The SF Giants spent last week cleaning up their 40-man roster, and the exercise said as much about the team’s present as it did about its future.
To get back into offseason compliance, the Giants moved 16 players off the roster, mostly through waivers, while also making a couple of trades with the Washington Nationals. One more player chose free agency.
In all, 17 players were activated from the 60-day injured list, a roster tool that disappears in the offseason. Even with that churn, the club still has to sort through a pile of injured pitchers who might not matter until 2027, if they matter at all.
The sheer volume of transactions was the headline, but the lack of drama was the real tell. The Giants had a lot of roster business to handle late in the year after moving nearly every eligible injured player to the 60-day injured list.
Still, the process moved along without many surprises. José Buttó getting claimed on waivers by the Texas Rangers stood out the most, and even that was only a modest jolt.
That’s because there weren’t many hard calls left to make. The Giants had added a bunch of players late just to get through the season, so there were plenty of obvious exits built into the roster. They needed bodies, plain and simple, and that created soft spots everywhere.
A few players fit the pattern perfectly. Grant McCray had been around in each of the past three seasons, but he never really forced his way into a lasting role. By the time the Giants lost him on waivers to the Seattle Mariners, they had already used up that look.
The same general story applied to Tristan Beck, Jason Foley, Reiver Sanmartín and Matt Gage. By season’s end, it was tough to see a clear path for any of them moving forward.
A strong roster might have one or two such cases. The Giants had far more than that.
So while the purge is done, the deeper issue remains. The 40-man roster still has weak spots, especially on the pitching side, and the Giants need to get back to a place where these decisions actually hurt.
Right now, that kind of difficulty is missing, and that’s a sign of thin depth. Losing 97 games is part of the picture, but not the root of it.
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