Rafael Devers' core surgery caps a season in which the Giants used 67 players

What happened

Rafael Devers underwent core muscle surgery, ending his 2026 season and becoming the 16th San Francisco Giants player placed on the 60-day injured list, per FanGraphs' Jon Becker citing a report from Giants reporter Alex Pavlovic. Pavlovic's report came on September 13, after Devers had played through core discomfort for much of the year. With Devers on the 60-day, the Giants set a franchise record for players on that list — and, per Pavlovic's report, when Robert Edwards took his first at-bat, San Francisco set another franchise record by using 67 different players in a single season.

Those two numbers, taken together, tell the story of a 2026 Giants season that was less a baseball campaign than an extended audition process conducted under emergency lighting.

Why it matters

The surgery is the headline, but the downstream roster consequences are what make this offseason genuinely complicated for Buster Posey, Zack Minasian, and the rest of San Francisco's decision-makers, per Becker's analysis. The 60-day IL removes a player from the 40-man roster count while they are on it, which ordinarily gives a front office some flexibility. The catch, as Becker notes, is that the 60-day IL cannot be used again until the onset of spring training — meaning none of those 16 players can be shuffled back onto the 40-man in the interim. The Giants also have just one pending free agent in JT Brubaker, which limits the natural attrition that typically helps a front office trim its list heading into the winter.

The result, per Becker, is that San Francisco's decision-makers will face 55 names to sort through all at once, with no intermediate moves available between now and spring training. That is not a normal offseason roster puzzle. It is closer to a logic problem administered under time pressure, with real careers attached to each variable.

For context on how unusual this situation is: per FanGraphs' RosterResource data going back to 2021, only one other team had 16 players on the 60-day IL at the same time — the 2021 Texas Rangers, from August 27 through August 30. Crucially, that late-August timing gave Texas some in-season room to begin working through the shuffle. The Giants, with the regular season winding down and no one on their 60-day expected back this year, do not have that luxury.

The numbers

Devers finished his abbreviated season with 3.4 WAR and 37 home runs, per Becker. The 37 home runs left him one shy of his career high, which he set in 2021. Per Becker's piece, had he stayed healthy and hit three more, he would have reached the 40-homer threshold — a mark no Giants player had hit since Barry Bonds in 2004. That footnote will have to wait for another year.

The Giants' season-long record stands at 64-91 (.413), placing them 4th in the NL West, 31 games back in the division, and ranked 11th in the Wild Card race at 21.0 relative to the cut line. They have been eliminated from both the division race and the Wild Card race, and enter the final stretch on a two-game losing streak.

Where the club stands

San Francisco is at 64-91 (.413), fourth in the NL West and 31 games back of the division lead. The Wild Card is similarly out of reach, with the club sitting 21.0 games below the cut line and officially eliminated from postseason contention.

The remaining schedule offers little in the way of stakes but plenty in the way of audition material — which, given that the Giants have already used 67 players this season, is perhaps the most on-brand possible way to close out a year. On Sunday, September 20, they are at the Los Angeles Dodgers at UNIQLO Field at Dodger Stadium, with Matt Wilkinson listed as the probable starter against Jack Dreyer. The club then returns home to Oracle Park to host the Minnesota Twins on Monday, September 21, and again on Tuesday, September 22.

The injury news has not been limited to Devers. A week removed from the Devers surgery report, Logan Webb was placed on the injured list with a blister, ending his 2026 season as well — a move that came days after Giants manager Tony Vitello had described shutting Webb down as "a conversation," citing inconsistency and possible fatigue after 160.2 innings pitched. And as of the most recent Posterior Wire item, Bryce Eldridge was out of the lineup for a second consecutive game due to a head laceration, adding yet another name to a depth chart that has been reshuffled so many times this season it practically reshuffles itself.

The picture in the field has been equally grim. Per a recent Posterior Wire item, the Giants ranked 24th in MLB with -16.4 Def Runs Above Average and a league-high 102 errors, with Willy Adames and Jung Hoo Lee identified as the worst performers in the field. That is an offseason priority layered on top of the 40-man reconstruction — a front office to-do list that is growing faster than it is shrinking.

What we don't know yet

Becker's analysis identifies 24 players he would place in the initial 40-man with no danger of being cut, but the remaining decisions — who gets protected ahead of the Rule 5 draft, who gets outrighted, who gets designated for assignment — are entirely unresolved. The Giants have not announced any specific offseason roster plans, and the complexity of evaluating 55 names simultaneously means the answers are unlikely to come quickly or cleanly.

The timeline for Devers' recovery from core muscle surgery has not been reported. His status for spring training remains unaddressed in the available material.

What to watch

The Rule 5 draft is the sharpest deadline on the Giants' offseason calendar. Any player who has been in the organization long enough and is not on the 40-man roster is eligible to be selected by another club — meaning San Francisco's front office must decide, for a large number of players simultaneously, who is worth protecting and who is not. With 16 spots currently occupied by players on the 60-day IL who cannot be moved until spring training, the arithmetic is genuinely constrained in a way it almost never is for a single organization.

Worth watching also is how the club addresses the defensive issues that defined this season. With 102 errors and a -16.4 Def Runs Above Average mark, per the Posterior Wire item, the roster reconstruction is not purely a matter of filling injured-list vacancies — it involves rethinking the alignment of players already on the 40-man. That is a different kind of problem than the roster math, and it will require different solutions.

For now, the Giants close out a season that will be remembered less for its results — 64-91 does not invite extended reflection — than for its sheer operational volume. Sixty-seven players. Sixteen on the 60-day. One franchise record for the wrong reasons, and another for a reason that is at least neutral. Posey and Minasian have a long winter ahead of them.