Eldridge abomination?

I feel like I've used that pun before, but if I'm not sure then it basically doesn't count

At some point, you pass an imaginary line in the season, and instead of saying “It’s still early” when you’re evaluating your team, you start saying, “Uh oh.” Of course, some brave souls are uhohing from the jump, but generally speaking, a team gets a grace period at the beginning of the year because it really is silly to panic too early. You’re gonna do this for fun all summer and you can’t even give it a week? Come on. Live a little!

But then you get several weeks in. You get a month in. And you get nervous. Because there’s no denying it anymore. This is just who you are now. Sure, you’ll get the very occasional 2019 Nationals or 2024 Mets, but the odds are, if you’re an awful team in May, you’re not going to be much good for the rest of the year either.

This presents a problem for the Giants, who, here in May, look a whole lot like an awful team.

Yes, the Giants won last night, but it was the kind of win a team gets despite its issues, not because it’s starting to overcome them. According to Fangraphs, the Giants have been the worst offense in the league. They’ve also been the worst baserunning team in the league. They have the fewest homers, the least power, the worst on-base percentage, the worst walk rate, the worst wRC+, the fewest runs, and overall, the least valuable group of position players of any team in baseball.

13th in batting average, though! So who’s to say if they’re good or not?

So if this is who they are — if this team, for whatever reason, truly can’t hit — then what do you do? You look for a spark in your minor league system. You look for a difference-maker with massive untapped potential. It’s Bryce Eldridge, by the way. I don’t want to make it seem like I'm trying to create tension with this paragraph when we all know who I mean. You look for someone who can show up, sock a few dingers, and possibly, if it’s not too much to ask, transform the lineup through his very presence. That is kind of a lot to ask though, so if it doesn’t happen everyone understands, but it would be nice.

So with Eldridge in the majors — I don’t want to shortchange Jesus Rodriguez here, but unfortunately I am absolutely about to shortchange Jesus Rodriguez by not mentioning him again in this newsletter — what can the team expect from him? He shot through the minors on a dinger-powered rocketship, made his MLB debut last September, didn’t do all that well in 37 PAs, and got sent back to Sacramento to begin 2026.

In Sacramento, Eldridge has had what is not technically a slow start, but did feature an unusually low number of homers: 5, in 137 plate appearances. Still, a .333/.445/.518 line will play anywhere, so up Eldridge came to the majors, ready to swing his bat and help his team.

But will it work? There’s reason to think it will (Bryce Eldridge is very talented) and reason to think it won’t (he swings through a lot of stuff in the minors). To me, the more pertinent question is: has he learned everything he can learn in the minors? Because with a prospect like Eldridge, the reason you call him up is that he is done with the previous level, and has conquered it. If that’s not the case — if he still needs to work on pitch recognition or laying off waste pitches and that is work that can be done in the minors — then that work should be done there, where Bryce Eldridge will not be eaten alive by the best pitchers in the world.

If that work is complete, and AAA has nothing else to offer Bryce Eldridge, well, that’s fine, though it does seem like a wild coincidence that he finished proving everything he needed to prove right when the team finished an abysmal 0-6 road trip that cemented their status as 2026 also-rans. From the outside, it seems like a desperation move, like the kind of thing that the team is doing to prioritize short-term needs instead of long-term ones. Considering that the short-term will be bleak no matter what, this seems like an unwise decision.

But what do I know? I’m not the one watching video of Eldridge every day, reading scouting reports, hearing how he addressed whatever shortcomings in his game existed in Spring Training. Maybe he’s doing all that. Maybe his high swinging strike percentage and relatively low in-zone contact percentage are just his game, and he can be successful despite those stats. It works for Corbin Carroll!

But maybe not. Maybe Eldridge won’t be a productive major leaguer without ironing out those kinks. Maybe this is a PR move and a clubhouse move, instead of a baseball move. Maybe the Giants are adding to their already not-stellar reputation of calling up prospects early by doing another one. Maybe this is all a terrible mistake.

But we have no way to judge that now. Even after Eldridge’s 0-for-3 to open up his major league season, we don’t really know anything about how he’ll do going forward. All we can do is wait and hope that he rewards the Giants’ faith, as well as ours. And also hope that he just wallops the crap out of some balls. Hey, if we’re dreaming, might as well dream for something we might get.