Barring a 22- or 23-game winning streak at some point, this will be the fifth consecutive season for the San Francisco Giants without a winning record. The last time before this that they had four consecutive seasons without a winning record was 2017-2020, and the mathemagicians among us will correctly point out that this means it’s been almost a full decade of .500 or worse, with a magical 2021 season thrown right in the middle to confuse everyone. Before 2017, the last time the Giants franchise had four straight seasons without a winning record, a 21-year-old kid named Christy Mathewson helped break the streak.

It’s a gnarly stretch for the Giants, then. The team already has one of the stranger postseason quirks going, as they’ve made the playoffs in back-to-back years just once since moving to San Francisco (2002, 2003), but this feels much more ominous.

There is, however, a silver lining, and it’s the same one that lousy teams have looked for since the introduction of the affiliated minor leagues. The farm system is popping. And how. Just from a purely anecdotal standpoint, I don’t remember ever checking the morning box scores for Giants affiliates and seeing as much good news. I don’t remember seeing half as much good news. There are teenagers hitting like veteran All-Stars and encouraging signs from recent first-round picks, pitchers developing as planned and rawer pitchers who are showing signs that they might.

The silver lining extends to the last couple of trade deadlines, too. Gone are the days when the Giants were trading prospects like Caleb Kilian away for veterans like Kris Bryant. Now they’re trading veterans like Caleb Kilian away for prospects. In between these Kilian tentpoles, we have at least a couple deadlines where the Giants were sellers, and it’s time to do a proper roundup on how it’s gone for them.

2022

Traded Matthew Boyd, Curt Casali to the Mariners for Michael Stryffeler, Andy Thomas

Traded Trevor Rosenthal to the Brewers for Tristan Peters

Traded Darin Ruf to the Mets for Nick Zwack, J.D. Davis, Carson Seymour, Thomas Szapucki

Traded Jeremy Walker to the Rays for Ford Proctor

The Trevor Rosenthal trade is one of my favorite trades of all-time, if only because he signed with the Giants two weeks before and never threw a pitch for either team. The player the Giants got, outfielder Tristan Peters, made the All-Star team this year and is having a tremendous overall season. It’s not helping the Giants, who traded him for Brett Wisely, but the initial trade still makes me smile. The Giants probably cut one check to Rosenthal that looked more like a catering bill, then traded him for a future All-Star.

Carson Seymour has appeared in 22 games for the Giants since the start of last season. (Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)

The Darin Ruf trade hasn’t worked out as well as it appeared it might, although Carson Seymour still has a chance to stick in the majors, and Nick Zwack is still in the system after dealing with all sorts of injuries.

Not the best trade deadline, but it also wasn’t a full sell-off. Carlos Rodón wasn’t traded, with the Giants figuring that the resulting draft pick would be worth more than the meager offers they were receiving for a rental. (The Giants got Joe Whitman with the pick, who still has a strong chance of making the majors, so it looks like a fair gamble from here.)

2023

Traded a player to be named later to the Mariners for AJ Pollock and Mark Mathias

The Giants were ostensibly buying, but they ended up with the dullest deadline in recent history. The player, as far as Baseball-Reference is aware, has never been named. He’s just wandering around the minor leagues, responding to “Hey, you” and “buddy,” and maybe he’s hitting or pitching well, but nobody knows what to do with him. He doesn’t have a Social Security Number, so they don’t even have him on the payroll. Somebody should help him.

Otherwise, this wasn’t a very eventual deadline.

2024

Traded Luke Jackson and Jorge Soler to the Braves for Sabin Ceballos and Tyler Matzek

Traded Eric Silva to the Tigers for Mark Canha

Traded Alex Cobb to the Guardians for Nate Furman and Jacob Bresnahan

Another weirdo deadline, with the Giants acting as buyers to get Mark Canha … only for the Tigers to turn their entire season around and make one of the best regular-season comebacks of the decade. Poor Canha didn’t see a lick of winning that year, despite playing for two teams that considered themselves to be contenders. Eric Silva is struggling mightily in the Tigers’ system, so the deal itself wasn’t a disaster. It was just amusing, considering how everything turned out.

The real stunner here is the Alex Cobb trade, which might end up being the most consequential trade of all. Cobb made only three regular-season starts along with two duds in the postseason, but the Giants got Nate Furman, a bat-control wonk who has already made the majors and has a fairly low floor, by infielder standards. If that were the only return, it would still look good, but the Giants also got left-handed starter Jacob Bresnahan, who has become one of the best pitching prospects in the system. The 21-year-old isn’t especially close to the majors, but that’s because he’s currently thriving in the Northwest League, where he’s learning how to throw strikes and miss bats.

It is, of course, hard to get too excited about prospects when they’re that far away, but maybe this will help: Imagine a world where the Giants were good in 2026. I’ll give you a second. OK, maybe more than a second. But in this fantasy world, the Giants would have been buyers, jockeying with other teams for bullpen help. Bresnahan is exactly the kind of prospect who could have gotten them a hotshot reliever, even if they were loath to trade him. In this world, the Giants have already won the 2024 deadline, possibly in service of losing the 2026 deadline. It would have been exciting, though.

This trade and the deal with the Braves is where the deadline really starts to pump up the Giants’ system. Sabin Ceballos is on a David Villar-like slow and steady path through the minor leagues, even though the main part of that trade was clearing Jorge Soler’s salary off the books. What did the Giants actually buy with the savings? There’s no real way to untangle that question, so I’m choosing to believe it went to the bonuses of both Josuar Gonzalez and Luis Hernández. That’s probably not accurate, but the savings definitely went somewhere. Think big. Otherwise it gets depressing.

2025

Traded Tyler Rogers to the Mets for Drew Gilbert, Blade Tidwell and José Buttó

Traded Mike Yastrzemski to the Royals for Yunior Marte

Traded Camilo Doval to the Yankees for Carlos De La Rosa, Parks Harber, Trystan Vrieling and Jesús Rodríguez

Drew Gilbert was the inspiration for this article, as I think I’m ready to make a call: He’s a major leaguer. It’s impossible to call him a future everyday player until he’s at least passable against left-handers, but he’s on the correct side of a platoon (in terms of getting playing time), and he’s doing excellent things against right-handers, with a .274/.364/.426 line, which is roughly 20 percent better than the average hitter.

Don’t minimize the contributions of an ultra-qualified fifth outfielder or an overqualified fourth outfielder. They can be the final piece for pennant-winning teams, mostly unheralded but essential players. Grégor Blanco comes to mind as an extreme example, except it’s not that extreme. That seems like a perfectly reasonable kind of career for Gilbert to settle into, but he’s still young enough to hope for more.

Blade Tidwell’s potential is still very much an open question, and it’s helpful to have already mentioned Carson Seymour earlier as a reminder that the answers can take years to arrive. In a couple years, Tidwell might be a large fastball monster at the top of the rotation, a solid middle reliever, an ineffective spot starter or retired. If Gilbert can play all three outfield positions and hit right-handers (and do so with “vigor” and “spirt” and possibly a slight case of “mania”), he’ll make the trade worth it on his own.

Camilo Doval has already been jettisoned by the Yankees, who traded him to the Pirates a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, the Giants get to keep Parks Harber (currently with a .916 OPS in Triple A), whom you’re likely to see as soon as this season, although he doesn’t have to be protected from the Rule 5 Draft until next offseason. Jesús Rodríguez was having a promising season before going on the IL with right-elbow neuritis, but he should be a part of the Giants’ next season, at the very least.

Yunior Marte (not to be confused with this Yunior Marte) was promoted to Double A this season, which was something of a challenge move after throwing well, but not dominating, a level below. He’s pitched better since the promotion, and he’s at least someone to be aware of.

2026

Traded Tyler Mahle to the Braves for Anthony Molina

Traded Robbie Ray to the Padres for Miguel Mendez and Joniel Hernandez

Traded Erik Miller and Carlos Gutierrez to the Red Sox for Marcelo Mayer

Traded Luis Arraez and Caleb Kilian to the Phillies for Ramon Marquez and Marty Gair

Traded Heliot Ramos to the Yankees for Henry Lalane and Kaeden Kent

It’s obviously far too early to judge this deadline, but the early returns were impressive, which would make for a third straight season in which the consolation prize of deadline prospects turned out to be more exciting than expected.

The total WAR in the majors for all of the new Giants up there, assuming they can’t take credit for Peters? That would be 1.8 WAR, and it’s been distributed like this: 1.8 WAR going to J.D. Davis and 0.0 WAR going to Buttó, Gilbert, Tidwell, Rodríguez, Furman and Seymour. There is still work to do before the Giants can get cocky about their deadline prowess.

From here, though, the Giants have added talent when they needed to, which isn’t how it turns out for all of the sellers throughout trade deadline history. It’s not much, but it’s a substantial contributor to the Giants’ farm system ranking as highly as it has since the days of Madison Bumgarner, Tim Lincecum and Buster Posey.

There will be another Giants game on Tuesday night, possibly as punishment for something you did in a past life. Underneath whatever happens, though, there’s a little bit of hope. We’re still in the middle of the story, with a lot of twist endings possible, but you should take the silver linings when they come. It’s heart healthy, if nothing else.

Bayern Munich say Jamal Musiala will “speak out” after the Germany midfielder collapsed during a match for the second time in a four-day period.

On Tuesday, Musiala collapsed six minutes after coming off the bench in Bayern’s 4-2 friendly victory at Heidenheim.

The 23-year-old appeared dazed as he received medical treatment and was helped off the pitch.

The incident occurred after he collapsed during Saturday’s 3-1 friendly win over RB Leipzig in Munich.

“Jamal will speak about this in the near future. We knew about it and we are aware of the situation,” Bayern sporting director Max Eberl said on Tuesday.

“Jamal will speak out. He’s in the dressing room, getting changed and taking a shower.”

Hot conditions were thought to have played a role in Musiala’s collapse on Saturday, with the temperature in excess of 30C.

Musiala missed the first six months of last season after breaking his ankle at the 2025 Club World Cup, but returned in the second half of the campaign and started three of Germany’s four games at the 2026 World Cup.

Chilean international Alexis Sánchez was introduced as CF Montreal’s newest designated player Tuesday. The 37-year-old attacker joins MLS during a critical moment in the league’s history. After the 2026 World Cup, MLS hopes to attract new fans and media partners.

Additionally, the league will shift to a summer-to-spring calendar starting in July 2027. Sweeping changes to the strict squad-building restrictions are expected to take place, too, in an effort to allow MLS teams to push the envelope when it comes to international recruitment.

Sánchez, though, represents a more traditional MLS signing, one that does little to raise the profile of America’s top flight. After a brief stint with Sevilla last season, in which he scored four goals and added two assists in 28 La Liga appearances, Sánchez joins a Montreal side that sits at the bottom of the table and is winless in its last five matches.

“It’s mainly a footballing decision,” said Luca Saputo, CF Montreal’s managing director of recruitment and sporting methodology. “We have a lot of young players here, including many South American players, who can learn a great deal from a player like Alexis. Whenever we make a decision, the first consideration is always what he can bring on the field. But obviously, with a player of Alexis’ stature, he brings a lot off the field too. So it ended up being a perfect fit.”

News broke last week that Montreal had plucked Sánchez from European football, and not Inter Miami, where Sánchez would have been reunited with Lionel Messi, his former Barcelona teammate. Instead of the sun and Latino-influenced culture of South Florida, Sánchez will play in a cold-weather MLS market best known for its hockey heritage.

Still, “El Niño Maravilla” (The Wonder Boy), is eager to show the football world that one’s surroundings shouldn’t temper one’s motivations. Despite a very impressive club career that includes time with Barcelona, Arsenal, Manchester United, Inter Milan and Marseille, Sánchez is not a byproduct of an avant-garde recruitment strategy by Montreal.

His signing resembles that of James Rodríguez in February. The 35-year-old captain of Colombia joined Minnesota United but only managed to play in six games. Montreal will hope to distance itself from that type of outcome.

President and CEO of CF Montréal Gabriel Gervais presents Alexis Sánchez with his jersey in Montreal. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis / MLS via Getty Images)

“This is something new,” Sánchez said about signing for Montreal. “It’s a club that wants to grow, a city that wants to grow. They told me hockey is very big here too, so I hope football can become the same. That passion, people coming to the stadium, enjoying it with family. And I can bring some joy to the people, too.

Joy is one way to describe Sánchez’s contributions to the sport. He debuted in Chile’s first division as a teenager and regularly performed at a high level in South America’s premier cup competitions. With a boyish smile, an intense way of playing and a knack for scoring highlight-worthy goals, Sánchez became a respected professional and a title-winner in European club football.

“I trust in my ability as a player,” Sánchez said confidently, adding that at Sevilla he could run more than the side’s 22-year-old players. “I was born playing football. I grew up playing football. It’s a talent God gave me, and I find it easy to do. It comes easy for me. Football isn’t just about running, it’s about thinking, understanding the rhythms of the game. And I think I’ll keep playing because it comes easily to me.”

MLS poses a different challenge. It’s a physically demanding league that has humbled its fair share of world-class players. Moreover, MLS teams still lack the type of squad depth that elite players are used to. Sánchez, like many stars before him, must accept his reality while elevating the play of his teammates. Sánchez, at least on Tuesday, said all the right things. He wants to mentor Montreal’s young players, win titles and set a new professional standard at the club.

“I’ll demand more from (the younger players),” Sánchez said. “I want the kids to learn because I know they love football. I think my role in recent years has been to be professional, so the young players can learn from me, showing that the team has heart and grit, and plays good football.”

Sánchez joins other recognizable players who see MLS as more than an over-30 men’s league with nice stadiums. Messi is the league’s unicorn, a greatest-ever level player who has not lowered his standards since arriving three years ago. Even after his playing days are over, Messi’s willingness to come to MLS, while continuing to produce heroics for his country on the international stage, will motivate other big names to do the same.

“I’m very competitive by nature,” said Sánchez. “Sevilla wanted me for one more year, but I made the decision that it was time to end my European chapter and come here to Montreal.

“I saw that all the world-class players were coming here. I was watching Messi, (Luis) Suárez, (Robert) Lewandowski and I said, ‘Why not come and give myself the chance to play here with the best players in the world?’ To compete, which is what I love.”

Sánchez has joined first-team training and appeared to target Saturday’s game against LA Galaxy as an opportunity to connect with the city’s growing population of Chilean expats. The back-to-back Copa América titles that Chile won in 2015 and 2016 established Sánchez as an all-time great for his national team.

When asked Tuesday about the influence he has had on Chilean football, particularly on Chilean children, Sánchez flashed his trademark smile and answered with the superstar charisma that has long defined him.

“I’m very loved back home by the kids, and by the grandmothers, too. I’m very happy about that.”

But can he capture the hearts and minds of Montrealers?