3 POSITIVE takeaways from this awful Giants season...

There is no way around the fact that it was an extremely underwhelming season for the San Francisco Giants. However, in the midst of one of their worst losing seasons in the history of the organization, there were a handful of bright spots and positive takeaways. We're going to break down three of them here on SF Giants Digest. If you're new here, welcome to the channel. I am your host, Michael Montreal, and if you've been here before, welcome back to SF Giants Digest. Now, before we get into today's video, let me know down in the comment section what your favorite bright spot, even in this abysmal season, what your favorite bright spot from 2026 was for the San Francisco Giants. Also, if you haven't yet, make sure to go down below, hit that like button, hit that subscribe button. About three quarters of you guys watching the videos are not actually subscribed to the channel. It's completely free, takes just a second of your time, and really does help us continue to make the best Giants content and analysis on YouTube. So, if you enjoyed today's video, go down below, hit those buttons. That'd be much appreciated by myself and everyone here at Digest Media. Now, getting into today's video, we have a number of bright spots and positive takeaways to break down. Now, I know some of you are probably focusing on all the negatives, on all of the horrible takeaways from the season, the bullpen, the injuries, the offense, the rotation. There are virtually endless negatives with this 2026 San Francisco Giants team. However, there were still a handful of bright spots, and I want to break down three of them in today's video. Now, before we get into the three, I do want to start with our honorable mention, and this one is Rafael Devers. See, I'm not going to go too in-depth here because I think we all know the caliber of hitter Rafael Devers was, and I think we're just finally seeing that in San Francisco. It took him, you know, a little bit of time to get comfortable in the orange and black. He came over from Boston. His life got turned upside down. He moved across the country, and after the first month of this year, we saw the Rafael Devers that Buster Posey thought he was getting from the Boston Red Sox when he made that deal, and after all that, he put together one of the best offensive seasons we've seen since Barry Bonds, and quite frankly, in the history of the San Francisco Giants organization. So, I did want to shout out Rafael Devers, but he did not make the top three because I think a lot of us expected to do something, expected him to do something similar to what he actually did in 2026, but to no one's surprise, the number one bright spot, positive takeaway from this year's Giants team was none other than Bryce Eldridge. Now, of course, Bryce Eldridge was the organization's top prospect heading into the season. He got a cup of coffee last year, and I've said this several times here, other places. I think Bryce Eldridge is the best prospect this organization has had since Buster Posey. Of course, now he's a big leaguer, and now he has cemented himself as a huge, huge piece of this organization's future. Now, we can kind of get into some of his numbers from the year, but you see in 2026, a 269-364-461 slash line, a 131 WRC+, 1.8 fangraph wins above replacement, and a 26.6% strikeout rate, which is arguably the most important number he posted in his rookie campaign because across the minor leagues, he was striking out virtually 30% of the time at every stop. So seeing that number dip below 27% is a very welcome development for Bryce Eldridge. 17 home runs, 57 RBIs, 50 runs scored, and a 13.2% walk rate, which of course was one of the better marks among rookies in the National League. A lot of these numbers are among the better marks in rookies in the National League, and I think we're just seeing what we all kind of wanted to see from Bryce Eldridge in his rookie campaign. It's a really advanced hit tool for a kid that's 6'7", 21 years old, and then of course, the power is ridiculous. I think we're going to see him tap into that a lot more over the next few seasons, and one thing I did want to shout out with Bryce Eldridge was his defense at first base. Now, you see the defensive runs saved at negative two in the middle there. That may not be the most encouraging, the ultimate average right at zero, but on the right-hand side, his fielding run value, which is basically an all-encapsulating defensive stat, sits right at two, so he was actually a pretty average defender at first base when the entire conversation about him coming up as a prospect was the fact that he's going to really struggle defending at first base. He's really raw as a defender, kind of like a baby draft over there, and I think that was not the case at all. I think Ron Washington really worked with him, and he looked very passable at first base, and at times made some really, really impressive plays at the opposite hot corner. Now, just getting a little bit deeper into Bryce Eldridge for a second before we get into the last two bright spots, I mentioned this, but every plan the San Francisco Giants should have through the next few seasons is to build a franchise around the success of Bryce Eldridge. It's not every day you have a player come up to the San Francisco Giants and be an automatic, you know, above average hitter right away. We've seen prospects come up through the years and just completely stall out at the big leagues. Marco Luciano, Joey Barr, there's been a ton in the past, whether that's the Giants handling of their development, whatever it may be, this one is finally working out, and the Giants need to capitalize on the Bryce Eldridge era in San Francisco. Now, we can get into the next bright spot takeaway, whatever you want to call it, and this one we're going to talk about a specific player, but if I'm being honest, it's about a lot of the young outfielders and their development, but we are going to talk about Jonah Cox. Now, I know he slowed down a little bit towards the end of the season, but like I'm sure a lot of you, I was very impressed with what we saw from the 24 year old outfielder. Now, on this season, you can see some of his numbers, a .252, .298, .384 slash line, a .91 WRC+, .6 wins above replacement. That strikeout rate at 38.5%, that is not very encouraging. We'll get into that in a second. A walk rate of 6%. He did hit four home runs, drove in 16 guys, and the one number that I'm sure a lot of us are looking at with Jonah Cox, 16 stolen bases. That set of things, he brings an element to the game that the Giants haven't had in a very, very long time. I'd argue he's the fastest player I've ever watched this much. Of course, there's a lot of fast guys around the league, but in terms of someone that can change the facet of a game this significantly, I really loved watching Jonah Cox run the bases, and I've said this a lot. Over the years, the Giants have had fast guys, Kelby Tomlinson, Tyler Fitzgerald, but Jonah Cox actually knows how to run the bases. He actually knows how to steal bases, and it has been extremely refreshing because the Giants, like I'm sure a lot of you know, have been towards the bottom of baseball and stolen bases over the last three to four seasons. Now, another welcome development with Jonah Cox is the above average defense. As you can see in center field, in about 250 innings roughly, it was three defensive runs saved, three outs above average, and a fielding run value of one. So by every one of those metrics, he was slightly above average, and that was in a pretty limited sample. We didn't see him the entire year. He got injured. He was up and down a little bit towards the end, but for the most part, when we saw him in center field, he was a very talented defender, and that is also a pretty welcome encouragement because over the years, we've seen Luis Matos, Jung Huli, Elliot Ramos, those guys man center field, and they just weren't very good defenders. So seeing a guy like Jonah Cox come up with Drew Gilbert, with some of the younger guys, seeing them defend at a high level has been really refreshing. Now, of course, Jonah Cox did strike out a lot this year. That's something that we'll be monitoring through the first few weeks and months of next season because you can't really sustain a close to 40% strikeout rate at the big league level. So that's something that he'll need to adjust to, and I do think he was making some strides in the right direction toward the end of the season, but at the end of the day, him batting .400 in AA to open the air, getting caught up straight from AA, and then showing the speed he showed, showing the defense he can play, I think that gave him a pretty healthy chance of making the opening day roster next season. Now, the last bright spot I want to take away from this season is a pretty important one because we know this bullpen was absolutely atrocious through the entirety of the season, but one arm came up and really proved himself as a piece of this future, and that was Trent Harris. Now, Trent Harris wasn't even on the organization's radar heading into 2026. He had a rough spring training. You know, he didn't seem like a big piece of their future. He wasn't a big piece of their plans, but he came up and basically right away was their most trusted arm since debuting in the big leagues. Now, we can get into some of his numbers here, but a 2-3-1 ERA in just over 23 innings, pitched a 10.4 strikeout per nine, locking just 2.7 guys per nine innings, a 53.3% ground ball rate, .6 F4, which was the highest mark of any Giants reliever this entire season, so higher than Caleb Killian, Keaton Winn, Dylan Smith, any of those guys who got a pretty significant run in the bullpen, he beat all of them in terms of overall accumulated value, which was really nice to see for a young guy who can now come up next year and be a real piece of this bullpen, whether that's in the 6th and 7th inning or maybe in the 8th or 9th inning. However, Buster Posey decides to build the back end of this group, but at the end of the day, it was really fun to watch him come up and just be a big part of this group. Now, we get into some of the stat cast, advanced metrics, if you want to call them that, a hard hit rate of 25% was really encouraging as well. You know, a good hard hit rate for a hitter is anything over 45%, 50%, so seeing that down at 25% means he's inducing a lot of weak contact, and he wasn't getting lucky. A 2-3-1 ERA in the year and an expected ERA of 2-4-2, so he was basically performing exactly how he should have been, a barrel percentage of just 1.7%, and that was on 60 events, 84.7 average exit velocity. He was inducing weak contact left and right, and then of course, combining that with the 10.4% strikeout rate I should say, it was just really fun to watch, and I enjoyed every time he took the mound because pretty clearly, he was the best reliever in that group through the last month of the season, month and a half, however long it was, since he had been called up. That's going to do it for today's video. Let me know your comments on Bryce Eldridge, Jonah Cox, Trent Harris, all solidifying themselves as future pieces of this organization. Of course, next year, it's just going to be even more fun to see them get even more run at the big league level, but I could not be more excited about Bryce Eldridge, the future of this organization, as well as Jonah Cox and Trent Harris being nice pieces on the aggregate for the Giants moving forward. And of course, shout out to Raphael Devers, that was of course a bright spot, but that one was a little too obvious to talk about in today's video. That's going to do it for today's video. If you enjoyed, hit that like button, hit that subscribe button, that'd be much appreciated by myself and everyone here at Digest Media. As always, thank you so much for watching. We will see you next time.