You’ve read the headline, and now you have a question: There was good news for the 2025 San Francisco Giants?

There was! There was so much of it, in fact, that this article needed to be split into two parts, with the first installment here. A .500 season typically doesn’t generate an unending torrent of fun stories and positive developments, but it sure beats the heck out of a .400 season. Plenty went right for the organization, with the hope being that it will all help future teams win more games.

Let’s dive in, then, with five developments that should make you more optimistic about the Giants’ future.

5. Robbie Ray looks like an above-average starter

That’s underselling his season, at least in the first half, when he was a deserving All-Star. Acquiring him for Mitch Haniger (since released by the Seattle Mariners) and Anthony DeSclafani was something of a masterstroke for Farhan Zaidi.

It wasn’t all peaches and cream, of course, as Ray led the league in walks and faded dramatically in the second half, with a 5.54 ERA in 12 starts. That was almost three full runs higher than his ERA in the first half (20 starts), and it was one of the major contributors to the Giants’ decline and fall.

All true. But he still had a season that surpassed expectations for a pitcher in his first full season after Tommy John surgery. It’s unlikely that he’ll return to Cy Young form, but his 2025 season was a pretty good impersonation of his 2022 season, which was a helpful one for the Mariners. He’ll be projected to be valuable next season, too.

The best way to put it: If Robbie Ray wasn’t already on the Giants, they’d have to find him in the offseason. As in, the Giants would be on the hunt for one more veteran starter, preferably on a short-term deal. That’s easy enough to find when you need one or two, but without Ray establishing himself again, the Giants would be looking for three or four. It’s possible for a scavenger hunt like that to work out like it did in 2021, when the Giants got excellent seasons out of DeSclafani, Alex Wood and Kevin Gausman. There’s a reason why it’s so easy to remember that season, though. It was an outlier. Don’t expect it again.

Ray’s presence makes a difficult offseason job slightly easier. Take the small victories when you get them.

4. Josuar Gonzalez is streaking up the prospect lists

The Giants officially signed Gonzalez, one of the top international free agents of the 2025 class, for a bonus worth just under $3 million, and he made his professional debut in the Dominican Summer League. It went well. Remarkably well. He’s already cracked Baseball America’s end-of-season top-100 list, coming in at No. 82, with them writing that “Scouts patrolling the league report a player who should easily stick at shortstop while also flashing the type of offensive skills to provide value at the top of a lineup and on the bases.” Francisco Lindor has come up as a comparison, which is as irresponsible as it is compelling.

FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen is even higher on Gonzalez, ranking him as the 28th-best prospect overall and comparing him to a first-round pick. Check that: He compared him to a No. 1 pick in the entire MLB Draft:

I’ve seen enough of Josuar Gonzalez in Arizona to consider him in lockstep with (Eli) Willits, who just went first in the draft. Gonzalez is an incredible athlete with amazing athleticism and range on defense. He’s built like a young Francisco Lindor. 

That would be the Eli Willits who is another teenage shortstop and this year’s No. 1 pick in the draft by the Washington Nationals.

At some point leading into spring training, I’ll probably have to write an article about why Marco Luciano is in danger of running out of minor league options before establishing himself as a big leaguer, so you don’t need a reminder that prospect rankings don’t always translate to on-field success. Still, the Giants might have gotten the best player in the 2025 international class, and he’s already knocking socks off. It’s hard not to get excited about that. Doesn’t happen much around these parts.

3. Logan Webb became a strikeout monster

Webb didn’t need a strikeout pitch, mind you. He was already an ace, one of the most reliable pitchers in baseball. He led the National League in innings pitched for the third season in a row, and he also led the majors in innings for the second season out of the last three. If he pitches like the old Webb for another 10 years, he’ll make the Hall of Fame.

Ah, but this is the new Webb, whose secret weapon is … a pair of crappy fastballs. He talks more about his cutter in this Eno Sarris/Andrew Baggarly collaboration, but Webb also reintroduced his four-seam fastball. Both pitches got hit hard occasionally, but they got into hitters’ heads enough to get them swinging and missing at everything else. This took Webb from being a pitcher who was only as good as his defense and turned him into someone who could get his own danged outs. It’s nice to have both options.

If you’re wondering why this didn’t show up in Webb’s overall statistics, the answer is that it did … in the less tangible stats. Webb’s 2.61 FIP ranked fourth in baseball, just below Paul Skenes, Tarik Skubal and Cristopher Sánchez, and just above Garrett Crochet. That’s a list of the pitchers who will finish with top-three Cy Young votes and/or the actual award. Once again, any optimism you might have about next season’s team begins with Webb. If the strikeouts stick but his fielders give him more help, he just might have his best season yet.

2. The long-term contracts haven’t gone past their expiration dates yet

This could have been a complete disaster. The Giants still owe a combined $637.5 million to Willy Adames, Matt Chapman, Jung Hoo Lee and Rafael Devers. That’s at least eight or nine Ghirardelli sundaes, and it means that the Giants have very, very little wiggle room on the roster.

Remarkably, all four players might have received paydays similar to their current contracts if they were free agents this offseason. Adames would approach a six-year deal at his current average annual value. Chapman and Devers might get less, but it wouldn’t be orders of magnitude lower. It’s a thin market out there.

That’s good, because it most certainly didn’t have to work out like this. The entire crop of players with serious money left on their deals endured long, discouraging stretches this season where their contracts looked like albatrosses. Adames had an ominous start to his Giants’ career. Chapman would disappear for extended stretches. Lee went from looking like a future star to a future fourth outfielder, eventually settling right back down as a projected starter. Devers can go into some of the deepest funks you’ll ever see.

By the end of the year, all of them contributed to the Giants’ goal of winning baseball games. All of them are expected to do so again next season. It could have been a much, much more annoying offseason without those tiny gifts. All of the players in question either came close to their career averages or even underperformed, but that’s not the point. It’s a foundation worth building around.

1. Trading for Rafael Devers

The Giants will not spend this offseason with a Kyle Tucker-or-bust mandate. They will not try and fail to acquire a big name in free agency. They will not finish second for the slugger they need in the middle of the order. They have him. They’ll have him for a long, long time.

Devers is an imperfect franchise player. He’s limited to first base or DH, and he’s going to give back a lot of runs with his legs. He’ll strike out when he’s in the middle of a slump, and his slumps will last an awfully long time. I don’t know if he’ll age into a one-note thumper in his mid-30s, or if the Giants will even be that lucky. But for the next few seasons, he has the kind of left-handed power that plays even at Oracle Park. There can’t be more than a dozen people alive who can claim that. He fits a hole that’s existed in the lineup since Barry Bonds retired, almost 20 years ago.

The trade didn’t come without risk. Kyle Harrison would have been the best option for the Giants in September of this season, much less future seasons. James Tibbs III somehow found his way into the Dodgers’ system, where he has the potential to harass the Giants for a decade. And there’s the contract, of course. The next time a nine-figure free agent hits the market, don’t expect the Giants to be too involved. They got their guy. This is their uppercut swing with a 3-0 count. Their next swing will be much more measured.

All true, but being scared of the risks is a good way to avoid improving the team at all. As of this date in 2025, the Giants have a player with 40-homer potential under contract for the next several seasons. There were only a couple of ways that was going to happen, and the Giants lucked into one of them.