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Sep 9, 2026
Giants
Sixteen Left

Every Team Left On The Giants' Schedule Has A Number. San Francisco Has A Letter.

Sixty-one wins, sixteen games to play, and a ceiling of seventy-seven that Philadelphia, the Cubs and Arizona have already passed with three wild-card places between them. The Cardinals, the Padres, the Twins and the Dodgers all still have a live number. The Giants do not.

GL
Grant LombardSep 9, 20264 min read
Every call on this site goes on a public ledger and gets graded. The misses stay up.
Matt Chapman at the plate in the Giants' cream home uniform, the black GIANTS wordmark outlined in orange across the chest and a navy helmet with the orange interlocking SF. An undated file photograph from a home game, not from this week's series with St. Louis.

San Francisco can win seventy-seven games this year. That is the ceiling and not a forecast: sixty-one wins already banked, sixteen games left, every one of the sixteen going the right way.

Philadelphia has eighty-one. The Cubs have eighty-one. Arizona has seventy-eight.

There are three wild-card places in the National League.

That is the whole proof, and the league's own standings feed has been printing the conclusion for days. The feed carried a wild-card elimination number of two for the Giants through Saturday's games. From Sunday's games onward it has read E, in the wild-card column and the division column both. Sunday itself was a 4-2 loss at Citi Field, and Arizona beat Houston 3-2 that same afternoon.

The Giants have won two straight since, which is how these things usually go. Monday ran eleven innings and ended on a Shay Whitcomb single. Tuesday was 2-1, Landen Roupp throwing six scoreless, Joel Kuhnel taking the last out with the tying run standing on second base. Both San Francisco runs were solo home runs, one from Bryce Eldridge and one from Christian Koss, and that was the entire offense, and it was enough.

Anyway. Here is what is left of the season.

Sixteen games against four opponents, and the first of them is tonight. St. Louis is at Oracle Park this evening and then hosts the Giants for three more next week, and the Cardinals are 72-74, six games out of the third wild card, elimination number ten. San Diego arrives Friday for three: 77-68, half a game behind Arizona for that same place, winners of three in a row. Minnesota comes in on the twenty-first for three, four and a half back of Cleveland for the American League's last spot. And six against the Dodgers, who are 88-57 and lead the West by ten and a half.

Every one of those four clubs still has a live number. San Francisco does not. Read the schedule from the other direction and the sentence gets shorter: the only eliminated team left on San Francisco's schedule is San Francisco.

The National League contains exactly two teams that are out. The other is Colorado, 55-89, and the Giants are finished playing Colorado. Whatever mercy the schedule had in it has already been spent.

The San Diego series is the one with teeth, and it is teeth pointed in a peculiar direction. The Padres are chasing Arizona for the last place in the field, the Giants play San Diego three times in three days, and Arizona does not appear on San Francisco's remaining schedule at all. So the Giants can push one of those two clubs and cannot touch the other. Three wins this weekend would be a real thing done to the National League standings by a team with no stake in them.

Then the Dodgers, six times, which is the part worth sitting with. Three at Dodger Stadium starting the eighteenth, then the last three games of the year at home, September 25 through 27. If Los Angeles has any business left to settle by that Friday, it gets settled in front of a Giants crowd.

What the sixteen are for, on this end, is a look at people. San Francisco has used sixty-four players in 2026, and fifteen of the sixty-four made their major league debut this season, which is a great many first days for one summer. September on a bad club is the month where the front office finds out which of those fifteen it wants to see again in April, and there is no way to find out except to play them.

None of which is consolation, and nobody should sell it as one. A club that finishes 70-92 and a club that finishes 66-96 are the same club in every way a person in the stands can feel. The difference between those two records is four games in the middle of September against teams that will remember them in October.

They are out of it and they are in everybody's way. There are worse jobs for the last three weeks.

Filed under Giants

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Nine for nine

Every Run The Giants Scored On Saturday Left The Ballpark

San Francisco beat the Mets 9-5 at Citi Field on Saturday, and all nine of its runs scored on home runs. The Giants hit six: Rafael Devers in the first and the fifth, his 34th and 35th; Christian Koss in the third and the fifth, his second and third; Osleivis Basabe in the eighth; Grant McCray in the ninth. Every run-scoring play in the game was a home run. The Giants also had four hits that were not home runs, a Grant McCray single, a Jonah Cox single, a Bryce Eldridge double and a Shay Whitcomb single, and none of the four drove in a run. Three of the four men who homered are having bad seasons: Koss is hitting .211 with three home runs in 52 games, two of them Saturday and all three inside his last nine games after none in his first forty-two, McCray is hitting .143 with eight hits in 56 at-bats, and Basabe is hitting .216. Manager Tony Vitello was ejected by home-plate umpire Jeremie Rehak in the top of the second, after one of the nine runs had scored. Across 143 games this season the Giants have scored 601 runs, 259 of them on home runs, which is 43.1 percent, on 164 home runs. Sixteen times this season every Giants run in a game has come on a home run, and before Saturday the most they had scored in such a game was three. Only twice all year have they hit five or more home runs in a game, the other being seven on June 5. Friday night in the same ballpark they had twelve hits, one home run, and lost 10-6. San Francisco is 59-84, eliminated in the National League West, with a wild-card elimination number of four and 19 games left. Two takes filed.

Grant LombardSep 6, 20265 min read
Every Run The Giants Scored On Saturday Left The Ballpark
What is left

San Francisco's Active Roster Does Not List A Shortstop

San Francisco placed Willy Adames (left elbow sprain on the transaction log; MLB.com reported an MRI showing a moderate strain of the non-throwing elbow, and the two wordings are recorded here as published rather than blended) and Victor Bericoto (right knee bone bruise) on the 10-day injured list on August 24 and JT Brubaker (bruised ribs) on the 15-day, all three hurt in Sunday's 5-4 loss at Boston. Bryce Eldridge went on the bereavement list and Matt Wilkinson was optioned. The Giants recalled five men from Triple-A Sacramento the same day: Nate Furman, Grant McCray, Anthony Molina, Ryan Walker and Shay Whitcomb. Adames had started 121 games at shortstop and played 1,046.1 innings there; MLB's active-roster page now lists no shortstop among the 26. Christian Koss, a third baseman with 71 innings at short this year and two innings pitched, played the position Monday while Whitcomb made his Giants debut at third. San Francisco won 5-0 behind six pitchers after losing starter Carson Whisenhunt in the third inning to left elbow pain. Whisenhunt was scheduled for an MRI on Tuesday morning and no result has been published. The Giants have used 58 players this season, tied with the Angels and the Athletics for fifth-most in the majors against a league median of 52, and seven of them made their San Francisco debut in August.

Grant LombardAug 25, 20264 min read
San Francisco's Active Roster Does Not List A Shortstop

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The left side

Losing Willy Adames Costs The Giants A Third Baseman, Not A Shortstop

Six men have started a game at third base for San Francisco in 2026. Matt Chapman made 82 of those starts and has not played since June 30; Casey Schmitt made 24 and has not played since July 27. Both had surgery in the following days and MLB's injury page gives both an expected return of 2027. Christian Koss has held the job since July 28, but he has also started nine games at shortstop since July 1, and on every one of those days somebody else played third: Schmitt once, Buddy Kennedy five times, Shay Whitcomb three. Kennedy and Whitcomb were both claimed off waivers this month, from Seattle on August 2 and Houston on August 13, and Kennedy was designated for assignment on Thursday after going 4 for 33 with four singles. Willy Adames received a PRP injection in his sprained left elbow on Thursday; Tony Vitello said three or four weeks of rest and the club's injury page says a four-week minimum, which lands on September 24 against a last scheduled game of September 27. Koss and Whitcomb have drawn six walks in 159 plate appearances between them this season, against 74 in 857 for Chapman and Adames. Three takes filed, on Adames, on Koss at shortstop and on a seventh third baseman.

Andie TownsendAug 28, 20266 min read
Losing Willy Adames Costs The Giants A Third Baseman, Not A Shortstop

On the record

Called Shots →
OpenAug 14, 2026

Christian Koss makes more starts at third base for the Giants over the rest of the 2026 regular season than any other player.

Koss has started 13 of the 15 games at third since Casey Schmitt's July 28 meniscus injury, which is the job by default rather than by decision. The live question is whether it stays his through 41 remaining games while the club evaluates young players. Against him: Schmitt is on the injured list with a six-to-eight-week timeline that could return him in September, Shay Whitcomb was claimed on August 13 and sits in Sacramento on the 40-man, Osleivis Basabe and Buddy Kennedy have both started there, and Alex Pavlovic reported that Triple-A hitter Parks Harber could enter the mix. Scored by counting starts at third base in the boxscores from August 14 through September 27; the player with the most wins, and a tie scores this wrong.