The San Francisco Giants are officially going home at the end of this week. There won't be any playoff games to play in. They've been eliminated.
It's a bummer in any context, including the reality that it's now been four consecutive postseasons without the Giants. But it's an especially big bummer considering the springtime move to trade for Rafael Devers.
The lefty slugger from the Red Sox is one of the best hitters in baseball. If the Giants weren't quite good enough at the time of the deal, this had to put them over the top.
Except, somehow, it didn't. The Giants slipped up and missed the playoffs anyway.
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But not all is lost. The Devers deal can still go down on the right side of San Francisco baseball history, and here's how:
Why the Rafael Devers trade can still be a Giants win
The contract
To be fair, Devers' contract could also wind up making this a loss. It's long and pricy.
Except it's in the years left that Devers can be everything the Giants wanted. They didn't trade for one season of Devers.
They traded for a slugger who is under team control through the 2033 season. That's a lot of time to make it all pay off.
The bat
Devers remains one of the best hitters on the planet, and some scuffles with the Giants don't change that.
His .234 average in 86 games so far with San Francisco isn't great. But his .785 OPS isn't bad.
And his career OPS is .854 in a much larger sample size. Devers still has the incredible hands that allow him to hit any pitch firmly to all parts of the ballpark. The bat will be just fine.
The glove
No one will ever mistake Devers for a Gold Glove winner. But he upset things in Boston by refusing to play in the field once the Red Sox shoved him to DH.
It wasn't clear whether Devers would be OK to don a glove again when the Giants got him.
But so far, he's played 27 starts at first base, and he's done just fine, even making a few very athletic plays.
Devers doesn't have to be a full-time fielder if the Giants feel they have other options. But they got past the controversy that Boston couldn't, and that makes the future workable.
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