201d sign hanging somewhere, it hasn\u2019t been reset to 0 in a while. When the Giants win, they look convincing, and the hiccups can be nonexistent. Several Giants players aren\u2019t coy with their emotions, and the emotions on display have generally been the ones you want to see: intensity, fire, camaraderie, enjoyment. You won\u2019t get an answer to the managerial question for another few months, and even then, your opinion can change drastically. I would have marched into the Giants\u2019 clubhouse and fired Bruce Bochy exactly 120 days before the Giants\u2019 first championship<\/a>, so maybe taking a little time to make up your mind is a good thing.<\/p>\n Those were the biggest preseason concerns, and while not all of them have been resolved, much less successfully, they\u2019re not the reason the Giants are still under .500. The biggest problems have been:<\/p>\n
\u2022 The back end of the rotation
\u2022 Defense on the right side of the infield
\u2022 An unknown manager\/coaching staff<\/p>\n