SAN FRANCISCO — If my columns had the shelf life of Farhan Zaidi’s post-trade deadline comments, I’d be out of a gig.
Two weeks ago, Zaidi, made two downright outlandish claims after a quizzical series of moves.
The first was that the Giants believed they could still make the playoffs, off the back of “the best rotation in baseball.”
The second was that trading the team’s best power hitter, Jorge Soler, would help the team because it would allow top prospect Marco Luciano to carve out regular at-bats as the team’s designated hitter.
Those claims — as dubious as they seemed in the moment — look downright offensive now.
Zaidi was gaslighting the fanbase.
And after years of preaching patience with this team’s front office and imploring an ever-growing portion of the fanbase to give the unquestionably sharp Zaidi another shot at pulling this team out of its spiral of mediocrity, I’m out.
It’s one thing to insult the intelligence of the media — we’re fair game.
But to insult the intelligence of the fan base, as Zaidi did?
That’s unforgivable.
And in a just world, it’s firable.
The “best rotation in baseball” is two pitchers deep.
Yes, Webb and a resurgent Blake Snell are as good as it gets in baseball as a 1-2 punch. But after that, this rotation is a disaster. The Giants went all-in on Robbie Ray (coming off of Tommy John surgery) and youngsters Kyle Harrison and Hayden Birdsong, trading No. 6 starter Alex Cobb for a prospect that will never see the big leagues.
How silly does that look just two weeks later?
In a nearly-must-win game Wednesday, Ray couldn’t even complete an inning. Meanwhile, the 23-year-old Harrison, in his first full big-league season, has hit a wall — his velocity and spin rates are down significantly in recent starts, leaving him to gut out five innings every start with eminently hittable stuff. Birdsong has a 17.05 ERA since the trade deadline.
Meanwhile Luciano, after two weeks of being buried on the bench, losing at-bats to Jerar Encarnación, who was playing in the Mexican league earlier this year, and Mark Canha, a favorite of manager Bob Melvin, who “took the keys” of the team to trade for him in the final moments before the trade deadline, isn’t even with the big-league team anymore.
Luciano received a grand total of 21 at-bats after the trade deadline.
In six months, the Giants’ stance on the team’s top prospect went from him being the shortstop of the present and future, to no longer being allowed to play the field, to now not being allowed to hit, either.
Culpability for this ultimately lies with the player – Luciano’s poor defense and poor hitting didn’t force his way into the big-league lineup — but it’s also prospect malpractice from the Giants.
Not only have the Giants failed to put Luciano in positions to succeed time and time again, but they’ve also tanked his value in any trade scenario.
He’s become yet another Quadruple-A player for a franchise that has made such players its specialty over the last six years.
I’d ask “What are the Giants doing here?” but I already know the answer: the same damn thing they’ve done for more than a half-decade now.
Every four years, the big question of the presidential election is “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
I have a similar question for the Giants, as they head towards another season without playoff baseball: Is this franchise in a better position than it was six years ago, when Zaidi took over as Director of Baseball Operations?
Zaidi took a job that, at the time, I called the worst in baseball. The roster from the big leagues to the minor leagues was depleted.
Well, six years later, the big-league roster is still middling — the record doesn’t lie — and the farm system that was unquestionably bottom-third in baseball in 2018 was ranked No. 22 by MLB.com on Thursday.
Patrick Bailey and Tyler Fitzgerald (he of just a bit over 200 big-league at-bats) are the only players to be added to the farm system by Zaidi who have graduated into everyday players.
A mediocre present without immediate hope for a brighter future?
What’s there to sell here?
Of course, the Giants had a chance to prove that this team wasn’t the boring, mediocre squad it was in the first 100-plus games of the season this week. They were coming in on yet another hot streak (they’ve had a few this season), beating up on three teams with worse records to put themselves above .500 in the standings and within legitimate striking distance of the third and final Wild Card spot in the National League, with the Braves — the team that’s long held one of those Wild Card spots — coming to town for a four-game set.
The Giants proceeded to drop three of four, with three embarrassing losses proceeding Thursday afternoon’s 6-0 win behind another sterling performance from their ace, Webb.
The series loss leaves the Giants at .500 on the season, 3.5 games back of the Braves in the standings.
Can anyone ignore the looks, sounds, quacks anymore? Average teams always find a way back to the mean.
For the anti-math crowd, I’ll phrase it this way: This isn’t a playoff team. It’s the same squad it was before the trade deadline, which wasn’t nearly good enough to compete for anything serious.
And it’ll be the same kind of team next year, and the year after that.
Of course, the season still has six-plus weeks and the Giants can still consider themselves to be “in it.” Perhaps my take will age like Zaidi’s.
But when Zaidi took over, the expectations for this team were still sky-high, as they always should be for one of the sports’ prestige brands in one of North America’s largest markets.
The goal then was to compete with the rival Dodgers, to contend for World Series titles.
Six years later, there has been one change: now, the best anyone can hope for — and the only thing the organization seems to be shooting for — is to be “interesting” in September.
It’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad.
Yes, this team is spinning its wheels on the road to nowhere. And it’s a road well-traveled at this point. That’s no longer acceptable or forgivable.
So after six years of little to no change, here’s hoping there’s a big one coming this offseason.