© Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports
We’re not even a week into the season, and we’re already on edge in the KNBR studios.
‘Leadoff Spot’ host Adam Copeland and I tangled about the Giants on Friday morning. Caller Ed from Yuba City had my baseball rage volcano exploding on Monday.
We’re four games in.
Listen. Nobody wants to be full of tension when Opening Day at Oracle Park is just four days away. Red, white and blue bunting! Ceremonies! Hot dogs!
Oh, and 98 percent chance of rain.
D’oh! True story.
So let’s just lay down the terms of the argument before we all cannibalize each other:
What do you believe the Giants’ intention is this year?
Are they trying to win the NL West?
Or are they trying to “rebuild” the team, albeit without publicly declaring it?
Because if they’re trying to win the NL West, you’d have hoped that head of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi would have done a far, far better job of finding outfielders — like Marwin Gonzalez or Adam Jones or Carlos Gonzalez or Nick Castellanos.
Not guys like Connor Joe and Mike Reed who, bless their hearts, have zero big-league experience, and maybe even more important, zero Giants experience. Their arrival on the 25-man roster just hours before Opening Day in San Diego will go down in Giants history as one of the most bizarre and surreal transactional moments we’ve ever experienced.
So if you’re trying to win, you’re doing a funny job of fielding an outfield.
Let’s then assume they are trying to “rebuild”, without saying so, because the Giants like to sell tickets.
If this is a rebuild, I would expect big salaries to be gone. Evan Longoria. Brandon Belt. Mark Melancon. Even if it means you have to eat salary; you dump it.
If this is a rebuild, I would expect a surplus of bullpen arms to be moved for prospects.
If this is a rebuild, Madison Bumgarner is gone in July, for a haul of future Giants.
It’s more likely that this is a rebuild. And if it is, they’re also going about it in a funny way — by not rebuilding at all.
Maybe we can call it for what it is — a lost year, maybe a lost two years, as they wait for Joey Bart and Heliot Ramos and young pitchers like Shaun Anderson and Sean Hjelle and Jake Wong. Add in this year’s No. 10 overall pick, and maybe the Farhan Zaidi Era won’t take full flight until 2021.
Because I do believe Farhan could possibly be the right guy to build a winner here in the next five years. But I also believe he had a bad first off-season, accomplishing essentially nothing.
Is it a rebuild? Are they trying to win? Is it a lost year, or two?
No wonder why we’re all on edge.
Oh, and see you at Opening Day. ‘Cause, you know, baseball.