​Logan Webb (61) tosses a new ball as Fernando Tatis Jr. (23) rounds the bases on Manny Machado’s (13) two-run home run in the second inning as the San Francisco Giants payed the San Diego Padres at Oracle Park in San Franciisco, on Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026. (Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images) You’ve watched baseball long enough to know an inherent truth: stars cannot save you. This is not football, where having one of the best quarterbacks alive can gift you a .500 season as the starting point. It’s certainly not basketball, where having one of best players is synonymous with having one of the best teams. You watched Barry Bonds break the single-season home record for a team that still missed the playoffs. You watched Tim Lincecum win a Cy Young on a team that finished 18 games below .500. And if you thinks this is just a San Francisco Giants thing, well, it’s not. The Los Angeles Angels employed Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani for six straight seasons, and won exactly zero postseason games. While Ohtani has left and found greener pastures, Trout has put together one of the greatest careers in MLB history and, more than 17 years since the day he heard his name called at the draft, is still in desperate search of his first playoff win. Not a series win; a game. Nine measly innings. So yes. Stars very much cannot save you. But an absence of stars will kill you, swiftly and emphatically. This is a newts and salamanders situation: not all stars play for good teams, but all good teams have stars. Plural. The Giants entered the season with two stars, one on each side of the ball: Logan Webb and Rafael Devers. And while those two were far from the only reason that the season started as sideways as a 2004 Paul Giamatti film, you can at least draw something of a line connecting the team’s record after six weeks (14-23) to Webb’s ERA (5.06) and Devers’ OPS (.593). Those two eventually course-corrected to varying levels. Webb mixed enough good in with the bad to make his third-straight All-Star appearance, while Devers turned the calendar in a hurry and, since the start of May, has been third in both OPS and wRC+, behind only presumptive MVPs Pete Crow-Armstrong and Yordan Alvarez. The Giants, of course, did no such course correcting, reminding us once again of today’s lesson: stars cannot save you. We spent much of the summer watching Devers smash home run after home run and remembering that lesson. But occasionally that aforementioned corollary — an absence of stars will kill you — would rear its head. On Sunday, in a 6-4 loss that resulted in a sweep at the hands of the San Diego Padres, the Giants were reminded of that corollary. It was a starless Sunday at Oracle Park, unless you were one of the fans sitting in the bleachers watching the first Sunday of the NFL season, instead. The Giants found themselves emphatically starless. Webb was pitching, yes, but just two starts removed from the worst outing o