theathleticuk
The San Francisco Giants will not finish the first half of the 2026 season in last place.
If the season is going to underwhelm, then so will the flags they fly above the ballpark.
The 2026 Giants, this one will read, 1st Half Not Last Place.
Youll take it.
For now.
And maybe buy a shirt of it if the price is reasonable.
Advertisement The final game of their series win against the Colorado Rockies coincided with the second day of the 2026 MLB Draft, when teams start drafting based on outlier tools, senior signability or the statistical analyses their internal models spit out.
The win was nice enough to offer a ready-made refresher about the importance of the draft.
In chronological order, you had ..
Trevor McDonald (11th round, 2019) started the game and had an excellent outing, perhaps the best of his MLB career, allowing just one run and three hits, with a walk and four strikeouts in seven innings.
He needed just 73 pitches to get that far, and with a bigger lead, he might have had a chance for his first complete game.
McDonald pitching on the drafts second day is perfect, because hes the best example of the high school pitcher who gets signed away from his college commitment.
Ahead of the 2019 draft, Baseball America ranked McDonald as the 151st-best prospect, one of the best high school right-handers overall, and he was expected to go in the first few rounds.
But as he kept falling, teams assumed they wouldnt have enough money left to sign him away from his South Alabama commitment.
The Giants took a chance, and they convinced him to sign.
It took a while for McDonald to make the majors, as you might expect from a high-school draftee, with stops and starts, injuries and rough adjustments to promotions.
But hes here, seven years later, affecting the Giants ability to win or lose.
In this game, he helped them win, but in future games? Nobodys really sure yet.
He has obvious stuff, with a nasty sinker-slider pairing, but hes also the poster child for the difference between command and control.
McDonald doesnt struggle because he gives up too many walks; he struggles because hes not always hitting corners and edges with his pitches, which he needs to do.
On Sunday, he hit them, and the Rockies were flummoxed.
If he keeps hitting the same spots going forward, the Giants will always have a spot for him.
Advertisement Draft comp from this years class: The Giants selected 21 players in this weekends draft.
They didnt take a high school pitcher in the later rounds in this years draft, but they did take center fielder Josiah Kemp in the 12th round, and hes a) a big-time Oklahoma recruit and b) the nephew of Matt Kemp, which means he may have met Rhianna.
The Giants might not sign him, but they also took multiple seniors who arent likely to sign for slot money.
And in seven years, you still might be wondering if Kemp will be a long-term major leaguer, and youll be happy to be doing so.
The first run of Sundays game scored after Bryce Eldridge (1st round, 2023) drew a two-out walk.
Hes the obvious manifestation of a draft dream: the first-round pick who does what hes supposed to, when hes supposed to, checking every box along the way.
From the second Eldridge was drafted, a little devil appeared on your shoulder and whispered unreasonable expectations into your ear.
Imagine if he has the strike-zone judgment of Brandon Belt and the home-run beltment of Aaron Judge, he said, and you thought, yeah, that would be neat.
What if hes doing all this when hes 21 and helping the Giants squeeze out low-scoring wins? You thought against your better discretion, sure, that would be amazing.
Now Eldridge is doing exactly this.
Maybe the little devil on your shoulder can pull up a lawn chair and grab you stuff from the fridge every so often.
It should be a good show.
Draft comp from this years class: First-round pick Jackson Flora, obviously.
You know the warnings about pitching prospects, but you also know that every other rotation seemingly has a gigantic dude they drafted in the first round.
Perhaps its the Giants turn.
Willy Adames singled Eldridge over to third with two outs, and you might think this doesnt have anything to do with the draft.
Not true! Adames is on the Giants because the organization was able to sign Logan Webb (fourth round, 2014) to a team-friendly deal for several seasons.
Ownership pocketed some of the scratch, but they also gave some of it to Adames when they needed a shortstop more than an ace, which they had for cheap.
The draft is a scam, but it helps teams feel like they can part with more of their money for free agents.
Thats really what the Giants are trying to do here: develop as many cheap-as-heck major leaguers as the rules allow, and maybe the fans will get some free agents as a little treat.
Advertisement Draft comp from this years class: The player from this class who perseveres through years of minor-league torment and self-doubt to achieve the ultimate goal: the chance to be underpaid and help subsidize free-agent spending sprees.
Theyre the true lifeblood of the modern game, after all.
(If youre wondering why this stuff makes me cranky, its because Im probably going to be writing about My top books of 2026 (so far) instead of baseball articles at this time next year.) Drew Gilbert (first round, 2022) singled Eldridge home, but Gilbert doesnt count for these comparisons because the Mets drafted him.
He still gets to be mentioned, though, because in 2013, an 10th-round pick signed for $7,500, which is about enough to buy a used car and fill it up with gas once.
A scout saw a tall, skinny drink of water pitch at Austin Peay State, located in the sovereign state of Austin Peay, in the glamorous capital city of Austin Peaysburg.
He saw him throw 80-mph from his shoelaces and thought, hot dang, this could work.
And then he had to convince everyone else that Tyler Rogers was worth a 10th-round pick.
Thats how Gilbert got to the Giants, so he still becomes a story of how important the second day of the draft could be, and how the trickle-down effects from the successes can last well more than a decade into the future.
Draft comp from this years class: Tanner Mally, the Giants 17th-round pick, isnt a perfect comparison for Rogers for a lot of reasons.
Malley is a normal, athletic outfielder, not some sort of weirdo contortionist reliever.
But Rogers works as a comp for Mally because theres a scout who voiced support and a war room that has a little imagination.
Mally hit .446 for Western Michigan, which led all Division I hitters.
He wasnt just a hack-and-slash guy, either, putting up a .554 on-base percentage, too.
Mally is also fast and has the potential to play center field in the majors, which should have combined with his absurd bat-to-ball skills to make him a top-five pick.
But there are obviously tools missing, from bat speed to power, that knocked him almost out of the draft entirely.
But someone(s) in the Giants player-development department see enough to dream.
And maybe in 13 years, itll be the reason youre watching an entirely different weirdo contribute to a Giants win.
Keaton Winn (fifth round, 2018) pitched a scoreless eighth inning, and his current trajectory suggests that he can have a long career as a late-inning reliever if he can stay healthy.
The Giants stuck with him as a starter for a while, but this became the obvious path when his velocity ticked up in the bullpen.
Advertisement Draft comp from this years class: This is just a guess at this point, of course, but sixth-round pick Eric Nachtsteim out of McNeese State has a profile on MLB.com that includes the phrases his fastball (features) some of the best carry of the draft as well as almost certainly a reliever, so there you go.
It doesnt sound like the splitter will get him to the majors, like Winns did, but that makes the comp even better.
Winn also didnt have a splitter when the Giants drafted him out of a literal Iowa cornfield.
Get a guy with a best (x) of the draft and see if you can teach him a pretty good (y) that can help him stick in a 2034 bullpen, assuming the labor stoppage is over.
Grant McCray (third round, 2019) came into the game as a pinch runner in the eighth inning of a tie game and immediately created havoc, stealing second base, which allowed the lead run to score on a throwing error.
The error allowed McCray to get to third base and score on an Adames single for an insurance run.
You might think that McCray is a relic from a 40-man-roster decision of the past, someone who doesnt have a future in a Gilbert-led outfield, but thats overstating it.
McCray came into the season with a clear mandate of cutting his strikeout rate precipitously, and hes done it about as well as any Giants prospect in recent memory, posting a ratio of 34 walks to 46 strikeouts in 211 Triple-A plate appearances before injuries opened up a spot in the major-league outfield.
If McCray can keep some of the contact gains while reclaiming some of the power from his earlier career, he could be a center fielder for years.
Literal years, with a big, long contract waiting for him from someone at the end of it.
You dont understand how good of a player you can make out of the things McCray has already hinted hes capable of.
Theyve been just hints so far, and its a long way from those to the everyday player described up there.
The odds are against him.
Still, hes here, and you can see how he might help.
Its fun to watch Giants players who make Road Runner sounds when they zip around the bases.
Draft comp from this years class: You can go two ways, here.
McCray was a relatively high pick with memorable bloodlines, as his dad was a longtime minor leaguer who is remembered for a very, very specific reason.
The natural analog there would be fifth-round pick Luke Nixon, the son of Trot.
But if you want more tools with that bloodline, thats where third-round pick Peyton Bonds fits best, as his family connections are absolutely incredible*.
* His dad was a second cousin of Reggie Jackson, twice removed! Sundays victory was a fun win in a disastrous season that kept the Giants from an even more ignominious finish to the first half.
But it also came with a measure of hope and long-term sanity, both on the field and in the draft.
The Giants drafted a variety of high schoolers and college kids that youve never heard of, and you wont think about them again for years, which makes it hard to get too excited about the draft, especially in comparison to its counterpart in the NFL.
Heres a game to help remind you of how much the draft matters.
And when it works, it looks like that: A mighty fine time at the ol ballpark, which is the point of all this nonsense in the first place.