A month into the 2026 Giants season, there might be room for optimism

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That identity is “confusing as heck,” apparently, but it’s still a kind of identity. It’s information we can work with. And right now, “confusing as heck” would look really, really, really good to some teams. The Giants are in Philadelphia to play a Phillies team that ended a 10-game losing streak over the weekend. When the Phillies beat the Giants, 6-4, on April 10, they moved to two games over .500 and the Giants fell to 3-8. It looked like a playoff-bound team giving a wedgie to an also-ran. Since then, the Phillies have gone 3-15, and the Giants have crept back into the land of the living. It’s not just the Phillies, either. The Mets have also gone 3-15 since April 10. If you weren’t impressed with Harrison Bader’s first month with the Giants, now imagine an entire roster of it at twice the price. The Red Sox just fired a coaching staff that was apparently beloved by the players, and the front office’s response was apparently “shut up and play.” Now remember that they don’t have their version of Buster Posey delivering that message; they have their version of an Extremely Irritable George Kontos delivering it. The message is landing about as well as you’d expect. The Giants, though, allow you to be optimistic if you play fast and loose with your starts and endpoints. Over .500 since the Yankees series. They’ve won each of their last three series, including one against the Dodgers. They’ve scored six runs or more in back-to-back games just twice this season, and all four of those games have been within the team’s last nine. They also, somehow, lost four in a row to the Mets and Phillies teams that were described up there with a flashlight under my chin. The Giants contain multitudes, and they’re capable of out-stinking any team in baseball, even the ones that are about to fall into a bottomless pit. Over the last month, I’ve been asked a few dozen questions about the Giants. What’s wrong with them? Are they going to contend this year? Why aren’t they hitting? Can they turn it around? The answers were always couched in “it’s early” disclaimers, and they usually involved me talking out of both sides of my mouth. Maybe they’re good, maybe they’re bad, it’s not looking great right now, but who’s to say? You read my columns, apparently, so you know the routine. Underneath, though, I was strangely forgiving to the team. It reminded me of the 2000 Giants, another team that started with more questions than answers, but kept me going back to the roster and thinking, “Mmm, no, they’re good, actually. This team should be good. Run the numbers again.” The 2026 Giants won’t have a pair of future Hall of Famers finishing 1-2 in the MVP race, most likely, but it’s still a team that never completely lost me in the first month, even during their dullest stretches. There’s a simple reason for this: The Giants’ current problems aren’t the ones they were supposed to have. The problems they were supposed to have, haven’t been much of a problem at all. Out of all the different possible permutations, this isn’t a bad one to have. This is one the team can work with. Before the season started, my biggest concerns about the Giants were these: • Defense on the right side of the infield • Unknown manager/coaching staff Some of these concerns remain open, and they’ll probably stay open throughout the season, but they’ve all been addressed in some ways. The bullpen was always going to be a work in progress, a slow, painstaking experiment, with two flameouts for every late-inning success … except they seem to have landed on a reasonable arrangement just a month into the season? Every bullpen is a blown save away from you putting your boot through the drywall, but the Giants aren’t getting late-inning outs from pitchers throwing 93-mph four-seamers down the middle and hoping for the best. They’re getting leverage outs from relievers who look the part. The backend of the rotation is still very much an open question, but Tyler Mahle’s last start was encouraging, and even if Adrian Houser can’t get unstuck, his struggles are much easier to take with the emergence of Landen Roupp. It wasn’t the best-case scenario for the rotation, but a reasonable preseason goal would be to have one rock-solid starter behind Logan Webb and Robbie Ray and one pretty solid starter after that. If the fifth starter pitched like a sixth starter (or a 16th starter, as it turns out), that was always something that could be addressed internally or at the trade deadline. The defense on the right side of the infield was going to be the biggest issue of April, I was sure of it. I was so primed to look for it that I initially blamed Luis Arraez for not making this play, which couldn’t have been made by Bill Mazeroski wearing a jetpack: Yes, it was just a matter of time until … he was one of the very best defenders in baseball? OK. Sure. I’m not certain what kind of award Ron Washington deserves for this, but it should be rarer and more impressive than an EGOT. And after a shaky start that included all sorts of calamity and broken glass over at first base, Rafael Devers has looked much, much better in recent weeks after returning to the field. As for the last concern, while there’s still a  “_ Days Since You’re Keenly Aware of the Rookie Manager” sign hanging somewhere, it hasn’t been reset to 0 in a while. When the Giants win, they look convincing, and the hiccups can be nonexistent. There are several Giants players who aren’t coy with their emotions, and the emotions on display have generally been the ones you want to see: intensity, fire, camaraderie, enjoyment. You won’t actually get an answer to the managerial question for another few months, and even then, your opinion can change drastically. I would have marched into the Giants’ clubhouse and fired Bruce Bochy exactly 120 days before the Giants’ first championship, so maybe taking a little time to make up your mind is a good thing. Those were the biggest preseason concerns, and while not all of them have been resolved, much less successfully, they’re not the reason the Giants are still under .500. The biggest problems so far have been: • Rafael Devers’ inability to hit • Harrison Bader’s lack of contributions • Patrick Bailey hitting like a pitcher (not hyperbole) • Logan Webb not pitching like himself Serious concerns, all, but also mitigated somewhat the more you look into them. Devers’ recent at-bats show a willingness to adapt, and it’s a reminder of the uncanny hitting talent that got him the monster contract in the first place. You’ll feel better when Devers is catching up to 97-mph fastballs at the letters, but it’s impossible to be unimpressed with that swing. As for the others, in order: Bader’s disastrous start has given way to a mini-emergence of Drew Gilbert, whose offense is looking major-league quality, even if he needs a lot more time in Oracle Park’s outfield to be an everyday contributor. Bailey has improved a bit (three walks in his last six games offers hope that he’s seeing the ball better). The rotation we’ve addressed, and Webb will be fine. If you’re worried about his strikeout rate, don’t be. He’ll always have to mix and match to be a strikeout pitcher, but when he’s in between methods of attack, he should still get outs with grounders. “Should” is the key word here: His FIP is 3.32, and his ERA is 4.86. Those two numbers will get a lot closer as the season progresses. That’s a lot of optimism from the same author of articles such as “The Giants are bad at everything, and you could be reading more books instead of watching baseball,” but it’s not intended to placate or pacify. There are reasons the 2026 Giants aren’t trapped in the same quicksand as the Mets, Phillies or Red Sox, and those reasons are encouraging. The reasons they’ve struggled aren’t the reasons they were supposed to struggle, which seems fixable. Cancel your October vacation plans? Not yet. You’d like to see the Giants beat the Phillies on the road before you assume too much. But the Giants are an under-.500 team for reasons they weren’t expecting. That’s a heckuva lot better than the alternative, which was expected roster cracks turning into entirely foreseeable hull breaches, all of it happening in slow motion. This is not that. Not yet at least. The bullpen’s been mostly stable, there might be a new frontline starter emerging in the rotation and the defense is improving. The biggest problems right now is that Webb needs to pitch better and Devers needs to hit more. And when you put it like that, it doesn’t seem too scary to be emotionally invested in the 2026 Giants. Watch your step, for sure, but you can also watch the games without both hands covering your eyes. This team might be a couple of tweaks away from letting you take your hands away from your face completely. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms