Do the 2026 SF Giants really have the worst bullpen in franchise history?

No matter how many times it’s felt like the SF Giants have hit rock bottom, they plunge further into darkness. That’s the oppressively cynical outlook Giants fans had when after Monday’s series-opening game against the Astros, where yet another ninth-inning lead was coughed up in maddening fashion. One-run leads don’t just feel unsafe heading into the ninth – it feels absolutely expected when they blow it. Heck, you would bet your first-born that whatever unlucky soul the Giants trot out to the pitcher’s mound in the ninth will leave it with their head hung low.

Buster Posey scoffed at doubters who complained about his lack of moves to shore up a bullpen that looked very suspect coming into the season. Where are those doubters now? They’re in the front row, pointing and laughing. In a season where practically nothing has gone right for the perennial middle child of the NL West, the bullpen has felt like the biggest roster letdown all year long. Has it really been as awful as the eye test says it is?

The SF Giants' bullpen has been bad – but is it the worst?

Frustratingly (shocking), the numbers don’t really back out our collective outrage. No one would ever call the Giants bullpen a world-beating bunch, but their combined 4.43 ERA is 24th in the league – that’s quite bad, mind you, but it’s not the worst. The team in last, the A’s, has an ERA over a run worse at 5.67. Their 17 blown saves, which sounds like a lot, is only middle-of-the-pack – the Nationals have blown a whopping 31 saves, nearly twice as many.

So what are we seeing on a daily basis? It’s a variety of factors conspiring in tandem to ruin our lives. It’s hard to have any confidence in Tony Vitello’s ability to pull the right strings and get the most out of his players, for one. Part of the reason this season’s bullpen stands out in our minds as being so particularly atrocious, though, is the contrast from just how good last year’s unit was.

2025’s relievers were almost a full run per nine better, with a 3.48 ERA that ranked 4th in baseball. The four relievers with the highest WAR last year (technically, Ryan Walker was tied for fourth) were Randy Rodríguez, Tyler Rogers, Jordan Hicks, and Camilo Doval. None of those four returned to the team this year. Rogers in particular, who fans clamored for the Giants to sign, inked a multi-year deal north of the border and has a sparkling 1.67 ERA in Toronto, even lower than his 1.98 mark with the Giants last year.

On top of looking so ugly by comparison, it’s also the anti-clutch gene that sticks in our craw so much. Relievers who offer perfectly decent run prevention in the middle innings – Caleb Killian, Dylan Smith, the whole gang really – just seem to turn into pumpkins when it’s time to go out there in the ninth. They’re unable to rise to the moment, for whatever reason, which makes us yell things at our television sets like “SIGN A CLOSER!”

This organization, when it’s going right, lives off clutch performances. The championship-winning seasons of the 2010’s relied on the “Core Four” of Jeremy Affeldt, Santiago Casilla, Javier López and Sergio Romo – and who could ever forget about the Beard to be Feared, Brian Wilson. Giants baseball was “Torture” in those years, but in the best of ways.

Even though the fanbase’s collective blood pressure always went well beyond unsafe levels, the Giants always seemed to squeak by with a clutch win in the nick of time. Just enough offense, and all the pitching we needed to make it stand. That’s what works in Oracle Park more than anywhere else, and it’s what led to an orange and black dynasty we may never enjoy again.

That’s why this collective bullpen failure feels so personal. There used to be nothing like Giants baseball, and now we hope there isn’t anything like Giants baseball. This franchise, if it wants to get back to its roots and back to the memory-making business, needs to not only pay a lot more attention to developing pitching but also on building as reliable of a bullpen as possible.

Relievers are always volatile year-over-year, but when things looked to be as bad on paper as they did last offseason, the experiment was always going to result in failure. Even though this bullpen isn’t even the worst in baseball this year, and certainly not the worst in Giants history, there needs to be an entire culture change before we ever feel safe with a ninth inning lead.

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