Selling the Giants:
Struggles, deficit put franchise in rare situation
Early struggles put San Francisco at a rare crossroads. It could become a seller with a key pitching piece.
If you’d asked the question two months ago, everyone in baseball would have laughed you out of the ballpark.
The San Francisco Giants as sellers during the 2017 season? Get out of here. The Giants are one of baseball’s perennial “in it to win it” franchises — a species that has become more scarce in recent years.
The Giants, shrewd, tough, cash-flush and fanatically supported, contend for the playoffs almost every year.
Entering this season, the smart crowd expected more of the same, with oddsmakers foreseeing 87-88 wins, making the Giants a cinch to notch their eighth winning record in nine years.
But baseball life is like real life. Stuff happens.
A whole bunch of stuff happened to the 2017 Giants, who by May 11 found themselves sitting at the bottom of the National League West — behind even the tanking San Diego Padres — with a 12-24 record.
And that wasn’t the whole grisly story.
After a mishap on a dirt bike during an off day in Colorado, the team’s ace pitcher, Madison Bumgarner, was walking around with a bum left shoulder and is on the shelf until July or later.
The rest of the NL West, meantime, was going gangbusters.
On May 11, the Giants found themselves 11 games behind the division-leading Colorado Rockies. Ahead of them by 81⁄ games 2 were the Los Angeles Dodgers, lauded universally as the National League’s deepest team and seeking their fifth consecutive NL West title.
Heck, because the Arizona Diamondbacks had sprinted off the mark, the Giants trailed them big, too, by eight games.
There was tragedy. Shortstop Brandon Crawford’s sister-in-law, Jennifer Pippin, died of an asthma attack.
There was Buster Posey getting hit in the head with a pitch and suffering a concussion.
Closer Mark Melancon, the expected final piece who had joined the team on a $62 million contract last winter, developed a sore elbow that would put him and his .302 batting average allowed on the disabled list.
On the field, the Giants suddenly lost their knack in tight games — dropping six of seven decided by one run.
The gloom finally lifted in midMay. The Giants, even without Bumgarner, began to eke their way toward .500.
Earning series victories against the Dodgers, Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Cardinals, the Giants got to 19-26 entering the week.
The bullpen, which regained Melancon, held its own. Jeff Samardzija and Matt Moore stabilized the rotation. Veteran starter Matt Cain pitched well in home games.
The offense became more timely and less reliant on Posey, a two-way star who, along with acrobatic Crawford, remains one of the sport’s must-see attractions.
Despite trailing first-place Colorado by nine games, there was a feeling around the team that the Giants aren’t dead.
“Hey, we’ve still got to get past the Giants,” Rockies manager Bud Black said.
Black said the Giants “will be there” this summer.
Even with the Giants’ losing record and three NL West teams to chase and the left-field rotation resembling a black hole, Tim Flannery said the team has earned extra slack from anyone trying to handicap its playoff chances.
Flannery, the third-base coach on the team’s three Giants World Series winners and a broadcaster who still is around the club, guesses the Giants brain trust will keep the faith in this bunch.
“I think they’ve seen so many miracles over the years that they’re going to give them a little bit of time,” he said. “And I don’t think anybody at this time anyway is really in the market to do much trading with it being only May.”
Flannery’s forecast: “We’ll know a lot about this team at the end of May or so. Before then, it’s a tough schedule. Give it a couple more weeks.”
The Giants close out May with the Chicago Cubs and Washington Nationals in two of three series and also face the Milwaukee Brewers, Minnesota Twins and Rockies in the first half of June.
The baseball world will be watching the Giants, in large part because of pitcher Johnny Cueto. Still a frontline starter, Cueto can opt out of his contract after this season.
If a team with World Series ambitions wants him, the relevant history is enticing. Pitching for the Kansas City Royals after they acquired him that July, Cueto threw a two-hitter in Game 2 of the 2015 World Series. The victory against the New York Mets was a big step toward Kansas City winning the series.
Cueto, 31, was 4-3 with a 4.50 ERA this season with 8.1 strikeouts per nine innings for the Giants entering the week. He has said he’d like to pitch in the American League again and could draw quite a haul if he gets hot.
But do the Giants need more prospects?
In years past, they have received huge returns from prospects they promoted onto a playoff contender. Posey, for example.
Sizing up their farm system these days is never easy, longtime prospect analyst Jim Callis said.
“The Giants never seem to rank very high in anyone’s farm system rankings, yet they consistently produce talent,” he told USA TODAY Sports. “That said, they aren’t ranked very high right now
and don’t have a lot of high-impact players.
“They only have two guys on our MLBPipeline Top 100, (pitcher) Tyler Beede at No. 79 and (current Giants infielder) Christian Arroyo at No. 80,” Callis said. “Beede could be a No. 3 starter and Arroyo can really hit, though he may not have more than average power. They have some other interesting guys, such as toolsy center fielder Bryan Reynolds and slugging first baseman Chris Shaw.”
The three runs to the World Series from 2010 to 2014 and a trip to the 2016 playoffs argue for the Giants making a strong push at some point this season.
However, they’ll have to paddle against the current.
Baseball Prospectus recently estimated their chance of winning the NL West at under 2% and the probability of collecting a wildcard spot at under 15%.
So maybe the Giants will raise, if not a white flag, an off-white handkerchief at some point this summer and find out what Cueto might bring them.
“I think it always make sense for a non-contending team to trade veterans for prospects and earn a better draft position,” Callis said. “I still think the Giants should be better than they’ve shown, so I wouldn’t pull the trigger on deals yet unless they’re too good to refuse. But if they’re continuing to struggle by July, playing for the future would make more sense.”
Bumgarner’s comeback will be a factor, as will the front office’s ability to reprise its impressive knack of importing veteran hitters for dirt cheap who become Giants stalwarts. Think of outfielders Pat Burrell, Cody Ross and Marlon Byrd. Who knows? Someone else might emerge.
“I think ‘MadBum’ comes back and helps. I think he’s going to be fine,” Flannery said. “They’ve got a guy down there, Tyler Beede, that’s got a great arm. (Starting pitcher) Ty Blach, he competes. He’s a little gutty guy.”
However the Giants fare on the field, Flannery sees the Giants retooling, not rebuilding.
Don’t even mention buzz phrases such as “sell off” and “race to the bottom.”
Lowering his voice, Flannery said: “I wouldn’t want to be the person to talk like that around here.”