The Giants opted to go for one more reload. Will it work?
Optimism is a powerful force.
The belief that good things are going to happen — that lofty goals can be achieved if a truly complete effort is given — is the backbone of success in both the sporting realm and the real world.
There’s no denying that the power of positive thinking is strong — we’ve seen it can transform otherwise pedestrian outfits into juggernauts.
But is positive thinking powerful enough to take down the Dodgers in the National League West?
The Giants certainly hope so. After a 98-loss season in which seemingly everything that could go wrong did, the Giants didn’t make wholesale offseason changes. The rebuild will have to wait. Instead, the organization chalked up the disastrous 2017 campaign as an anomaly, and while the team made some laudable offseason additions, the core of the team has remained more or less the same.
“We’ve never tried to operate that way, thinking that we’ve got to hard reset or a long rebuild,” vice president of baseball operations Brian Sabean said. “Ours is more a year-to-year proposition and out of respect to the fans. But some of these markets aren’t as invested as ours is, especially from a fan-base standpoint or as stable from an ownership standpoint.”
That said, the dynasty, as we once knew it, is over. You can’t lose 98 games in a season, even if it’s only a one-year blip, and continue to claim dominion. But the Giants, as San Francisco knows and loves (2017 excluded), are allin on 2018.
And yet, if you were hanging around the Giants this preseason, you’d never know that 2017 happened.
The Giants are operating as if the 2018 season will be business as usual.
This upcoming season is anything but that.
In fact, the 2018 campaign is setting up to be the most important (and interesting) in recent memory. More than just a World Series title is on the line — everyone in the Giants organization, from the front office to the batboys, seems to be hanging in the balance of this campaign.
Marginal improvements from last year’s debacle simply won’t do. In many ways, the 2018 season is a make-or-break year for the Giants.
And yet you’d never get that sense being around the team.
A lot of that has to do with the front-office duo of Sabean and general manager Bobby Evans doing an admirable job of adding to the roster (while — right or wrong — keeping payroll under baseball’s Competitive Balance Tax threshold) with the addition of three All-Stars — outfielder Andrew McCutchen, third baseman Evan Longoria and left-handed reliever Tony Watson.
But at the same time, the Giants return the vast majority of a veteran roster that finished in last place in the National League West last season.
It should come as no surprise that the players loved the moves:
“A lot of teams are tearing down their rosters and rebuilding and trying to do the whole rebuild thing over five years,” second baseman Joe Panik said at Giants media day in February. “As a player that’s been here through the ups and downs, I’m so happy that Brian and Bobby were able to go out and get guys that we needed to make a push.”
But things aren’t all sunny and positive. Sabean, who was promoted from general manager to a bigger-picture VP role after San Francisco’s third championship in 2014, was asked by ownership to step into a more day-to-day role this season. Evans has taken Sabean’s new role in stride, but the change can mean only one thing — this team better win, or else.
Of Sabean’s return as a steady presence, Evans said: “It’s really a great time for it because we have so much riding on this group, and we want to make sure we stay the course and get the most out of them. We’ve got a lot of guys with a lot of ability, a lot of success and a lot of great track records, and we want to see this team succeed.”
Yes, the core of that Giants roster built up enough clout to stave off a rebuild this summer. It has three World Series wins, after all; and given the cost and length of many of the Giants’ core players’ contracts and San Francisco’s bottom-of-the-barrel farm system, a rebuild was close to unfeasible.
But what happens if 2017 wasn’t a fluke?
What if the red flags we saw planted across the diamond last year are still flapping come June? Will these Giants and their bosses be in such a good mood then?
This Giants roster has always been a bit of an outlier — a team that zigged while others zagged — and that contrast was at the heart of the team’s successes earlier this decade. But the difference between the Giants’ style of play and the rest of baseball’s has never looked as pronounced as it does right now.
Opposite page, from top
2010: The Giants celebrate their first World Series title since 1954.
2012: Sergio Romo was the talk of the town in the Giants’ victory parade.
2014: And it’s not just the players who can celebrate ... the fans toast the Giants’ win over the Royals. Brian Sabean, right, has his work cut out for him. Can the Giants reload for one more go with newcomers, left to right, Evan Longoria, Andrew McCutchen and Tony Watson?