The San Francisco Giants have been one of the biggest surprises in baseball to this point in the 2025 MLB regular season.

Entering play on May 16, they have a 25-19 record, three games behind the San Diego Padres and four games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West.

Keeping within arm’s length of those two juggernauts will not be easy. Executives around the league believe that the disparity in the teams’ depth will be the difference, ultimately keeping the Giants from moving up in the standings.

San Francisco has been incredibly fortunate in the injury department, which has played a part in their success. Not having to move pieces around on the roster constantly has been a positive; the only injury they have had to deal with to this point is second baseman Tyler Fitzgerald.

Right now, even with their hot start, they are a 50/50 shot at advancing and have landed in the “Coin Flips, But Leaning ‘No Postseason’” tier of the playoff chance rankings that Kerry Miller of Bleacher Report put together.

Baseball-Reference views them in the best light with a 60.8% chance of making the postseason. Both FanGraphs and PECOTA are below 50% with 46.0% and 42.8%, respectively.

It would be great for their good run of health to continue, but what would really help improve their odds of making the postseason is their star free agent signings, shortstop Willy Adames and starting pitcher Justin Verlander, living up to their contracts.

Signed away from the Milwaukee Brewers, he agreed to a seven-year, $182 million deal, the largest contract in franchise history. 

The slugging shortstop had a brutal April but has been showing signs of turning things around recently, already hitting more home runs (3) in May than in March/April (2) in less than half the plate appearances.

Encouragingly, he is finding success at Oracle Park, a notoriously tough place for power hitters to succeed. He has a .269/.348/.449 slash line with three home runs, five doubles and 11 RBI in only 89 plate appearances.

On the road, Adames has a .189/.271/.305 slash line with two home runs, five doubles and 10 RBI in 107 plate appearances.

The 42-year-old future Hall of Fame pitcher agreed to a one-year, $15 million deal. He has a 4.31 ERA across 48 innings, looking the part of a backend innings-eater at this point in his career. Verlander is still seeking his first win with his new club.

Upping their production would greatly improve San Francisco’s chances of getting back into the playoffs.

Meet Lily Schwartz, the new executive and artistic director at the Presidio Theatre in San Francisco.

Originally Published: May 16, 2025 at 8:00 AM PDT

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — According to San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York, interested parties have approached his family “probably on a weekly basis” to attempt to buy a piece of the 97% of the team the Yorks own.

This week, it seems, three of the parties who approached the York family came with the right offer. The 49ers are working to complete the sale of more than 6% of the team to three Bay Area families, according to a league source.

Sportico, which first reported the pending sale Thursday, said the sales will be done at a franchise valuation of more than $8.5 billion. If the deal is completed at that number, the valuation will be the largest ever for a sports franchise in a transaction.

The Khosla, Deeter and Griffith families are the prospective buyers, with the Khoslas purchasing 3.1%, the Deeters obtaining 2.1% and the Griffiths acquiring 1%, The Athletic reported Thursday afternoon.

The NFL is expected to formally approve the transactions at the spring owners’ meetings in Minneapolis next week. The 49ers declined to comment on the proposed sales Thursday./p>

br/>The Niners have been receiving offers for the past few months, and York said in March at the annual league meeting that his family had been considering a sale of up to 10% of its ownership stake. At the time, he called it a “family asset allocation decision” based on the wants and needs of various family members.

“It’s just one of those things where if there’s an opportunity that makes sense, we would always explore that, but I’m not sure what we’re going to end up doing,” York said then. “And if we do, we would try to find the right people who would help bolster everything that we’re doing in and around the team, on the field, off the field, and just make sure that we had good partners that are with us.”

All three of the reported buyers have venture capital backgrounds. Vinod Khosla is co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures in Menlo Park, California. Byron Deeter is a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners in Redwood City and San Francisco, and William Griffith is a partner at Iconiq Capital in San Francisco.

In other franchise-related news, theLos Angeles Chargersare requesting approval to sell an 8% stake in the team to a private investment firm, The Los Angeles Times reported, citing a person with knowledge of the approval request sent in a memo to NFL owners.

The newspaper said Chargers owner Dean Spanos and siblings Michael Spanos and Alexis Spanos Ruhl will attempt to sell the stake to private investment firm Arctos at next week’s meetings.br/]