On Aug. 1, the Giants had the third-best record in the National League and a 66% chance at reaching the playoffs. They were dynamite in June but showed signs of decline in July, particularly offensively.
But with a chance to bolster the roster for a second-half push, the Giants front office didn’t make any additions. Although the team framed adding only washed-up veteran AJ Pollock and journeyman Mark Mathias as a vote of confidence in the Giants’ clubhouse, their inaction spoke louder than their words.
After the trade deadline, the Giants — and their deeply flawed roster — collapsed. The batting order reached historic lows. Veterans charged with lifting the team to the postseason never stepped up.
The Giants put up a 21-34 record after the deadline. A defense that was promised to be improved led Major League Baseball in errors by 16. The lineup struck out a franchise-record 1,492 times. As the league took advantage of the new rules, the Giants got lapped on the base paths, finishing last in steals.
Mental mistakes cropped up regularly. Attendance numbers stagnated as the rest of the league spiked. Concerns about leadership, both in and above the clubhouse, bubbled so much that the organization dismissed manager Gabe Kapler with three games left.
The end result: a fourth playoff-less season in the Farhan Zaidi era and a fourth-place finish. In a year when preseason darlings Mets, Cardinals and Padres tripped over themselves and the third National League wild card team needed only 84 wins, San Francisco (79-83) wasted a golden opportunity to crack the postseason.
It ended with Sunday’s regular season finale — a 5-2 loss to the Dodgers — that became a celebration of Brandon Crawford when everyone would much rather have had him gearing up for the postseason. It left a clubhouse full of teary-eyed coaches with much less job security than they had at this point last year.
The season wasn’t a complete wash; they were, of course, 13 games over. 500 at one point. The seven straight victories that got them there wasn’t even their longest win streak of the year.
LaMonte Wade Jr., Thairo Estrada and Blake Sabol helped the team win eight walk-offs. Twelve rookies debuted for the Giants this year. But that was as much a sign of the farm system’s improved health as it was the inadequacy of the club’s veterans.
Kyle Harrison and Patrick Bailey emerged as real pieces for the future. Tristan Beck and Keaton Winn looked like they could contribute in a rotation. Casey Schmitt started and ended with a bang. Some prospects got afforded more opportunities than others, some proved they’re not yet ready.
Regardless, the 2023 roster was designed for an influx of rookies to support a core veteran group, not supplant them.
Logan Webb tossed two complete games and became a legitimate Cy Young candidate, Camilo Doval led the NL in saves and Alex Cobb came an out away from a no-hitter during his first All-Star campaign. But the rest of the veterans — headlined by Joc Pederson, Mitch Haniger, Ross Stripling, Anthony DeSclafani, Alex Wood and Crawford — didn’t hold up their end of the bargain.
Zaidi spreading the organization’s resources across free agents this offseason was a pivot to the failed pursuit of Aaron Judge and the failed physical of Carlos Correa. San Francisco still managed to commit the eighth-most dollars of the winter to back up their clear-eyed postseason aspirations.
Coming off an 81-81 season, six signed free agents brought with them a fair expectation that the Giants would be better. Many within the organization believed they’d assembled as much or more talent than they had in 2021. And if everyone played up to or close to their potential, they had a compelling case.
Instead, SF’s highest-paid player graded out as the 25th most valuable designated hitter. Their top free agent signing — Haniger — played 61 games and produced his worst career numbers when he was healthy. They didn’t build reliable depth behind their 36-year-old shortstop. Their streak of optimizing veteran starting pitchers by bringing them into their ecosystem dried up; one of the starters they signed finished with zero wins, the other spent most of the season in the bullpen.
Kapler was left with defective buttons to push. The “lag effect” that owner Larry Baer hoped fans would experience never materialized. The year’s organizational failure has Zaidi admitting that he and the franchise needs to “rethink everything.”
Picking wrong in the offseason forced the Giants to deal with slim pickings at the deadline. Nary an impact player got moved, and San Francisco — in need of a bat and starter — ended up with five games of Pollock and Mathias and egg on its face.
Without reinforcements, the Giants bled out. In a 12-15 August, they lost series to the Athletics and Angels before getting outclassed by a slew of playoff teams. Some veterans grew disgruntled with their roles, others were just frustrated by their play.
During SF’s spiral of a second half, they dropped 28 of 34 games on the road, including three of four in Colorado and a pair in Arizona with their postseason on the line. That stretch accelerated Kapler’s departure.
But it was the players on the field, not Kapler, coming up short. Still, as the team tailspun, purported leadership issues exacerbated on-field woes (and public perception). Thairo Estrada, one of the most unassuming players in the clubhouse, organized a team meeting to deliver a speech. Zaidi himself called a team meeting in which he, Ron Wotus and a few veterans spoke.
“I’m tired of losing, it’s not enjoyable, it’s not fun,” Webb said. “We’ve got to make some big changes in here to create that winning culture, that we want to show up every single year and try to win the whole thing.”
“I think a kind of ‘fend for yourself’ type of atmosphere somehow fell into place,” Mike Yastrzemski said. “I don’t know where it came from, but it kind of took over where everybody felt like they could do their own thing and it made it feel like there wasn’t an entire group effort or a sense of unity.”
Separating “winning culture” from what it looks like when a team loses too much on the field is difficult. Anyways, changes aplenty will be afoot. That’s what happens after a third losing season in five years.
A manager with a different style than Kapler will be the first place to look. Next will be a hitter who can feasibly break the franchise’s remarkable drought of not having a 30-home run hitter since Barry Bonds in 2004.
With Wood, Pederson, Manaea, Stripling, Conforto and Jakob Junis as pending free agents, the Giants could have massive roster turnover. They’ll also have substantial financial flexibility and the opportunity to get creative — which they must exercise given a weak free agent class.
Zaidi, entering a likely lame duck year, has said the focus will be locking up long-term contracts, which he’s been reluctant to do with free agents in the past. He has focused in the past on reclamation projects of players coming off down or injured seasons, often finding great value in that area. But with the “no move too small” tab of Zaidi’s portfolio getting phased out by prospects, the need for everyday players has never been greater.
The Giants may be in an awkward in-between position. They have an unknown amount of young players ready to rely on, no manager to lead them and holes across the roster to fill.
San Francisco hired Zaidi to restock a depleted farm system without completely rebuilding. That’s an extremely challenging task, but the results should look clearer by now, after five years.
Until the Giants’ rookies blossom into true contributors, San Francisco won’t have the type of nucleus to consistently compete in the NL West. In 2021, Zaidi made up the difference with shrewd acquisitions on the margins — of course, with the help of All-Star caliber seasons from Crawford, Buster Posey, Brandon Belt, Kevin Gausman and Webb.
The front office no longer had to get cute on the edges in 2023, but had trouble forging a strong middle. And after two straight mediocre seasons that have made 2021 look more like an aberration, the franchise’s direction looks like a compass in a magnetic field: unclear, unstable and ominous.