The Giants are a franchise of dynamic duos. Are Rafael Devers and Willy Adames next?

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Willie Mays and Willie McCovey. Will Clark and Kevin Mitchell. Barry Bonds and Jeff Kent. Buster Posey and Pablo Sandoval.

All great tandems in Giants history, the four most potent right-left combinations since the franchise moved west in 1958.

Make way for another.

Rafael Devers and Willy Adames have arrived, potentially the Giants’ next lethal 1-2 punch, Devers a left-handed batter and Adames swinging from the right side, both offering power, production, and game-changing prowess.

Adames opened his first Giants season slowly after joining the team in free agency, and Devers hardly wowed anyone when he first came aboard in a mid-June trade.

But look at ‘em now.

The Giants have won 10 of 11 games, their best stretch of the season, and Devers’ and Adames’ fingerprints are all over the team’s rebirth. Adames is playing like he did last season in Milwaukee, a career year, and Devers is swinging like he did in his Boston prime.

Through it all, each has been feeding off the other, batting back to back in manager Bob Melvin’s lineup.

Devers on Adames: “It’s great playing alongside Willy because he has the personality that keeps you relaxed in the dugout and clubhouse.”

Adames on Devers: “I played against Rafi in the same division when I was in Tampa, but to see him up close every day, to see him get more comfortable as a Giant and more comfortable around the people here in the organization, it’s a pleasure.”

Devers is a legitimate superstar, the Giants’ first since Buster Posey and their best hitter since Bonds. Devers is the one sure thing in this conversation, a career .858 OPS guy, a four-time 30-homers guy, reaching 27 and 28 homers in other seasons.

The question is whether Adames can produce consistently enough to make it an all-time Giants 1-2 punch. Because a clear case can be made for Matt Chapman to be that main complementary piece. After all, he has a higher average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage than Adames, and also a higher WAR.

Adames’ and Chapman’s career OPS marks are a far cry from Devers’, .762 and .780, respectively, but impressive nonetheless.

The only one of the three who’s a holdover from the 2024 roster, Chapman is thrilled to have his new teammates aboard and excited about how they’d contribute going forward.

“How Willy’s season started, not producing the way he expected to, being really hard on himself, trying to get settled in, it just shows his character,” Chapman said. “He was the same guy every day, working hard every day, not complaining, showing up, being a leader. You saw what happened. He busted out of it, and we’re in the position we’re in because of him.

“Then Rafi comes in, takes a little time to get adjusted, like it would probably be for anybody coming to a new team. Then he gets settled in, and look what he’s doing, it’s unbelievable. He gives us all confidence. Somebody of that caliber, a good teammate on top of it, he’s somebody we all look to and count on, and he’s there for us. He’s going to be really successful for us in the future.”

Like Devers, neither Adames nor Chapman is foreign to the 30-homers club. Adames reached the mark twice in Milwaukee and has 26 in his first year as a Giant – 22 games to hit four more. Chapman hit 36 once in Oakland and 27 three other times in his career including last year in San Francisco.

“I think we have a chance to have three or four guys hit 30,” said Chapman, giving Heliot Ramos some love. “Any of the three of us could do it. We all hit 30 before. It can be done.”

That the Giants haven’t had anyone with 30 since Bonds in 2004 speaks volumes about the difficulty to power up at pitcher-friendly Oracle Park. Of Chapman's 20 homers, however, 11 were hit at home. For Devers, who homered 15 times as a Giant, eight came at Third and King.

Will Adames end the drought? “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, cracking a smile, “because I don’t want to jinx it. Whenever I hit 30, come and talk to me and ask me.”

Fair enough. Either way, it’s encouraging that the Giants, not necessarily known for their pop in recent years, even in their championship era, now have multiple power threats at the plate, particularly their three main core players.

All are in orange and black because of Posey, who knows the importance of big-name productive players on a Giants roster. The president of baseball operations traded for Devers in June, signed Adames in the offseason, and helped put the finishing touches on the Chapman extension talks a year ago Thursday.

The trio is leading the rejuvenation. The Giants have homered in 17 straight games, their longest streak since 1947. In that stretch, Devers and Adames hit seven homers apiece. Furthermore, each homered nine times in August, the first time two Giants teammates hit that many in a month since Bonds and Kent in August 2002.

As for Chapman, the Giants began their 10-1 hot spell the day he came off the injured list, and he has homered four times since then, two in Wednesday’s win in Denver that clinched a series sweep.

“Seventeen is a lot, especially when you play in our park,” Melvin said. “It’s been a huge part of the resurgence at this point, and it’s been mostly those guys in the middle of the order that we signed here long term to do exactly that: drive in runs, hit home runs and provide power.”

Melvin knows all about the great Giants tandems of the past. As a kid growing up in the Bay Area, he fondly remembers Mays and McCovey from the 1960s and 1970s. He teamed with Clark and Mitchell on the Giants in the late 1980s. And he coached and managed against Bonds and Kent in the 1990s and early 2000s, then Posey and Sandoval later in the 2010s.

As Melvin rightly noted, any current duo would need to produce over the long haul to be mentioned with the other great combos of the past. But the potential is there for a next-gen tandem to join the list.

“They could,” Melvin said. “I think they’re showing it right now.”

Mays and McCovey were first-ballot Hall of Famers. Mitchell and Clark finished 1-2 in the 1989 National League MVP voting. As did Kent and Bonds in 2000. Posey and the switch-hitting Sandoval were three-time champions, both MVPs in 2012, the former the MVP of the regular season, the latter the MVP of the World Series.

As far as other right-left duos, fans of the Brandons might want to pair Posey with Belt or Crawford. And long-time fans remember the Bonds-Matt Williams dynamic. Going back further, Orlando Cepeda was no slouch complementing Mays and McCovey. Jack Clark-Darrell Evans, anyone?

Whatever tandem you prefer, it’s a lot to live up to for Devers and Adames. Or even Devers and Chapman. 

The point is, even though the recent winning has been a group effort, it starts with these core players, and they realize it.

“It looks like the guys are having fun and executing when they have people on base,” Adames said, “which we were not good at when we were struggling. Now we are executing a little better. I would call that the difference-maker right now.”

The Giants, four games out of the wild-card race, have two homestands remaining, two more chances to feed off the last homestand when they scored 50 runs and went 5-1, a far cry from their dismal play at home previously.

“People always say you can't hit there, you can't score runs in San Francisco, this and that,” Adames said. “The reality is, it’s just a mindset. Obviously, the ball doesn't fly like it flies in Cincinnati or all those other good hitting parks, but we were getting beat up (at home). Teams were coming in and hitting homers. I was, like, why can’t we hit homers, too? Why can’t we score 10 runs? So I feel the mentality has changed.”

So has the production. The history books await the next great tandem.