SF Giants Player Review 2026: Rafael Devers proved the doubters (including me) wrong

The 2026 season for the SF Giants wasn’t exactly fun to watch, but one of the few reasons to tune in to the actual baseball in the last few months other than to hear Mike Krukow call games was to watch Rafael Devers as he went on an absolute tear.

In the second half he was one of the best hitters in all of baseball and proved the doubters, including myself, who were understandably concerned that the Devers trade was an unmitigated disaster in April, wrong.

Let’s talk about that month of April though because it was really bad. At the end of April he was hitting .207/.248/.289 with two home runs and 11 runs batted in. The Giants traded for Devers thinking he was going to be their best power hitter since Barry Bonds and he looked like a shell of the guy he was with the Boston Red Sox.

While Devers has always been a slow starter, it was easy to be really worried about his production especially since the team was losing and pretty much the whole lineup was struggling for that first month. The thought that the Giants were going to have this guy until 2033 was alarming to say the least.

May and June were better as the power came around a bit, but he still wasn’t completely setting the world on fire. Then there was the incident in Miami where he tried to reject a pinch runner in a pretty blatant act of subordination.

To his credit though, after that not only did he get his act together and not do anything like that publicly, he also started hitting the absolute snot out of the ball and served as a genuine mentor and leader to the younger players who were getting opportunities because of all the injuries.

After the trade deadline is when Devers took things into a different gear. He hit .272/.375/.553 with eight home runs and 18 runs batted in during August and then in September he hit a remarkable .342/.457/1.000 with seven home runs and 19 runs batted in across just 10 games before he was shut down due to a core muscle injury that he’d been dealing with for a while.

The fact that he was that dangerous at the plate while dealing with an injury that required surgery is just mind boggling and speaks to his toughness and how impressive it is that he wanted to be out there pretty much every single game.

Will Devers be the guy we saw in the second half during a playoff race?

Questions still remain, though. Can Devers do the things he did in the second half of 2026 when the Giants are actually in contention? That’s when it really matters, not when Devers is basically the only threat in a lineup full of guys who belong in Triple-A when the season has been lost since April.

Also, can he remain as durable as he’s been the last two seasons? Maybe the surgery will help him stay out there but he’s about to turn 30 and there’s always a fear that the injuries will increase once a player hits his thirties.

He was very fun to watch by the end of 2026 though and was exactly what the Giants hoped he’d be. Now they need to improve the team around him and hope he can deliver the goods when they’re actually vying for the playoffs. 

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