© Rick Scuteri | USA Today
Giants fans are upset. Despite having the second-highest payroll in MLB, the team is playing mediocre baseball at 52-53, and sits five games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West division.
The roster is the fourth-oldest in the majors and features seven players over 30 years old who will make an average of at least $14 million per year through 2020. The Giants have just one of the top-100 MLB prospects (as ranked by MLB.com) in No. 36-ranked Joey Bart, and the 27th-ranked farm system (as ranked by MiLB.com).
Most fans can see this is not a recipe for long-term success. Many have called for the Giants to sell just about everyone on the team in favor of a full rebuild. In theory, that’s a great idea. But a fire sale won’t happen at this trade deadline and it wouldn’t actually make sense for the Giants to try it.
Currently, the Giants are just below the MLB’s $197 million luxury tax threshold, after opening the season with a $203 million payroll. They dipped below the threshold after trading away outfielder Austin Jackson and right-hand pitcher Cory Gearrin along with Jason Bahr, a minor league pitching prospect. By doing so, the 50 percent penalty they’d face for exceeding it will drop to 20 percent next season.
General manager Bobby Evans has stated his desire to remain below that tax threshold, diminishing the likelihood of any big trades to bolster the roster, assuming the team is indeed in a buying mode. In the same sense, the team has very few assets that would bring positive value for the team in a trade.
Let’s say you’re the hypothetical general manager of the Giants and you really want to “blow it up” and rebuild. Where do you start?
Jeff Samardzija, Hunter Strickland, Joe Panik, and Brandon Belt are currently on the disabled list. Johnny Cueto has a massive contract and hasn’t been healthy or playing at his best this season. The same goes for Evan Longoria, Mark Melancon and the injured Samardzija. No team would take on any one of those four without prospects attached because they’re on the wrong side of 30, injury-prone, underperforming, and overpaid for at least the next three years. As mentioned, the Giants don’t have many prospects to trade and should be looking to add, not subtract young talent.
The Giants’ aging big seven
Graphic by Jacob Hutchinson, contact info according to Spotrac.com
So, what are your assets that would be worth trading for prospects or cash relief? You have Andrew McCutchen on an expiring deal, Buster Posey, Brandon Crawford, and Madison Bumgarner.
It wouldn’t make sense to move Posey at this point. He’s dealt with a bad hip this season, so his value isn’t clear or as high as it would have been last offseason. There is still the potential to move Posey to first base to extend his career when/if Joey Bart makes his way to the majors, and he’s a hugely marketable player, so his value is probably greater as a Giants player than as a trade piece.
McCutchen is in the last year of his deal and has hit the ball better than his stats show. Despite the average OPS, he is hitting the ball harder than he ever has and has his lowest chase rate since 2010. However, while McCutchen might bring back a prospect or two, the prospects won’t be top-tier with his expiring contract and sub-par stats. If you’re giving up on the season, it would still be worth it to move him now for a weak prospect than to lose him for nothing in the offseason.
The best two tradable assets the Giants have right now are Crawford and Bumgarner, so if the team really wants to “blow it up” and trade for prospects and cash relief, both players would have to go. Bumgarner makes $12 million this and next year (with a team option next year) and Crawford is making $15.2 million over the next four years. Bumgarner’s contract is especially good value and Crawford’s injury history suggests his should remain good value for most of its four years. The Giants would need to receive a substantial return to give up either player.
But before you commit to selling those players, first imagine how much will it hurt to watch Bumgarner and Crawford play well for other teams while the Giants are terrible. Then, ask yourself this: Is it still fun to watch the Giants play most of the time? Are most games competitive?
The answer, at least to the latter question, is yes. The Giants have played in 37 one-run games this season, good for fourth-most in the major leagues. And maybe you haven’t enjoyed watching the Giants play this year, but if the front office thinks it can keep fans interested for the remainder of the season and make a run at a player like Bryce Harper in the winter, of course it will keep this team together. And it should.
With so much money tied up through 2020, the Giants are extremely limited with the moves they can make.
The team’s best hope at rebuilding would probably come through trading Bumgarner, Crawford, Strickland, Panik and Belt in the offseason, or next season, depending on how they finish out the year. But if they’re able to sign Harper and add another starting pitcher in the offseason, it makes more sense to remain competitive and hope negative-value players like Samardzija, Cueto and Melancon get healthy and have enough success in the next year or two that they’re able to be traded.
It will likely take the Giants more than a few years to become capable of challenging for a World Series again. That requires shedding those older contracts, rebuilding the farm system and making smart free agency decisions. Outside of free agency, those improvements will likely take time.
But for now, Giants fans have an aging, frustrating and injury-riddled .500 team that’s hanging on to its playoff hopes by a thread. Maybe this team’s ceiling is a fringe Wild Card team. That’s not the worst thing in the world. Panik will be back in a week or two, as will Belt. Strickland and Samardzija are also on the horizon and while the Giants seem to trade one injury for another, baseball is unpredictable. It would not be unheard of for a .500 team to suddenly get hot.
Some teams don’t get to watch competitive baseball for decades. Meanwhile, in the last decade, the Giants won three championships in five years and still play baseball that, for the most part, is exciting to watch. That’s worth keeping together at least until the end of the season.