San Francisco Giants Given Disappointing Outlook in Most Recent Projections

The San Francisco Giants have made a number of moves this winter in their bid to return to the postseason in 2025.

They added legend Justin Verlander to their starting rotation to provide another quality option behind entrenched ace Logan Webb. They also landed one of the biggest fish in the free agency pond in shortstop Willy Adames, who promises to elevate both the Giants' team defense and offensive production.

New president of baseball operations Buster Posey put his stamp on the roster with these acquisitions and others.

This part of the same effort that necessitated Posey's hiring in the first place — a push to return the organization to the standards it built with three World Series championships in the 2010s.

The mediocrity in which San Francisco has largely been mired in since 2014 became untenable, and last year's 80-82 record was the straw that broke the camel's back.

However, if preseason projections are to be believed, it might take more than one year to right the ship and push back toward contention.

PECOTA gave the Giants only a 15% chance to make the playoffs, and another recent model does not project a bounce back for San Francisco, either.

Bradford Doolittle of ESPN recently published the projections generated by his own model, which has the Giants winning an average of 79.7 games and making the playoffs 23.4% of the time.

"Obviously, those expectations are a good bet to be met, but we reserve the right to be surprised by first-time executive Buster Posey," Doolittle wrote. "Posey got off to a fast start, inking Willy Adames in the free agent season, but things were more or less routine after that. That said, as much as you can say that there is upside to the signing of a 42-year-old, there is some upside to the addition of Justin Verlander."

San Francisco's push for a meaningfully better outcome than last year is complicated by the quality of the National League West Division.

The Los Angeles Dodgers are far and away the clear favorite. not just to win the division. but to repeat as World Series champions. The San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks also project comfortably ahead of the Giants with average win totals of 84.4 and 86.6, respectively.

San Francisco has the ceiling to turn things around, but if they're going to reach it, they'll need career year performances from players like Webb and Adames, growth from young players like Tyler Fitzgerald and Patrick Bailey and health for veteran starters Verlander and Robbie Ray.

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