By winning five straight games out of the All-Star break, the Giants cemented themselves as contenders.
Then they got swept by the last-place Nationals and extended their skid to six in Detroit — the type of stretch contending teams notably avoid.
The Giants have more than a handful of starting pitchers with successful track records, yet they clearly need a starter.
Their middle infield situation is dire — so bleak that president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi already highlighted it as an area to monitor — but might be fine in a matter of weeks.
This season has been a string of contradictions and affirmations. Promising runs and head-scratching stretches. It has left the Giants (54-47) firmly in the wild card race, but shoulder-to-shoulder with several other teams there.
Things are up in the air. So here’s a mile-high view of the club as the Aug. 1 trade deadline approaches.
The Giants have (probably) earned the right to buy. But who’s selling?
This is the second year of the expanded playoff format, which artificially convinces more teams that they’re in the mix.
With a week before the deadline, there are seven National League teams within six games of each other fighting for three wild card spots. In the American League, there’s eight such clubs who could feasibly make the postseason.
Most, if not all of those teams, consider themselves buyers. That makes 21 teams either currently in the playoffs or on its periphery.
Then there’s the cellar dwellers. Unlike last year, when the Nationals dealt Juan Soto, the pickings are slim; it makes sense that the worst teams in baseball don’t have much premium talent to send out.
The Rockies, Nationals, Royals and Athletics don’t have any blue chippers. The White Sox could deal some talented players, but their front office is difficult to read.
Shohei Ohtani, despite much ballyhooing, likely isn’t moving. The Cardinals are publicly planning on selling, but they’d probably want to reset around Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt than without them. There could always be surprises, but given the lack of available star talent, this could be a seller’s market.
The Giants will get healthier…but how much should that matter?
Zaidi described the middle infield position as an area to evaluate. He couched it by saying that it’s always better to address problems internally, so giving Casey Schmitt and Brett Wisely fair cracks at contributing was ideal.
Neither is ready to seriously contribute on a playoff roster. Schmitt is hitting .120 with a .207 on-base percentage since the start of June. That’s 38 games of unplayable hitting. Wisely’s numbers at the big-league level have been underwater all season; he’s slashing .177/.236/.274 in 48 MLB games.
San Francisco will get starters Brandon Crawford and Thairo Estrada back soon. But can SF even count on them?
Crawford is a 36-year-old who’s been banged up all year. It’s unlikely he gets fresher as the season intensifies. And even while he’s been terrific with runners in scoring position this year, his numbers across the board are the worst they’ve been since he was a 24-year-old rookie.
Estrada, who has been SF’s best player at times, showed serious signs of slowing down even before he fractured his left hand. He’ll always bring value as a speedster and defender, but Estrada batted .217 in his last 23 games before getting placed on the IL.
If the club can’t bank on Crawford, Schmitt and Wisely, this should be the most obvious area to upgrade.
It also happens to be an area of abundance on the market. The Reds are reportedly taking calls on Jonathan India. The selling Cardinals have a surplus of infielders in Paul DeJong, Tommy Edman, Brendan Donovan and Nolan Gorman. Boston might give Kiké Hernandez away for free and Tim Anderson is a major change of scenery candidate.
Some are more available than others. Some would provide a bigger lift than others. But this is the aisle the Giants should be shopping in.
Isn’t the most obvious play to just get a top-line arm?
Herein lies the biggest paradox of the 2023 Giants as currently constructed: they have too many, yet not enough starting pitchers.
Keaton Winn and Tristan Beck should probably be taking more starts from Alex Wood, Sean Manaea and Ross Stripling. All of them are, on paper, serviceable. The Giants wouldn’t be comfortable with any of them taking the mound in a Game 3 of a playoff series.
SF also wanted to throw top prospect Kyle Harrison in the mix before the deadline, but a hamstring strain delayed that plan. Harrison will likely join the rotation in the coming weeks and could become the team’s best option to start a playoff game — but that’s a big if for a 21-year-old.
So it would make sense for the Giants to be aggressive in the top-starter market. But, as detailed in the first section, so will half the league. Everyone, even the Braves and Rays, needs starters.
“If you’re talking about kind of a front of the rotation arm that becomes available I think every team with playoff aspirations is going to have interest — you can always fit that,” Zaidi said
Given San Francisco’s pitching depth, they could afford to flip a veteran starter for a middle infielder. Then perhaps they can aggressively pursue an arm like Justin Verlander, Marcus Stroman, Lucas Giolito or Lance Lynn.
Hoping Manaea, Stripling, Junis or Wood emerge as a more reliable option at this point would be foolish. Penciling in Harrison is probably greedy. The Giants can reach the playoffs without making a big splash. But advancing through October becomes much more difficult with stasis.
The price on the upper class of whichever proven aces become available — be it Verlander, Stroman, Max Scherzer or otherwise — will be high. But if the Giants truly believe they can make a serious run this year, they should meet it. Because…
The Giants have the assets to buy
When Juan Soto became available at last year’s deadline, the Giants had no chance at putting together a good enough package. The Padres ended up acquiring him for five prospects, including MLB-ready starter Mackenzie Gore.
But this year, the Giants’ farm system has had the inverse of 2022. Seemingly every prospect last year stalled. This season, everyone has thrived.
The Giants have prospects who have already debuted in Luis Matos, Schmitt, Winn and Beck to deal. They have top Triple-A prospects in Harrison and Marco Luciano, plus pitcher Mason Black. They have both a stud starter and a stud outfielder in Double-A (Carson Whisenhunt and Vaun Brown). They have promising lottery picks and high-ceiling unknowns like Reggie Crawford and Grant McCray. Heliot Ramos and Joey Bart haven’t reached their potential as Giants, but another team could certainly be interested in giving them chances.
Zaidi said he feels that the pitching depth in SF’s system is a strength. The team could be dealing from a position of power in whatever type of package a selling team seeks (unless they demand Patrick Bailey or Logan Webb, each of whom should be practically untouchable).
San Francisco has the talent to match or beat essentially any offer, which hasn’t been the case since Zaidi took over. They should be able to capitalize on a strong year across the organization — if the right player is put on the block.
And even though they have clear needs, the Giants could theoretically upgrade anywhere. Every position on the diamond has a positive Fangraphs WAR (a relic of their quantity of quality roster construction) but catcher is the only spot with at least 1.0 WAR. Bring talent into the building and figure out the rest later.
A wrinkle to watch: the Giants are pretty much at the competitive balance tax
The Giants’ highest-paid player is Joc Pederson, who’s on the $19.6 million qualifying offer. They’re still, according to Spotrac, flirting with the luxury tax payroll.
San Francisco is roughly $10 million below the luxury tax. If they add a player like Verlander or Scherzer at the deadline, they could easily surge into the competitive balance tax.
Zaidi said the front office has ownership’s support to add players to help the team win, but what is he supposed to say? Teams that go over the tax typically do it when they think they have a real chance to win the World Series. Have the Giants done enough to earn that?
“I think we’ve shown that we can beat the best teams in baseball,” Crawford told KNBR recently. “That’s definitely a positive. But we’ve been really streaky. At the end of the season, that can sometimes be a really good thing — sometimes a team that’s been streaky all year gets on a hot streak at the end of the year and cruises through the postseason, ends up winning the World Series. I’ve definitely seen that happen. But you get on a bad streak toward the end of the year, you end up missing the postseason.”
The CBT isn’t nothing. Even if Zaidi wouldn’t admit it — and there’s no reason why he ever publicly would — the threat of crossing into the luxury tax could prove prohibitive at the deadline.