Giants looking for playoff route
With Dodgers thriving and Padres buying, what is the path to relevancy?
After earning their first playoff berth since Bruce Bochy managed the club, the San Diego Padres have dominated offseason headlines with trades for elite starters Blake Snell and Yu Darvish and by signing highly touted South Korean shortstop Ha-seong Kim.
The Padres have gone all-in on winning the 2021 World Series, but they face one big problem; they play in the same division as the 2020 champions and current title favorites, the Los Angeles Dodgers.
If the Padres and Dodgers are the top two clubs entering the 2021 season, where does that leave the San Francisco Giants?
Returning to the playoffs is a concern for every Giants fan, particularly after the team suffered through its fourth consecutive losing season this year. After establishing an improbable dynasty during the first half of the last decade, the Giants appear destined to spend the early portion of this decade vying for relevance in their own division.
A team that consistently boasts one of the highest payrolls in baseball shouldn’t have ended up in a long-term rebuild, but that’s exactly where the Giants found themselves after ownership and previous front office executives chose to term a 98-loss 2017 season an “aberration,” instead of seeing it as a gigantic, flashing warning sign.
It’s possible the Giants would be in a much better position to challenge the Padres and Dodgers right now had the franchise elected not to use Mark Melancon’s four-year, $62 million contract as a Band-Aid following a 2016 second-half collapse, but reexamining past failures is no longer as relevant to the organization’s current status.
To understand where the Giants are and where they’re headed, it’s imperative to look back at the day the franchise changed course and hired Farhan Zaidi away from the Dodgers.
At the time of his hiring in November 2018, Zaidi’s presence gave the Giants’ front office a muchneeded shakeup and a lead executive who understood how to develop a model for sustainable success. In the present, Zaidi’s risk-averse process to building the roster has led to a certain level of frustration among fans who think the Giants should flex their financial muscle to contend sooner rather than later.
Despite the desire from fans to see the top half of the roster beefed up with more talented players, Zaidi has essentially executed the vision he outlined at his introductory press conference. He’s made an extensive series of incremental transactions that have slowly overhauled the back end of the roster, he’s increased the Giants’ reliance on data and analytics, and he’s hired a manager and coaching staff who proved in a 60-game season that players can continue the process of developing and improving deep into their major league careers.
Zaidi’s next challenge will be the greatest he’s faced in his time with the Giants.
At the end of the 2020 season, the Giants’ president of baseball operations said his goal is for the team to reach the playoffs next year. And with the Dodgers and Padres set up to be juggernauts, the Giants’ margin for error appears incredibly slim.
Regardless of how many regular season games are played in 2021 and what the eventual playoff format looks like, the Giants will likely struggle to emerge from a division filled with the game’s top talent. It’s not the scenario Zaidi or Giants fans envisioned when he first took over, but it’s worth pointing out that ownership knew it would be a long road back to the top of the NL West when the organization gave Zaidi a five-year contract.
The Dodgers’ extended success and the Padres’ sudden blitz of moves haven’t made the Giants’ path to the postseason any easier, but it would be unlike Zaidi and general manager Scott Harris — who was hired after the 2019 season — to suddenly change the process they’ve employed to set the team up for future success.
In the next year, the duo leading the Giants’ front office will continue to try and stockpile talent in a farm system that’s transformed from one of the worst in the league to one of the best, to try to extract value from lower-profile free-agent signees such as Anthony DeSclafani and Jason Vosler and to try and ensure that the club’s winning percentage continues to improve.
Teams that finish above .500 generally find themselves in the playoff mix a lot longer than teams that don’t, and even with the Dodgers and Padres expected to finish atop the division, Zaidi and Harris would be among the first to express disappointment and frustration if the Giants failed to improve upon their 2020 record (one game under .500 at 29-31).
It may seem unrealistic to expect Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford and Mike Yastrzemski to replicate their career years, but last offseason it was unrealistic to expect the trio of players to have those types of seasons in the first place. It may feel foolish to believe the improvements the team’s offense, defense and bullpen made over a 60game season will remain steady over a full 162-game slate, but few expected significant progress last season anyway.