Christian Koss’s destiny on the SF Giants roster is out of his hands now

You may feel an impulse to point fingers when it comes to who’s responsible for the San Francisco Giants’ abysmal season. The trouble with that proposition, though, is you only have ten of them. A lot more than ten things had to go wrong for everything to end up so embarrassingly, apocalyptically bad.

One Giant who quietly had a very poor season, but flew under the radar thanks to bigger names being bad as well, was Christian Koss. Koss became an everyday player in September once Casey Schmitt, Willy Adames and Matt Chapman had all fallen to the injured list, and he appeared in 70 games overall. He was solid last season, putting up a 1.8 WAR in 74 games, but this year you can’t even call his performance liquid. It was just toxic gas.

Of the 135 qualified hitters in 2026 (those logging at least 3.1 PA per game of the regular season), the player with the lowest OPS was Ezequiel Tovar, who compiled a .617 OPS. Koss’ OPS, for reference, was .562 (58 wRC+). His season, much like the Giants’ season, finished with a whimper – in his final five games he went 1-16 with 10 strikeouts and no walks. His defensive contributions, while adequate, could never compensate for hitting like a pitcher, as his 0.0 WAR per FanGraphs reflects.

Familiarity might not be enough to save Christian Koss's roster spot

Before any offseason moves are made, Koss would seem to have the inside track on a bench job just out of inertia. A cavalcade of injuries gave Koss any and every opportunity to etch his name in the plans for 2027, but he mistakenly used an etch-a-sketch to do so, and all his artwork was lost. Marcelo Mayer, who showed very little at the plate this year in his own right, has a higher offensive ceiling and could supplant Koss as the backup middle infielder going into next year.

Of course, that plan would be contingent on Casey Schmitt or an outside acquisition (Luis Arraez?) starting at the keystone, with Adames at short and Mayer as the backup. If Schmitt plays more left field than infield next year, the calculus changes. The eyeball test says Schmitt is more comfortable in the infield and would be more valuable to the team if he stays there. But if the team rightly lets Harrison Bader walk, and doesn’t bring in any outside help for the outfield, Schmitt may see plenty of reps out on the grass – which could open another opportunity for Koss.

A Bo Davidson/Victor Bericoto platoon may be the plan in left for now, or maybe Posey and Vitello would prefer to see a Turner Hill/Schmitt platoon there. Either way, there’s no definitive options there like there used to be when Heliot Ramos was around, and with the way he ended up playing for the Yankees, hindsight says he was no big loss either.

There are a lot of young guys and a lot of question marks heading into next season, and it’s especially dispiriting that not many young players (with the exceptions of Jonah Cox and Drew Gilbert, probably) were able to maximize their chances and force their way into the team’s long-term plans. With a whopping 57 players on the 40-man roster right now thanks to so many players being on the 60-day IL, that means 17 guys are going to be roster casualties that are either placed on waivers or outright released. Koss can't be feeling too secure that he'll survive that round of cuts.

Maybe the Giants still have warm and fuzzy feelings about Koss’s future, and maybe they don’t. All we know right now is that Koss is out of chances to plead his case, and he’s now at the mercy of whatever moves Posey makes – and doesn’t make – in the coming months.

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