SEATTLE — When Mariners fans stream out the home plate gate at T-Mobile Park, they exit onto the boulevard formerly known as South Atlantic Street. Now it’s called Edgar Martinez Drive.Seattle officials didn’t wait until Martinez was enshrined in the Hall of Fame to approve the change. They voted to rename the street before Martinez played his final game in 2004. That tells you what kind of impact Martinez had on the franchise and the region.And that’s one way to make this point: committing to one full-time designated hitter isn’t always a bad idea.It might be inconvenient at times. It might make it tougher to play matchups on occasion or get other veteran players off their feet. But it worked for the Mariners all those years. It certainly worked for the Boston Red Sox with David Ortiz, who didn’t start more than seven games in the field in any of his final 12 seasons. The Detroit Tigers had Victor Martinez and late-career Miguel Cabrera occupying the DH spot nearly every day during a successful run. The Los Angeles Dodgers manage all right with that Ohtani guy limited to DH.So the Giants might be wise to make peace with the idea of having Rafael Devers entrenched at DH into the next decade. Or a set lineup duo at first base and DH with Devers and Bryce Eldridge, if the team wants both players to continue to stay involved on defense.Devers’ atrocious start to this season was magnified because the rest of the Giants lineup was just as wretched, but from a slugging perspective, he’s getting back in line with his career norms. With his solo home run Saturday at T-Mobile Park, he joined Matt Olson, Kyle Schwarber and Juan Soto as the only major leaguers to post eight consecutive 20-homer seasons (not counting the pandemic-shortened 2020 season).No, Devers won’t approach his career-best 112 walks from last season, but last year was the outlier. The Giants are paying Devers to slug and he is on pace for 33 home runs and 41 doubles, the latter of which would be the most by a Giant since Brandon Belt in 2016.Yeah, it’ll be important for Devers to take his walks. It’ll probably be even more important that hitters draw walks in front of him.2026 Aces Project update: MLB insiders rank starting pitchersAndy McCulloughThat’s where Eldridge comes in. The 21-year-old rookie made a little franchise history Sunday in the Giants’ otherwise unsightly 6-3 loss when he hit his 10th home run, becoming the first Giant to reach double-digit homers before his 22nd birthday since Jack Clark in 1977. There are only three other players on that list in the Giants’ San Francisco era, and it’s pretty esteemed company: Chris Speier, Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda.It was also the 43rd time in his last 45 games that Eldridge reached base. Even though Eldridge didn’t make his season debut until May 4 and didn’t become an everyday presence until a few weeks after that, he’s already third on the team in walks and likely to finish the season as the team leader.One of the thornier aspects of having Eldridge and Devers on the same roster is that both are left-handed hitters who are positionally limited to first base and DH. It creates a certain amount of roster inflexibility. If Willy Adames and Matt Chapman play out the remainder of their contracts, they’ll theoretically need more frequent rest days when the DH could be a tempting option.As the Giants are currently constructed, it won’t be. But maybe we should look at that more as a Chapman/Adames problem than a Devers/Eldridge problem.It’s easy to view Eldridge and Devers as competing forces on the roster. But it’s looking more and more like their skill sets as hitters make them complementary forces in the Giants lineup. Perhaps it’s not a pure coincidence that Devers’ uptick in production coincided with Eldridge’s arrival.Devers has made it clear in his infrequent interviews that he isn’t comfortable being a club spokesman or a franchise star. If Eldridge ascends to that mantle, maybe the pressure will be off and the spotlight won’t be so bright. Maybe Devers can sit back and do his thing.Will Devers be subjected to the same age curve that takes every major league hitter for a ride in their 30s? Will his contract ($211 million owed from 2027-33) be a major drain on the payroll? Well, sure, but the Giants knew that when they traded for him last year. Devers doesn’t have to follow the Hall of Fame trajectory of Martinez or Ortiz to be a successful acquisition. He just needs to keep doing his thing, and by the end of this season, it appears his numbers won’t be totally out of line with his career norms.The arrival of Bryce Eldridge, who hit a home run on Sunday, coincided with an uptick in production from Rafael Devers. (Olivia Vanni / Getty Images)If Devers doesn’t want to be a franchise star, no problem. The Giants have more hitting on the rise in the system. Bo Davidson and Parks Harber are at Triple-A Sacramento and their major league debuts could come this season. Dakota Jordan and Gavin Kilen were having breakout seasons at the plate for High-A Eugene and will seek to keep the momentum going at Double-A Richmond. The highest-ceiling infielders in the lowest rungs of the Giants system won’t arrive anytime soon, but 2033 is a long time from now.Point is, the hitting outlook for the Giants appears bright. And despite all the ways he disappointed early in the season, including an unprofessional display when he balked at being lifted for a pinch runner, there’s no reason Devers cannot be a productive part of it.Although the Giants are on pace to draw 2.9 million fans this season, that pace is slowing down. The team announced a flash sale through Thursday for all remaining home games except the series against the Los Angeles Dodgers: tickets as low as $8, $12 bleacher seats and $20 seats on the club level. They’re calling it a “Back to School” sale.They can start by playing elementary baseball.The Giants dropped another series that they should have won and could have swept. On Saturday, Logan Webb paid for one mistake pitch and the Mariners executed better in the 10th inning to score their placed runner in a 4-3 victory. It was a mostly well-played game in which a few breaks and bounces didn’t go their way.What continues to weigh them down are all the self-inflicted losses, and the Giants endured another of those Sunday. Eldridge hit his home run in the first inning and Casey Schmitt stole his way into scoring position before coming home on Heliot Ramos’ single as the Giants took a 2-0 lead in the first inning.But the game got away from the Giants in the fourth. Schmitt ranged to his left to field Randy Arozarena’s grounder and airmailed an off-balance throw for an error to start the inning. It was a physical mistake, and those happen. It’s the mental errors that are entirely avoidable yet keep happening. The throw took a strange bounce and deflected all the way to second baseman Luis Arraez, who had a shot at throwing out Arozarena when he tried to advance. But nobody was covering second base.Adames had moved to his right when Schmitt fielded the grounder in front of him, then coasted into the outfield grass and watched the rest of the play. Starting pitcher Robbie Ray was a spectator as well, as he stood flat-footed on the mound. A heads-up center fielder might have surveyed the field and sprinted in to assist, but that didn’t occur to Grant McCray.It was another example of passivity from a team that has allowed so many bad outcomes this season. Sure, the ball took a bounce that nobody could have anticipated. But why stand around when there’s even the slightest chance that taking a little initiative could make a difference?Ray is almost certain to be moved before the Aug. 3 deadline, and he claimed that he isn’t thinking about the uncertainty.But he’s a free agent after this season. This is likely his last shot at another multiyear contract. He surely knows that pitching for a contender would provide a compelling platform, in addition to getting a chance at a ring. So every start with the Giants is an audition of sorts.Interestingly, Ray didn’t minimize the impact of the error to start the fourth.“It’s tough,” Ray said. “You can’t give major league teams extra outs. In that situation, ball gets away, he goes to second base, all of a sudden, it becomes a high-stress situation, high-stress pitches. I just threw too many pitches in that inning. That’s what it came down to.”Following the error, the Mariners scored two runs on three hits and a walk in the fourth. Ray threw 26 pitches in the inning and then allowed a pair of singles to start the fifth before Giants manager Tony Vitello went to the bullpen. Sam Hentges did well to induce a double-play grounder, even if it allowed one inherited run to score and vaporized the one-run lead that Arraez had provided with an RBI double in the top of the inning.In the sixth, Luke Raley hit a pinch homer off Adrian Houser that put the Mariners in front for good. It was Raley’s second career pinch homer. Oddly enough, the other one also came against the Giants. It was an inside-the-parker that hit the brick arcade and skimmed along the top of the center field wall in a 2023 game in San Francisco when Raley was a member of the Tampa Bay Rays.Watching Ray pitch in Seattle, it was hard not to be reminded that he arrived in the Giants organization in a trade with the Mariners that amounted to a swap of distressed assets. Say this for former Giants president Farhan Zaidi: he was awfully good at erasing some of his own mistakes. He spun millions of dead money owed to Mitch Haniger and Anthony DeSclafani and turned it into a slightly larger investment in Ray, who ended up being an All-Star for the next Giants regime.The Giants can squeeze a little more out of that deal by flipping Ray for a useful young player or two. Ray is still owed the remainder of his $25 million salary for this season, and the Giants should absolutely offer to eat as much money as they can if it means getting back a better talent haul.And if they can take a lesson from Zaidi, they’ll explore creative ways to move other distressed assets, too.