On a Roll!

Jul 18, 2026 | Latest Post, Out of Left Field

by DrLefty

Some of you have commented that the Giants seem to save their real stinkers for Friday nights, and then I have to sit down and write Out of Left Field on Saturday morning. Why, it was just a week ago Friday that Caleb Kilian blew (another) save and the Giants snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the ninth inning (again). I chose instead to write about homegrown players from the Giants’ drafts, since it was Draft Weekend.

Well, there will be no such avoidance or negativity this week. The Giants haven’t lost a game since I last wrote!*

Last night’s game in particular was encouraging, and we’ll get to that, but other good things happened over the past week. The Giants had what most experts considered a very successful draft, two top prospects appeared in the Futures Game, and four of them were promoted to the next level, and new farm system rankings are coming out, placing the Giants overall in the top ten and listing as many as five Giants prospects (including the newly drafted Jackson Flora) in the top 100. President of Baseball Operations Buster Posey finally showed up for his KNBR interview, and I thought it went fine–as far as his demeanor and responses, anyway; not so much for whatever (ex?) KNBR employee who dissed Buster on a hot mic at the end. Here’s the whole interview.

*OK. I know they’ve only played three games because of the All-Star break. I’ll still take it.

 

“Like a real major league team”–NFM

The Giants’ first game out of the All-Star break could not have gone much better. It featured a combined two-hit shutout, a two-run homer to get them on the board by the face of the future (present?), another of their signature grand slams, and a notably great performance by one of their rookie catchers. It was a good night for the “homegrown” theme I explored last week.

 

Landen Roupp

Roupp, who had a ten-day layoff between starts, put up his second great start in a row, throwing seven shutout innings. In his previous start against Toronto, he’d gone eight innings, giving up one run. Roupp has had an up-and-down year, but after a disastrous outing against Arizona on June 30, he said he’d found a mechanical problem and was able to fix it. Roupp will likely pass his career high in innings in his next start, so the rest of his season will be interesting to watch. If he can stay healthy and put up some consistently strong outings, he could go into 2027 as a fixture in the Giants rotation.

 

Bryce Eldridge

Eldridge has now graduated off the prospects list and is a fixture in the lineup, either as the DH or the 1B. After looking bad in his first two at bats, he hit a two-run homer in the fifth to break a scoreless tie. The remarkable thing about it was that he swung off balance and didn’t really even get all of it.

That was Bryce’s ninth homer of the year, and it doesn’t seem like a stretch to say he could get to 20 by the end of the season.

 

Drew Cavanaugh

An interesting thing happened on Friday. Daniel Susac was activated from the injured list, and veteran backup catcher Eric Haase was DFA’d. This means that the Giants’ catching position is now being manned by not one but three rookies: Susac, Jesus Rodriguez, and Drew Cavanaugh. The Giants are putting a lot of faith in three inexperienced backstops, especially after trading Gold Glover Patrick Bailey in May, but the rest of this season is as good a time as any to break them in, right? The pitching staff isn’t very good, so it’s not like the catchers are going to screw them up, and the 2026 team is going nowhere.

Anyway, let’s talk about Cavanaugh, who was the Giants’ 17th round pick in 2023, out of Florida Southern College. He, like Susac and Rodriguez, is 24 years old. He’s been a good minor league hitter (.265 batting average, .845 OPS), and Posey in his interview on Thursday talked approvingly about his defense and potential for growth.

Cavanaugh had a great game last night. He was on base four times, scored a run on Eldridge’s homer, caught a shutout, and threw a runner out at second base. It’s worth noting that Cavanaugh has appeared in 12 major league games this year and has now caught two shutouts (the other one was started/won by Logan Webb).

Susac will start behind the plate tonight to catch Webb, and the plan is reportedly that he will make about 50% of the starts, with Cavanaugh handling most of the others and Rodriguez occasionally catching (but mainly being used as a utility player). Since Susac bats right-handed and Cavanaugh bats lefty, this is a good balance as well.

 

Jason Foley

OK, now we’ve moved off  “homegrown,” though I guess we could mention that Kilian pitched a scoreless ninth, and he also was drafted by the Giants. But Foley is the more interesting story, appearing in his first major league game since the end of the 2024 season, having had shoulder capsule surgery. Foley looked great, with 97-98 velocity, threw a 1-2-3 inning, and struck out the last batter he faced, fist-pumping as he left the mound.

Foley, you’ll recall, was the “big ticket” bullpen item (making $2M this year) signed in the offseason, even though the Giants knew he probably wouldn’t pitch this season until now. He’s a bit of late bloomer, having not debuted in the majors until he was almost 26, plus he missed the whole 2025 season, which explains why he’s 30 years old and hasn’t hit arbitration yet (he will after this season). He did have 28 saves for the Tigers in 2024, making him the one guy in the Giants’ bullpen who actually has experience as a successful closer.

It will be interesting to see if either (a) he moves quickly up the “depth” chart in the bullpen (I put “depth” in scare quotes because the Giants don’t actually have any depth there) or (b) he has a few good appearances and gets traded by August 3. If you read articles about what various contending teams are looking for at the deadline, “bullpen help” shows up a lot.

 

Willy Adames

Let’s not sugarcoat it: Adames is having an awful year. Nonetheless, he hit his second grand slam of the season last night, and if he hits another one this year, he’ll become only the third SF Giant to hit three grand slams in the same season–and the other two are Hall of Famers (Willie McCovey and Jeff Kent).

The Giants lead the majors with eight grand slams, and their franchise record is nine. They should have a lot of opportunities to get there. Have you noticed they can hit now?

One other Giant has also hit two grand slams this year, so he also would have a chance to tie/break that single-season mark co-owned by McCovey and Kent. Without looking it up, who’s the other guy who has hit two slams this year?

That was Adames’s 16th homer, and while he may not get to 30 this year, he surely should hit 20.

 

Minor league notes

Before last week’s draft, Baseball America ranked the Giants as having the 10th best farm system. They published a new post-draft top-100 list, and as mentioned above, the Giants had five prospects not named Bryce Eldridge on it.

 

 

Two other general observations beyond these rankings. First, the four full-season affiliates are all having winning seasons. Richmond, Eugene, and San Jose all clinched playoff spots in the first half and lead their divisions/leagues in the second half. Second, the top prospects are doing well. Looking just at their current top-10 list per MLB.com, #3-6 and 8 have all been promoted (Jhonny Level, Gavin Kilen, Dakota Jordan, Bo Davidson, Trevor Cohen), and the top two (Josuar Gonzalez and Luis Hernandez) are having great seasons for the Arizona Complex League Giants and could end up in San Jose after the ACL season ends in a couple of weeks. The #7 prospect, lefty Jacob Bresnahan, got off to a late start due to injury, but he’s having a fine season for Eugene (3.02 ERA in 13 starts, 1.09 WHIP, 69 strikeouts in just 59 innings). It’s nice when the guys who are supposed to impress you are, in fact, being impressive.

Beyond these “top” prospects, we have success stories like that of Casey Schmitt, a second-round pick in 2020 who is having a breakout season and coulda/shoulda been an All-Star, the emergence of Cavanaugh, and the impressive debut for Victor Bericoto before he landed on the IL with a strained oblique.

The Giants’ lack of prowess in drafting and developing has been a storyline for far too many years. All indications are that this has turned around. It is the brightest silver lining by far of an otherwise dismal 2026 season.

 

Tonight’s Game

Giants at Mariners, 5:08 p.m. at T-Mobile Park

Logan Webb (5-7, 3.86 ERA) vs Bryan Woo (7-6, 4.23 ERA)

Hopefully Webb can channel “June Webby.” We haven’t enjoyed “July Webby” so far, but maybe that turns around tonight.

I’m happy I got to write about something more upbeat this week. We’ll get to the trade deadline next week and/or the week after. Lefty out.