Managing expectations is a pretty relevant skill, even when you’re a fan of an exceedingly wealthy team like the San Francisco Giants.
Rather than offer up a “Of course the Giants aren’t going to get Juan Soto” post (see previous entries in this series here, here, and here), I want to talk about the silver lining in the San Francisco Giants not being a serious team in pursuit of said player’s elite services.
Last night, the Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series in Yankee Stadium in what was ultimately a pretty easy series for them. Oh sure, they needed years of trial and error by Dave Roberts & co. to find the right mix of gut and data to make it all come together, finally, but as we know from our experiences watching the Giants win last decade, there was quite a bit of luck involved, too; and, for the Dodgers, some of that luck has come in the form of players falling in their lap. Soto could be the next one to fall.
The richest may get even richer. The Dodgers are halfway to beating the Yankees in the World Series, and word is they have interest in signing Yankees superstar Juan Soto, according to people familiar with their thinking.
The Dodgers, arguably baseball’s best offense already — it’s either them or the Yankees — intend to make a play for Soto “if he’s interested,” sources say.
Jon Heyman has a very strong relationship with Scott Boras such that it’s reasonable to conclude that he’s simply doing the agent’s bidding by getting the word out. We can figure the Giants will, at best, be used as a stalking horse — should Buster Posey decide that the team ought to bid for his services, which is by no means a guarantee.
John Shea explored whether or not the Giants should get involved at all in this Chronicle article, and I think it just comes down to this: the Giants aren’t a serious team. They’re in the wilderness. They have no identity. They’re not going to be able to buy one. The confluence of cosmic events that led to Barry Bonds signing with his dad and godfather’s team can’t be duplicated, not until some relative of Buster Posey becomes… the next Barry Bonds?
The Dodgers and Yankees are really the only good examples of teams buying championships, and even their wins are rare. It’s remarkable to look at this LA roster and see that it wasn’t Clayton Kershaw, Cody Bellinger, Corey Seager, or Yordan Alvarez leading the team to the promised land, it was the guys they bought or the ones they picked up and fixed — with, of course, some supplementation from the farm system. It’s the inverse of what happened with the Giants and Barry Bonds: they couldn’t win with free agents.
Everything the Giants need to do in order to get better has to come from within, and since player development is totally unpredictable and not linear, it’s impossible to say when that will happen. It’s trial and error plus injury luck, and in the Giants’ case for the next few years at least, hoping that a team or two ahead of them has an opposite bout of fortune.
The Giants aren’t underdogs, but they’re not not underdogs. It’s hard to say what kind of team they are now or what their identity might be in the future. The other week, I asked Roger Munter if these Giants of the 2020s were approaching the Giants of the 1970s, and he responded (in part):
But seriously, are we going back to the 70s? Bryan, we’re already there! At least by some measures. This club has had just one winning season in eight years — by that measure, they’re slightly worse than the period from 1972 to 1978, when they had two winning seasons in seven years.
Buster Posey is walking into a situation where the expectations are minimal. He’s the only one putting pressure on himself. Of course he might think he can be a great exec in year one because he’s been great at everything he’s ever done (probably) and in his first full season as a player he won the World Series.
I don’t think I want to write off that possibility, but I don’t think being a great exec necessarily means making the Giants a contender in his first offseason — most rational fans don’t believe that’s possible and I doubt Giants ownership does, either. They’re taking a long view, and why not? All shareholders and stakeholders can afford to at this juncture thanks to the success of the 2010s. A survey of the landscape pretty clearly sets the Giants as 2-3 years away from being a solid contender (even for the third Wild Card) on paper. Yes, one can’t predict baseball, but if an organization is planning ahead, they’re not making a change in management when they project themselves as being close to a breakthrough.
So, the rebuild goes on, and given the strength of the Dodgers (their money), the talent in San Diego, Arizona, and the rest of the NL field, and all the uncertainty on the Giants’ roster (Will Jung Hoo Lee be effective? Will Matt Chapman hold off the aging curve again? Can Heliot Ramos repeat?) and in the front office, it’s a great time to sit back and take a wait and see approach. It’s very hard to succeed in MLB, few teams are perennial contenders, and as the Dodgers showed last night, the next great Giants team might not include many or any of the Giants saw in 2024. And it certainly won’t have Juan Soto on it.