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The SF Giants need to get back to having hard decisions to make on the 40-man roster

Too many players, not enough roles
ByJeff Young
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Apr 25, 2026; San Francisco, California, USA; (L to R) San Francisco Giants chairman Greg Johnson and president Larry Baer and president of baseball operations Buster Posey and general manager Zack Minasian sit on the field before the game against the Miami Marlins at Oracle Park. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
Apr 25, 2026; San Francisco, California, USA; (L to R) San Francisco Giants chairman Greg Johnson and president Larry Baer and president of baseball operations Buster Posey and general manager Zack Minasian sit on the field before the game against the Miami Marlins at Oracle Park. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Last week, the SF Giants purged their 40-man roster to get back into compliance for the offseason. They were able to do so with relative ease, but it served as a reminder that they have far too many soft spots on the roster.

They jettisoned 16 players from the 40-man roster primarily through the waiver wire, but they did make a couple of trades with the Washington Nationals. One more player elected free agency.

In the end, 17 players were activated from the 60-day injured list. That roster lever goes away in the offseason. However, the Giants will have to navigate through a glut of injured pitchers who may not impact the club in 2027.

The Giants had a lot of moves to make. That became a story toward the end of the year, as they transferred nearly every eligible injured player to the 60-day injured list. The story was the sheer number of moves they had to make.

That said, a subplot to this story was how easy it was for a team to make that many roster moves. There were few surprises. Losing José Buttó on a waiver claim to the Texas Rangers might have been the biggest surprise, but even that surprise was modest at best.

The Giants had few tough decisions to make. In fairness, they brought in a lot of players at the end of the year just to fill out the roster. They simply needed players to finish out the season. That led to a lot of inherent soft spots on the roster.

Other than that, they had quite a few players with no future role with the club. Grant McCray had appeared in each of the past three seasons, but he struggled to carve out a future role with the club. By the time he was claimed off waivers from the Seattle Mariners, the Giants had exhausted that audition.

Tristan Beck, Jason Foley, Reiver Sanmartín, and Matt Gage were other examples. By the end of the year, it was hard to envision a role for any of these pitchers going forward. In isolation, a good roster could have one or two of these examples, but the Giants had much more than that.

The roster purge has been complete, but the 40-man roster still has some soft spots on it, especially on the pitching side. They need to get back to a point where these are difficult decisions to make. It is a sign of the lack of depth they have on the roster. I suppose losing 97 games would be a sign of that as well, but that is a symptom of the issue. Not the cause.

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