Giants' farm system coming through in 2026, but in an unexpected way

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Without help from the farm, the Giants were forced to give at-bats and innings to a variety of highly paid mercenaries and/or random drifters, and it didn’t turn out well. Homegrown hitters who could have helped on a deep bench were exposed as everyday players, and homegrown starting pitchers who needed a third pitch were reminded of it every fifth day. “No farm system, no chance” isn’t so much a baseball truism as an immutable law of physics. So, for all that has gone wrong for the 2026 Giants, take a brief moment to appreciate something that’s gone right: The farm system has absolutely come through for them. Just not in the way anyone was expecting. This isn’t about Bryce Eldridge or Jesus Rodriguez, or any of the teenagers zooming up the national prospect charts. The Giants brought up Eldridge and Rodriguez because they were running out of ideas. They’re another losing streak away from trying some 18th-century medicine, a bucket of leeches in the dugout next to the bucket of Dubble Bubble. Realistically, though, there’s only so much they can expect from rookies facing major-league pitching for the first time. Cautious optimism is warranted, nothing more. No, this is about a different kind of prospect. Let’s call them dry-aged prospects. They’re not quite prospects, and they haven’t been for a long time, but they’ve had that same whiff of uncertainty that prospects come with, where the only thing you know about them is that you don’t know everything about them. Ramos broke the Curse of Chili Davis (first homegrown outfielder to make an All-Star Game) and the Curse of Barry Bonds, Ver. 1.1 (first left fielder to make consecutive Opening Day starts), and we still don’t quite know what to make of him. He’s not remotely close to a prospect, but he’s still an unknown with an upside worth chasing and a downside that will drive you batty. Casey Schmitt was one of the Giants’ best prospects from the moment he was drafted in 2020, occasionally landing on some top-100 lists. He had Gold Glove defense at third, they said, with a low-contact bat that had power potential, which is a profile that sounds like Matt Chapman in the best-case scenario. And then the Giants signed (and extended) the actual Chapman, which left Schmitt in purgatory. He finally climbed up the depth charts to become the de facto starter at second base, only to have the Giants sign Luis Arraez. He was a bench player again, a right-handed bat on a bench that was entirely right-handed and managed by a skipper who still thinks benches are made up of the players who weren’t good enough to start at Alcorn State. If not for Rafael Devers’ hamstring injury, Schmitt might have as many at-bats as Christian Koss (12). Casey with the quick response 💥 pic.twitter.com/CL8mJnVWlT — SFGiants (@SFGiants) May 5, 2026 All along, Schmitt had tools, and he forever seemed maddeningly close to putting them all together. And while it’s far, far too early to consider him an unqualified developmental success, the colors on his Baseball Savant page are the ones you want to be there. He’s barreling the ball, and he’s making a lot more contact than he used to. He’s still swinging at too many bad pitches, but he’s not an outlier of a hacker anymore, which is the most important improvement he could make. Landen Roupp hasn’t exactly been toiling away in the Giants’ farm system for a decade — he was drafted in 2021 — but he was never thought of as a top prospect and never made a Giants top-10 list in the major publications. And right as he was starting to establish himself, he had his two worst starts of 2025, then went on the IL, killing whatever momentum he’d built up. He was far from a lock for the rotation all offseason, and if he’d had a couple of rough Cactus League outings, there would have been chatter and palace intrigue. Instead, he’s been the rock of the rotation, pitching like someone who could pitch in the first or second game of a postseason series and make you feel good about it. It’s still early, but it’s hard not to remember that the Giants have had similar luck with long-simmering organizational arms. I know better than to praise a reliever in an article that publishes before a night game, so I’ll keep it quick with Keaton Winn: It’s very, very easy to see how it might keep working. And it’s not hard to imagine it really working, for a long time, in the most high-leverage sense. This is not a jinx. I don’t even think he’ll be available Tuesday night against the San Diego Padres, OK. Also, because it’s too weird to ignore, almost half of the bullpen also falls into this category, if you’re extremely liberal with the definition. Matt Gage (10th round, 2014 draft), Caleb Kilian (eighth round, 2019) and Gregory Santos (who was a teenager in the Dominican Summer League when the Giants traded for him in 2017) are all honorary dry-aged prospects. They’re also helping the Giants stay afloat, so they can sneak in the team picture. They count if you want them to. If you want, you can make this a much bigger point about the Giants than I’m about to. If you want to build a case for what this means, you can go in any number of directions, from praise for the old front office to praise for the current one. Maybe it’s a sign that the organization has more success with players who speak the organizational dialect, so to speak, compared to expensive free agents. Maybe it’s a sign that Buster Posey occasionally shares some of the magic developmental dust that flakes off him, like a butterfly’s golden scales, but only with the homegrown players. All I know is that these dry-aged prospects have been one of the better parts about a historically disappointing start to the season, and that it’s probably a good thing. It’s especially encouraging for a team that’s (once again) building up from the bottom with teenagers, who can take forever to arrive, if they ever do. Eldridge and Rodriguez will get most of the attention over the next few days, and rightfully so. The Giants aren’t going anywhere if their highest-paid players don’t start meeting expectations, but don’t overlook that the team is getting a lot of encouraging early baseball from some younger players who might be around for a long time. It’s not a 10-game winning streak, which is the only thing that will really make you feel better, but it’s a silver lining. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms