SAN FRANCISCO — The Giants have hardly played like sellers since the dust settled from last week’s frantic wheeling and dealing, winning back-to-back series on the road and five of nine games overall since the trade deadline.
In one of those ways that baseball can be cruel sometimes, had they strung together the same stretch a week earlier — against two of the same foes, no less — Mike Yastrzemski, Tyler Rogers and Camilo Doval might still be wearing orange and black.
Nevertheless the Giants traded away three players from their major-league roster and will now get the chance to see whether their recent turnaround is more than a mirage (consecutive losses to the Nationals over the weekend didn’t help). Meanwhile, no team was more active than the Padres, who added seven players in five deals.
The teams will meet seven times in the next 10 games, beginning Monday at Oracle Park.
Buster Posey denied this week on KNBR that the deals meant the Giants had shifted their focus to 2026, and if the postseason remains a meaningful goal for this season, it will likely mean catching the Padres — or at least coming close.
After dropping two of three against the Nationals over the weekend, the Giants begin the series seven games back of the Padres, who won their weekend series against the Red Sox.
“We worry about ourselves,” manager Bob Melvin said. “They’re ahead of us, so we have to beat them. I think we just like the way we’re playing right now. We needed to get past what was a difficult period and not very good period for us. It seems like we’re playing a lot better.”
Melvin’s old boss, A.J. Preller, the Padres’ president of baseball operations, has a well-earned reputation for leaving no stone unturned and striking deals seemingly out of nowhere. In 2022, Melvin could all of a sudden pencil Juan Soto into his lineup after an Aug. 2 blockbuster. They went big again this year, swinging the highest-profile trade of the deadline to add fireballer Mason Miller from the A’s to a bullpen that already looked to be the best in baseball.
San Diego also lengthened its lineup with outfielders Ryan O’Hearn and Ramon Laureano from the Orioles, firmed up its catching with Freddy Fermin from Kansas City, and deepened its rotation with Nestor Cortes — tentatively set to oppose Robbie Ray on Tuesday.
“I think that team played their way into that front office doing that,” said Logan Webb, scheduled to start Monday’s series opener. “I think maybe a month before that, it was kind of the opposite. We were the good team that was probably going to be going all-in. They played really well, we didn’t play well.”
Indeed, while the Miller deal involved the highest-rated prospect to be traded at the deadline in years (Leo De Vries), Posey closed arguably the biggest blockbuster of the season six weeks earlier. The Giants were 11 games above .500, two back of the Dodgers and in possession of a wild-card spot when they acquired Rafael Devers on June 15. In spite of the boost he has provided the lineup (125 OPS+), they sputtered to a 13-25 record from then until deadline day, cementing Posey’s selling posture.
The trades served as a wakeup call of sorts, Devers said.
“Every time a team makes a trade or any player movement, it’s for a reason,” Devers said through team interpreter Erwin Higueros. “So yeah, I think that’s something that will motivate us and has motivated us now to continue playing.”
San Francisco sat six back of San Diego on deadline day and has managed to keep the gap from growing much larger in the week and a half since. Despite their disparate directions, the Padres have played only marginally better, posting a 6-3 record to the Giants’ 5-4.
Still, the Giants need to be making up ground — not treading water — no better time than this week.
“It’s what, five games?” Webb said Saturday of the gap in the standings. “There’s a month and a half of the season left.”
Added Devers: “It’s a very important series.”
<
