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Henry Schulman explains why winter meetings were relatively quiet for Giants

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The Winter Meetings came and went for the San Francisco Giants, and if you only followed the transaction wire, you might have missed it.

New VP of Baseball Ops. Farhan Zaidi didn’t make any splash deals, or really any deals at all, over the past few days, with the most notable news coming out Thursday that the club had selected two players in the Rule 5 draft for the first time ever.

Giants beat writer Henry Schulman was at the Winter Meetings in Las Vegas with Zaidi, and explained to Gary & Larry why there didn’t seem to be much action.

“This has been, pretty much like in the days of Brian Sabean and Bobby Evans, a tire-kicking stage,” Schulman said. “One of the problems Zaidi has, he was so busy building a staff, that it took away time from having discussions about which players you want, and which players might be available, and he was using the meetings more to have those discussions.”

On Dec. 10, Zaidi made three additions to the front office, in J.P. Ricciardi (Senior Advisor to the President of Baseball Operations), Zack Minasian (Director, Pro Scouting), and Michael Holmes (Director, Amateur Scouting).

“So while at the same time he was going around the hotel talking to agents and other teams, a lot of the time here was spent in the actual Giants suite going over a lot of these players and a lot of preliminary meetings have been had,” Schulman continued.

Just because the last few days have been quiet, however, don’t expect the Giants to necessarily enter the new year without a few new pieces.

“As I wrote today, he does think that some of them will bear fruit before the Christmas holiday. Maybe perhaps picking up an outfielder or two or a starting pitcher or two.”

Listen to the full interview below. To hear Schulman on the Winter Meetings, start from the beginning.