Backyard Scouting: San Francisco Giants
A Skills-First Review of the Giants’ Lineup
Welcome to Backyard Scouting, where I’ll be tracking MLB hitters one team at a time, with an eye toward the bigger picture. This isn’t about reacting to hot streaks or weekly leaderboards. It’s to build a long-term view of the player pool that helps us stay sharp in both redraft and keeper formats.
Each week, we’ll review one lineup in full. Who’s showing signs of growth? Where is playing time shifting? Which under-the-radar changes might matter a month from now, not just today? The goal is to step back from the daily noise and track how fantasy value evolves across skill sets, usage, and opportunities.
Today’s focus: the San Francisco Giants, an organization still seeking its first 30-homer season since 2004.
Rafael Devers arrives in San Francisco amid the best season of his career. At 28, he's posting career-highs in both barrel rate and walk rate, the latter having spiked dramatically over the past two seasons. As I noted in an offseason piece for Baseball America, Devers was trending toward a signature season last year before shoulder issues — now well-documented — impacted his surface statistics.
Healthy again, it’s business as usual with elite contact, plus power, and a more discerning approach at the plate. The trade from Boston comes with two complicating factors: Oracle Park is a more challenging environment for hitters, and the NL West presents an unfamiliar slate of pitchers. Devers had spent his entire professional career with the Red Sox after signing out of the Dominican Republic as a teenager, so some level of adjustment should be expected.
From a fantasy lens, the key variable now is eligibility. If he gets enough games at first base this summer, Devers would slot comfortably into what’s becoming a loaded top-6 tier at the position, a group that includes:
Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Pete Alonso
Freddie Freeman
Bryce Harper
Matt Olson
Add Devers to that mix, and it’s suddenly a position of strength again.
Heliot Ramos quietly leads the Giants in plate appearances, home runs, runs, batting average, and OPS. Now 25, he first flashed during a hot stretch in June and July last season before fading late — and with just enough swing-and-miss and park-adjusted skepticism to keep him off most breakout lists. But this year, Ramos has leveled up: his K% is down, his BB% is up, and he’s already posted a 116 mph max exit velocity. The lesson? Young hitters can improve, even when we don’t fully see it coming in December draft prep.
Entering 2025, Willy Adames was the biggest regression candidate in fantasy baseball. Here’s my favorite stat from last offseason’s research, featured in my season shortstop preview:
Let’s start with the 112 RBI. Adames had a whopping 224 PAs with runners scoring position last year, tied for the highest total since 2012. It led to a historic number of three-run homers. That’s the definition of running hot.
At the time, I felt the negative sentiment was a bit overdone. But so far, Adames hasn’t meaningfully outperformed replacement level in 12-team roto formats. That said, his longer track record still offers a potential buying opportunity in dynasty, and he’ll likely come at an ADP discount in redraft next spring. One thing I’m watching: a surprisingly low pull rate, which could be holding back his power output more than expected.
Jung Hoo Lee has cooled off since a torrid April, but most projection systems still believe we haven’t seen his best over a full season. Entering Monday, he’s played just 112 MLB games, meaning the error bars remain wide. Lee’s contact-driven, table-setting profile would play up in a better run-scoring environment, but even in San Francisco, he’s offering a bit of everything. The one disappointment so far? A lower-than-expected batting average, especially given his KBO track record.
It often takes international hitters multiple seasons to fully adjust to big-league pitching. Lee isn’t someone to build a fantasy roster around, but he’s not a finished product either, and there’s likely more upside here than we’ve seen to date.
Wilmer Flores ranked fifth in RBIs through the end of May. However, as with Adames, it’s worth remembering how opportunity-driven that stat is. Flores is also striking out at the highest rate of his career, but not to a concerning degree. More than anything, it signals that a major skill shift didn’t drive his early-season fantasy value. He remains what he’s been: an average hitter occupying a run-producing spot in an average offense.
Mike Yastrzemski is posting his best OBP since the shortened 2020 season, even as his power production has dipped. He’s taken on more of a top-of-the-order role for San Francisco, occasionally sharing leadoff duties with Jung Hoo Lee. At this stage of his career, Yaz profiles best as a platoon streamer, someone to deploy during weeks when the Giants face a heavy dose of right-handed pitching.
Matt Chapman is quietly having his best season since 2018. Long a Statcast darling, he's taken a different path in 2025, lowering his bat speed and posting a declining barrel rate for the second straight year.
Chapman has always been a bit of an enigma, but at this point, I’m comfortable calling him simply good. When he returns from his hand injury, I’ll be watching his walk rate closely. Was April’s spike a random blip or the beginning of a new on-base profile?
Also worth noting: since joining the Giants last season, Chapman has swiped 22 bases, two-thirds of his career total. The power may be tapering, but the speed adds an underappreciated layer to his fantasy value.
Tyler Fitzgerald has seen his sweet-spot rate crater in 2025, and his production has followed. No qualified hitter outperformed his expected stats more last season, thanks in part to a high rate of pulled fly balls, which hasn't held this year. With that contact quality regressing, second base is shaping up as a potential upgrade spot for the Giants at the trade deadline.
Patrick Bailey remains one of the premier defensive catchers in baseball, but his strikeout rate has spiked in 2025, pushing him well off the fantasy radar. With an already shaky offensive profile, there's little here outside of two-catcher or deep NL-only formats.
Casey Schmitt has been on a tear filling in for Matt Chapman at third, and the expected stats offer some optimism that it might be sustainable. Still, we’re dealing with just a 32-game sample, and just like surface stats, batted-ball metrics often regress toward a player’s baseline over time. To his credit, Schmitt has maintained last year’s barrel rate while improving his plate discipline. He may earn more playing time at Fitzgerald’s expense once Chapman returns, but for now, he remains more of a deep-league consideration.