Nuance is dead. If you look closely at some of the details behind this claim, I’m not so sure, but it’s what they keep telling us. It’s a binary world. No time for shades of gray. If a baseball team isn’t contending, it’s rebuilding. These are the only two states of existence for a franchise, and never the twain shall meet. The 2026 San Francisco Giants aren’t contending, and they made moves at the trade deadline that weakened their chances of winning next year. Which means …
Hold on, there. The Giants aren’t rebuilding, and you shouldn’t let anyone talk you into the idea they are. Note that this is separate from any argument about whether they should or should not undertake such a project. Save that stuff for the comments. Of other websites. No, this is just about identifying what the franchise is doing right now and labeling it properly.
Here’s the spectrum that I tend to use in my writing, then. If you go back and read my earlier work, possibly as a dare or court-mandated punishment, you’ll notice it’s very deliberate: rebuilding, reloading and contending. Teams can be between two of the states at the same time, and most are, but they’re also typically much closer to one of the three.
Start with the one that we know doesn’t describe the 2026-27 Giants.
Rebuilding
Part of the problem with the term “rebuilding” is that it means something different in the other North American sports, where draft picks can be stockpiled and draftees are expected to contribute right away. Baseball is different. Some of the prospects are literal teenagers, and all of it requires patience on a seemingly geologic timeline.
A rebuilding team is a team without hope. It doesn’t have a chance to make the postseason in a league where 40 percent of the teams make it, and it’s hard to express just how bad a rebuilding team has to be. There is absolutely no reason for a rebuilding team to have young and talented players in their arbitration years. They won’t be around for the next contending team, and they can be traded for younger and cheaper players.
The only question a rebuilding team needs to ask: How does this make us better in two or three years?
Every team asks a version of this, but read that again. This is the only question a rebuilding team asks. Every position needs to be filled with a veteran with trade value, a minor-league free-agent type who might break out with regular playing time, a rookie who can produce right away or a rookie with a chance to produce in three years, even if he stinks the entire time until then.
Forget having a merely competent veteran on a modest free-agent deal. You can’t trade those guys, and even if they’re worth a couple of extra wins, they’re costing you looks at younger, cheaper players who might be around for the next phase. Evaluating these players might be the most important job of every season, at least at the major-league level.
Everything is done for a team that’s at least two years away, maybe three. The solid 27-year-old hitter on a rebuilding team will be 30 and more expensive in three years. Get him out. The starting pitcher having success with a 97 mph fastball might be throwing 94 with an extra 400 innings on his shoulder. Trade him, too. These kinds of players don’t belong on a rebuilding team.
When a rebuilding team collects enough prospects and other quality young major leaguers, it starts to expect a few more wins. Then it gets to join the clubs in the next tier. It’s where almost all the rest of them are, after all.
Reloading
A reloading team looks at every spot on the 26-man roster and wonders how to make it better. It will use an overpaid veteran, a rookie, a 52-year-old from Triple A if the knuckler’s really dancing — better players at every position, whenever it can. It’s really not more complicated than that.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t some longer-term considerations for the typical team in the typical situation, like a team’s decision about a rookie’s struggles in the service of his development. A team will have to decide whether it’s time to trade a veteran to make room for a younger player, even if the veteran is likelier to be better in the short term. Not everything is win now, and this is where the definitions start to blur a bit.
There’s enough talent on a reloading team, though, where it’s absolutely plausible for it to be a wild-card team. It doesn’t need to be a fluke season or an all-time underdog story, either. A few players live up to or exceed expectations, a pitcher starts locating his fastball better, and bingo bongo, you’re 10 games over .500 at the deadline and looking to buy.
That’s not the likeliest scenario, perhaps, but it’s plausible. The reloading team is neither as hopeless as the rebuilding teams nor as frantic as the older contending teams with a closing window. Reloading teams want to make every spot on the roster better for that season, and they’ll figure out how frantic they need to be once they start winning.
Willy Adames, Rafael Devers, Matt Chapman and Logan Webb all fit with a reloading team. So do Jung Hoo Lee, Daniel Susac and Grant McCray. (Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
Reloading teams aren’t typically interested in paying down the salaries of higher-paid, still-useful veterans. They need production, so there’s no sense in paying down a player’s salary just to have him be worth a couple of wins on another team. This is especially true when there’s nobody in the organization who’s as likely to be as good right away.
Consider Willy Adames: There’s nobody in the Giants’ organization who is likelier to be a better major-league shortstop in 2027 than Adames, and this isn’t controversial. The Giants are awash with impressive shortstop prospects, and they have players such as Osleivis Basabe, Buddy Kennedy and Christian Koss who might have enough talent to transcend a utility role one day. But if we’re talking next year, it’s not close. You can use nerd stats to come to this conclusion, or you can use a folksy truism, such as, “The guy who’s done it before is likelier to do it again.”
Now, there are questions about Adames’ defensive value this year, and his swing-first philosophy isn’t likely to age well, and it’s likely that the younger prospects will start pushing their way into the conversation soon … but we’re just talking about next season. A reloading team goes with the best player and worries about other positions instead.
Adames, Rafael Devers, Matt Chapman and Logan Webb all fit with a reloading team. So do Jung Hoo Lee, Daniel Susac, Grant McCray. … Look, it’s an open audition right now. If you can play and make next year’s team better, grab a mitt and a bat and make your case. When the offseason hits, though, the Giants will know how roughly two-thirds to three-fourths of their lineup will shake out, and they’ll feel pretty good about it. They’ll attempt to make the lineup better around them. They’ll build their rotation around the idea that there should be enough hitting to contend.
And if they roll into the 2027 trade deadline looking pretty smart, they’ll become …
Contending
I need a better term for this, to be honest, because it doesn’t convey the urgency it needs to. Contenders are win-now teams that will be radioactive disappointments if they don’t win the World Series. This might be because they keep winning them (Dodgers), because they won so many of them in the past (Yankees), or if they’ve never won one at all and the guy in charge is a mad scientist (Padres). They might have a team of aging and disintegrating veterans who still have the talent for an “Expendables 2”-kind of run (Phillies).
These teams all hope that the minor leagues keep spitting out prospects, but they can’t really worry about that now. It would be a risk trading six years of an underpaid All-Star for three months of a half-decent starting pitcher, but it’s a risk they’re willing to take.
You know what a contender is. They’re a lot of fun.
Therefore …
The Giants are reloading. Almost every team is reloading, at least the ones with half-decent owners. They’re balancing the present with the future, waiting for their opening. When they gather enough talent, they become contenders and start doing delightfully stupid things at the deadline.
The last time the Giants were in a rebuild was after Barry Bonds retired, and it lasted, like, 18 months. Every at-bat that went to Omar Vizquel, Rich Aurilia and Randy Winn in 2008 was an at-bat that didn’t go to a player who was going to be around for the next contender. It worked out, anyway.
That might have been the only true rebuild in franchise history, depending on your definition, and you’ll hopefully never see a Giants team stink badly enough to need one again.
Until that happens, though, it’s not complicated: Is this player helping the Giants more than anyone else they have access to? Is it worth their while to make a large investment in a player who is better at the same position? Is there a younger player who is better? Will another team give us prospects for this veteran, which helps the farm and opens a spot for a younger, potentially better player?
These are the questions of a reloading team. The questions of almost every team. Some teams will be disappointed if they don’t win the 2026 World Series. Some teams will be happy if they avoid 100 losses. In between is a big ol’ bell curve. That’s where the Giants are, have been and are likely to stay.
