SAN FRANCISCO — At 11:15 a.m. on Wednesday, Giants manager Bob Melvin was asked if it might be time to start playing some younger guys over veterans who might not be part of the 2026 mix.
“Not yet,” Melvin said.
He admitted that every day that went by changed the math a little, but added that hopefully the final game against the San Diego Padres would be the one where the Giants would “break out of it.”
At 3:30 p.m., the messaging had changed a bit.
“We might be at the point here pretty soon where we give some guys some days off and look at some other guys,” he said after the blowout. “I still hate to admit that we’re at that point.”
In the hours between Melvin’s media sessions, his team lost 11-1 and played some of the ugliest baseball of the season. Losers of 13 of their last 14 home games, the Giants are three games under .500 and five out of the final NL playoff spot.
The New York Mets, who seemingly take a gut punch every night, are single-handedly keeping the Giants alive, although their postseason odds have dipped to 3.5 percent, per FanGraphs. Managers in this situation like to say that their team is one good week away from being back in it, and that’s fair, but right now it’s hard to see how the Giants might put that week together over the final quarter of the season.
They still have 41 games to play, though, and there are things they can accomplish other than trying to get back above .500. Here are five ways they can make the most of this finishing stretch, one that, as Melvin hinted, might include a lot of new faces:
Bryce watch
The biggest question this August and September will be whether the Giants let top prospect Bryce Eldridge get used to life in the big leagues. There are key decision-makers in the front office who would prefer to see him continue to learn in Triple-A and sharpen his skills at first base, but there has been increased talk internally in recent weeks about the possibility of calling him up.
Eldridge still has some holes in his game — that’s the case with any 20-year-old — but even Giants people who believe he could benefit from finishing the Triple-A season rave about his makeup and work ethic. He has done nothing but impress, and even if the strikeouts might be high — he’s at 33 percent in Triple-A — there’s little doubt within the organization that the power would immediately translate.
A few Eldridge homers in September would go a long way in terms of energizing the…