Buster Posey and Zack Minasian did quite well at the trade deadline yesterday, but where does that leave the San Francisco Giants today and beyond? In the midst of another rebuild.
Buster Posey might not call it that, and the Giants have strenuously objected to such a practice in the past, but make no mistake: the Giants are rebuilding, and for the third time in a decade. Trading 23% of the major league roster in a 48-hour span while watching your team inch towards setting a new franchise record for losses in a season is definitionally a rebuild. So, we don’t need to think too deeply about their motivations.
I think I’m all out of interest in applauding the Giants for their moves that look positive on paper. The past decade or so has featured many such moves that haven’t panned out. Also, the Giants’ reputation is in the toilet for non-baseball reasons and I don’t think acquiring 8 prospects for 6 major leaguers changes the general perception. Nor should it.
But they became more interesting. Not a little more interesting. Actually interesting. Basically since the moment Buster Posey has touched the front office, the farm system has improved. Heading into the final hours of the deadline, the Giants were already ranked in the top 10 of the sport. They might not crack the top 5 in that ranking after yesterday’s additions, but their already upward trajectory was certainly turbo boosted by the additions of Marcelo Mayer, Ramon Marquez, Henry Lalane, Miguel Mendez, Kaeden Kent, Joniel Hernandez, and Marty Gair (my apologies to Anthony Molina and the salary relief).
That’s just one component of what makes them interesting. The other is that Buster Posey has been given permission to engage in creative destruction of the major league roster, something the last two front offices weren’t really allowed to do. Maybe it’s Larry Baer’s old age, maybe it’s the infusion of venture capital the past few offseasons, but this is a new dimension. The Giants have rebuilt without calling it that before, but they’ve never so nakedly engaged in rebuild behavior.
Now, there were a lot of complaints in my trade grades article from yesterday saying that the entire deadline was a bust because they didn’t move any of Rafael Devers, Willy Adames, or Matt Chapman, three players whose acquisitions were largely celebrated in the moment. I think I understand the compulsion to scream at the front office for wanting them to only trade bad players for good players (and, to be fair, a lot of commenters said good riddance to Heliot Ramos, too), but what makes the Giants interesting with them on the roster going into next year and beyond is that it’s extremely plausible and rather probable that at least one of them will be fairly important on the next not-bad Giants team, which could be as soon as 2028.
The Giants are the envy of no one but they are no longer a public embarrassment when it comes to their farm system. They are alive on the international side of the industry and they seem to have jumped to the front of the pack when it comes to the next development trend: emphasizing contact on the hitting side. And because they’ve been bad and a little lucky this past draft in terms of the lottery, they’ve been amassing some consensus quality prospects.
This doesn’t mean the Giants are automatically good or that a bright future is guaranteed, but the success of the operation and the talent that’s caught the attention of the industry means — to me, anyway — that fans don’t have to settle for hoping for hope. Yes, they’ve had some prospects and some position players (and Logan Webb) who’ve made us all conjure a few “interesting”s in our daily Giants talk, but the volume is simply greater now. The Giants have pushed themselves from “it will take an incomprehensible volume of luck to move the needle from ‘hopeless’ to ‘some hope” to being maybe 2 years away from a lineup that includes Bryce Eldridge, Gavin Kilen OR Marcelo Mayer, and Bo Davidson complimenting Casey Schmitt, Rafael Devers, and the cremains of Matt Chapman & Willy Adames with a pitching staff that includes the last useful innings of Logan Webb’s career buttressed by Jackson Flora and backed up by a bullpen that has Randy Rodriguez, Henry Lalane, and Miguel Mendez.
Or whatever. There are at least two other wishcasting configurations a fan could conjure and that’s because the Giants have put themselves in the position to maybe have some options. So, in terms of a rebuild, this isn’t like that post-Bonds era nor that post-championship run. Not exactly. The Giants have grabbed talent wherever they could and now they’re counting on VP of Player Development, Randy Winn, and his group to get at least some of them to become major leaguers.
Now, the Giants could rush through them the minors as Farhan Zaidi did and make sure the team has some of this talent on the roster in two years, but what’s interesting is that the talent has been arriving at the right time. Bryce Eldridge maybe could have used most of this season in the minors, but it seems like starting him in the majors would’ve been the most correct move and his development hasn’t raised any red flags. He’s figuring things out and you can see the flashes of greatness in his game. Casey Schmitt’s breakout might be a total fluke (we’ll find out after the lockout!), but it did happen and under this brand new coaching staff. Daniel Susac hasn’t exactly flourished, but he’s captured and held the confidence of the organization. Ron Washington helped Luis Arraez become an All-Star defender at second base. The Giants seem to have the tools to help players realize their abilities at the major league level.
Tony Vitello was predicted to be a great manager for developing younger players, and it looks like the board has been cleared for him so he can do exactly that the rest of this season and whenever the lockout ends next season. A full year of experience under his belt and an offseason as a major league manager rather than a transitioning college coach will do wonders, too. Plus, Buster Posey and Zack Minasian will have more experience, too.
Even with Devers, Adames, and Chapman on the books next year and beyond, the salary burden is overstated. In terms of “real money,” the Giants are on the hook for $154 million in 2027, about $40 million less than they’re projected to spend this season. With the lockout looming, it’s premature to get worked up over player payroll — plus, all three should project to be — at minimum — decent in however many games are played in 2027. Yes, probably too much money for 6 to 10 wins above replacement for 3 players, but tough to replace without spending a similar amount of money or expending prospect capital.
The owners’ planned lockout does make it difficult to predict the next 6 months, and I’m not even suggesting that the Giants have drafted and traded for their next championship core, but they now have so many prospects to go with enough graduated prospects and solid veterans that an unknowably long rebuild doesn’t seem to be on offer. They could be good within the next two years, which felt like an impossibility just a month ago.
I’m bringing a similar energy to this post as I did back in 2019, when I predicted in May of that season that the Giants would be good again in 731 days (2 years). I got the premise right (the Giants won 107 games two seasons later), but the details wrong:
Evan Longoria, Brandon Crawford, Brandon Belt, and Buster Posey won’t be the core of the next good Giants team. The 2019 and 2020 versions of these players are the stewards of 2010-2014 legacy. Or, they’re living museum pieces. They are not the future of the franchise.
And it gets worse from that point, but I think you get where I’m going here. Maybe none of the prospects acquired yesterday or the ones in the Giants’ top 30 right now will be the main reasons why the 2028 team is a good one, but that would be closer to a shock than a simple “that’s Baseball!” This group of Giants prospects isn’t vaporware, at least on the hitting side. We can only hope that some of them will be used to acquire better pitching.
Doesn’t that possibility also make the Giants actually interesting? The failing and losing of the past decade no longer constrains them. Because they have this tremendous volume of up and coming talent and financial flexibility, they can go in a lot of different directions to become a successful team again.
