Where young Giants pitchers fit into the team’s plan for 2026 MLB season originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
ORLANDO — The Giants headed to the Winter Meetings with two open spots in their rotation and left with two open spots in their rotation. But internally, they don’t want to view it as that straightforward.
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If you ask members of the front office how many starters they need, they likely will give some variation of “as many as we can get.”
“We used 15 starters last year,” general manager Zack Minasian said this week. “To think we’re going to use five would be fooling ourselves. The more the merrier is kind of how I look at it right now.”
Buster Posey and Minasian are confident they will be able to add veterans through free agency, trades or both, but they also still feel good about the young depth that’s around. Some of it might be needed in deals — everyone is looking for young, cost-controlled pitching — but in Hayden Birdsong, Blade Tidwell, Trevor McDonald, Kai-Wei Teng, Carson Whisenhunt and others, they feel they have plenty of young pitchers who can fill cracks in the rotation or bullpen down the line, or even in the spring.
A year ago, Posey spoke often about the organization’s collection of young pitchers. Landen Roupp broke through as the No. 3 starter and Kyle Harrison brought Rafael Devers to town, but overall, the group disappointed.
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How many can be part of the solution in 2026?
“I’d say that’s up to them. It’s up to them with how they perform,” Posey said on Thursday’s “Giants Talk” podcast. “We certainly hope that there’s a handful of them that we’re saying ‘we need this guy in the rotation or we need him in the pen,’ but ultimately it’s going to boil down to how they perform.”
The group underwhelmed in the second half last year, but there’s hope internally that a new coaching staff can find the right adjustments. There will be three new faces on the pitching front — Frank Anderson, Justin Meccage, Christian Wonders — and during their interviews they were asked about ways they could help specific pitchers in that group.
Birdsong has the highest ceiling and Tidwell pitched for Tony Vitello and Anderson at Tennessee, but it might be Trevor McDonald who leads that pack at the moment after two eye-opening starts at the end of the season. The right-hander allowed just three earned runs in 15 innings in September and had an eye-opening start at Dodger Stadium.
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Posey asked about McDonald often last season in his conversations with player development leaders Randy Winn and Kyle Haines and Triple-A manager Dave Brundage.
“He really settled in to hone in on his sinker and slider late and said this is going to be my bread and butter,” Posey said at the Winter Meetings. “Early on it seemed like the feedback was he was being a little too cute with trying to get his usage to look a certain way instead of just attacking with the top end of his arsenal. I’m excited for him. He’s got to feel confident going into the offseason.”
Honors For Everyone
Brad Grems (home clubhouse) and Gavin Cuddie (visiting) were named the Clubhouse Manager of the Year in their respective categories. It marked the first time that one organization took home the awards on both sides.
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Grems took over for the legendary Mike Murphy, who got an even bigger honor in November. “Murph” was part of the initial six-man class for the MLB Clubhouse Managers Hall of Fame, along with longtime Athletics clubhouse manager Steve Vucinich and Eddie Logan, who worked for the New York and San Francisco Giants and ran the home clubhouse at Candlestick Park before Murphy. Murphy and Vucinich flew to Cooperstown earlier this offseason to see their plaque.
Also, this week, executive assistant Karen Sweeney won the Katy Feeney Leadership Award, which honors exceptional female employees in the industry. When it came to awards — a big part of the Winter Meetings for behind-the-scenes employees — the Giants just about came away with a clean sweep. Earlier in the week, Matt Chisholm was honored for excellence in media relations. There was also Jeff Kent’s induction into the Hall of Fame, of course.
Who Wins Out?
The trade for Rule 5 pick Daniel Susac gave the Giants a second young right-handed catcher to compete for the job behind Patrick Bailey. Susac, a former first-rounder, likely will enter camp with an edge over Jesus Rodriguez, since he has to make the Opening Day roster or else be offered back to the A’s, but there still will be a competition in the spring.
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The organization is extremely high on Rodriguez, who came over in the Camilo Doval trade with the New York Yankees. He hit .322 in Sacramento and is a .309 hitter in the minors, and while Susac has much more power, Rodriguez might be better suited to hit big-league pitching right now. The main concern heading into the spring is the lack of reps he has gotten defensively.
“We’re really excited about his future,” Posey said. “I think what excites me is when I hear our manager or a coach on the staff in Triple-A talk about his makeup and how well he has worked with the pitchers and his desire to get better defensively. At least from the games that I’ve watched, he’s a guy that’s going to encourage a pitcher throughout the game. If he needs to tell a pitcher, like, ‘Hey, you need to get that breaking ball further outside,’ he’s going to be willing to do that.
“But having said that, we have to look and see what other options might be out there because he has been pretty limited in the amount of games he has caught so far.”
The Giants will at some point need both the 24-year-old Susac and the 23-year-old Rodriguez. It’s also possible they go with three catchers at times if the two are playing well and there’s a roster need; Rodriguez has a lot of first base and DH experience in the minors and Wilmer Flores, a key right-handed bench bat, won’t be back.
