After the most underwhelming first half of a season in franchise history, San Francisco Giants’ general manager Bobby Evans could have used the All-Star break to celebrate the Giants’ shining star.
Catcher Buster Posey was named to his fifth All-Star game this season, and the face of the Giants hit cleanup for the National League in Tuesday evening’s contest in Miami. While Posey brought his family along with him, Evans didn’t follow his catcher to Miami, and instead stayed in San Francisco to focus on preparing for Major League Baseball’s trade deadline.
“I didn’t go to Miami just because there was so much work to do…” Evans said on Tolbert and Lund on Thursday afternoon. “This break was more about just preparing for the ramp up.”
The Giants posted a 34-56 record through the first half of the season, and will exit the All-Star break having scored the third-fewest runs in the Major Leagues and having allowed the third-most runs in baseball. That’s a recipe for failure, and Evans knows it.
But on Thursday, Evans suggested that aside from the Giants’ inability to pitch and hit, their struggles in the field this year have been cause for concern.
“We look at different parts of our game that just didn’t live up to expectations,” Evans said. “I think maybe not talked about enough, but I think we’ve done a much better job in recent weeks in trying to adjust to where we struggled, and that’s defensively.”
Evans said missing Brandon Crawford for a stretch at the beginning of the season hurt the Giants, but that the team’s outfield defense has been an issue throughout the first half.
With 27 games separating the Giants and the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers in the standings, there’s momentum building externally among Giants’ fans for management to consider a rebuild. On Tolbert and Lund, Evans said the Giants realize they need to make changes, but that the organization is still very confident in the core group of players that helped lead the team to three World Series titles earlier this decade.
“You may have to tear down a wall or two, but I certainly wouldn’t bring it down to our studs,” Evans said. “We’ve got a lot to work with here, we like our core and we think our core has championship blood. It’s in their DNA and we think they can help us get back t here. I don’t anticipate major changes to our core, but we’ve got to figure out a way to get bigger and stronger and more effective.”
The Giants’ general manager indicated the team could be active at the trade deadline, and acknowledged the franchise needs to improve its offensive output. San Francisco ranks last in the Major League in home runs, but Evans was quick to point out that the Giants also ranked last in the Majors in 2012 in the same category, a year in which the Giants claimed a title.
“Home runs are not necessarily an expectation of ours, but we do want to put ourselves in a position where we can score more runs,” Evans said.
After a frustrating first half, Evans said he’s excited to watch the Giants’ rotation work out some of its kinks, and believes having left-handed ace Madison Bumgarner back in the fold will play a pivotal role in helping the team find more success.
“It’s been a big hurt to us without him (Bumgarner) because he represents a lot of the heart and soul behind this club,” Evans said.
Evans also said that San Francisco will use the second half of the season to evaluate some of the team’s veterans because he said it’s imperative the Giants know exactly what they have heading into the 2018 season. The last thing Evans wants to do is suffer through another miserable campaign, and after going 64-98 over their last 162 games, the Giants need to use the next few months to build momentum for a significant turnaround.
“No one is denying the struggles including the second half of the second half of last year but the struggles we had the second half of last year are nothing compared to the struggles we’ve had the first half of this year and that’s what worries us the most,” Evans said.
To listen to Evans’ full comments on the Giants’ trade deadline strategy, click below.