At the 2019 trade deadline, the Giants were 54-53, 2.5 games out of a wild card spot.
In his first season as president of baseball operations, Farhan Zaidi tried to split the middle. Even with a team that started 22-34 and fell behind by as much as 29 games in the division, Zaidi opted against a full fire sale.
The Giants traded relievers Mark Melancon, Drew Pomeranz and Sam Dyson for prospects and added Scooter Gennett in hopes of some offensive juice. They kept starter Madison Bumgarner and closer Will Smith, both of whom could leave in free agency at the end of the year.
Zaidi’s explanation: “We value the present,” he told reporters then, before his team finished 77-85.
At the 2022 trade deadline, the Giants were 51-52, 4.5 games out of a wild card spot.
In a surprising string of moves, the Giants neither bought nor sold. Veterans Darin Ruf and Curt Casali, along with injured pitchers Matt Boyd and Trevor Rosenthal, got shipped to truer contending teams. Prospects and J.D. Davis came back. Carlos Rodón and Joc Pederson, San Francisco’s All-Stars with the most trade value and the option to hit free agency, stay.
Zaidi’s explanation: “The present really matters to us,” Zaidi told reporters in the Giants’ dugout.
Now, like three years ago, the Giants are caring too much about the present. No two teams, and no two deadlines, are exactly the same. But this one seems destined to end just like 2019: with a missed playoffs and regret about not building more for the future.
“For most of this season, we’ve been in a playoff spot,” Zaidi said. “Obviously we’ve had a bad couple of weeks that’s kind of put us on the fringes of the race. But we know a hot two weeks could turn us around just like a bad two weeks put us here.”
The two hot weeks San Francisco is seeking will have to come with J.D. Davis and a slew of prospects, not Darin Ruf, Curt Casali, Matt Boyd and Trevor Rosenthal.
If the Giants — currently 3-10 since the All-Star break — continue playing sloppy, uninspired baseball, their deadline will look half-hearted in hindsight.
The 2019 club had won 20 of 26 games heading into the deadline, earning reinforcements. This group limped into the break with the franchise’s first 0-7 road trip since 1985.
Nobody realistically available in a trade this year has the sentimental value that Bumgarner — and Bruce Bochy, by proxy — did in 2019. Even knowing after the fact that he’d leave for Arizona in free agency, keeping him for one last ride remains defensible.
Will Smith, though, could have netted prospects to help accelerate a retooling. Instead, the Giants lost him for a qualifying option pick. They could lose Rodón and Pederson for nothing.
When asked about lessons he learned from 2019, Zaidi said he’s now more cognizant about trading out of a position of strength. The 2019 bullpen had depth before Melancon, Pomeranz and Dyson departed, but injuries sunk it down the stretch.
Zaidi’s job, in his words, involves “juggling the present and the future.”
So the first question becomes: did the Giants get better now?
Davis gives the Giants a hitter with more neutral platoon splits, but he’s likely not at the star level to where SF would play him every day. Manager Gabe Kapler mentioned his positional flexibility, which has become a cliché buzzword. Kris Bryant played a bunch of different positions, but none particularly effectively. Yermín Mercedes’ positional versatility is comically hypothetical.
While Davis has played first, third and corner outfield, he’s a bat-first player. When pushed, Kapler admitted Davis’ defense could be about as impactful as Ruf’s was. In other words, the Giants gave up a DH for a younger DH with less pop.
That seems like a parallel transaction in the short-term. On the other moves, Casali’s departure makes Austin Wynns — a stopgap solution — the backup down the stretch. None of the prospects coming to San Francisco are in MLB.com’s Top-100 list and only one — left-hander Thomas Szapucki — may contribute immediately.
The Giants’ season-long warts were on display in their 9-5 loss to the Dodgers. They committed two errors and misplayed multiple other balls and their righty-heavy bullpen gave up key runs late. Davis doesn’t fix the former. Szapucki, who recently moved to a relief role, might help the latter ever-so-slightly.
If the Giants did get better, they almost surely didn’t get crash-into-the-playoffs better. At 51-53, their postseason odds shrunk to 7.6%. And they still have eight games left against Los Angeles and nine more against the Padres, who acquired Juan Soto, Josh Hader and Josh Bell.
“We’ve got a little bit of a rope to climb,” Zaidi said.
The next question: if the Giants only got marginally better now, how much did they improve for tomorrow?
Four of the six prospects joining the Giants are high-A lottery tickets. Michael Stryffeler, a 2021 MLB.com organization All-Star for the Mariners, could contribute next year if all goes well.
That’s not changing the loaded National League West’s landscape any time soon.
It’s impossible to know exactly what types of prospects San Francisco could have netted for Pederson and Rodón. But Joey Gallo, who has a much shakier recent track record than Pederson, returned a 23-year-old former second-round pick.
Rodón’s unique contract likely complicated what contenders were willing to give up for him; Zaidi said nothing lined up enough that would make sense. The Giants probably didn’t get a Luis Castillo-type offer for Rodón, but he was still the best starter available.
St. Louis, who was reportedly interested in Rodón, gave up a 28-year-old gold glove outfielder under club control for Jordan Montgomery.
In the NBA, teams stockpile assets, waiting for the next aggrieved superstar to become available. The baseball transaction marketplace isn’t that opaque, but when Washington fielded offers on Soto, it became quickly clear that the Giants’ farm system isn’t stockpiled enough to make the splash. The Padres, Cardinals and Dodgers were reportedly finalists for Soto.
Some of that is out of the front office’s control. Prospects get hurt. They have down years that depress their values. Some teams view a certain talent differently than another.
There’s also randomness in prospects. Mauricio Dubón, Jaylin Davis, Kai-Wei Teng and Prelander Berroa — the 2019 haul — are either with a new organization or haven’t yet made an impact for San Francisco.
But recouping prospect hauls for Rodón and Pederson from contenders would have helped replenish SF’s organizational depth. It would be doing so with the next available star — perhaps Shohei Ohtani — in mind.
The Giants were at a fork in the road, and they chose to bumper-car into the middle barrier. What’s left is a team roughly as good as it was before the deadline, with a marginally better farm system, vying for a playoff spot it’s been fading from for weeks.
“We’re playing with what we’ve got,” Rodón said. “It’s not going to be easy, as you know. But still no excuses. We still have a job to do, we’ve got games to win.”