Well, the odds of the Giants trading Bryce Eldridge just went up

Will a return to the old ways bring new successes for this beleaguered franchise?

This morning, ESPN Insider Jeff Passan dropped a metaphorical bomb on us:

As a lot of recent moves have suggested, the San Francisco Giants appear to be committed to steering the franchise 180 degrees away from the tone and practices they’d been engaged in the past six seasons under the direction of Farhan Zaidi. Both Bobby Evans and Jeff Berry had been rumored to be in the mix to serve in an advisory capacity ever since Buster Posey took over as President of Baseball Operations, too, but now that it’s actually happening, it feels… surreal.

It certainly seems as though the Giants are committed to remembering the good ol’ days and patting themselves on the back for last decade’s successes. As the sharp GPT on X mentioned following the Randy Winn hire:

In case it’s unclear: austerity in the form of cuts to the payroll and a decrease in staffing. “Nostalgiarchy” in the form of popular figures from the team’s past coming back to guide its future.

Bobby Evans was certainly involved in the literally unprecedented success the franchise experienced back in the 2010s, and Jeff Berry was absolutey Buster Posey’s agent and an agent for many successful players this century, but is all this familiarity going to add up to winning, a concept the team has largely been divorced from since 2016?

We’re supposed to think that it will because it’s Buster Posey running the show. Even if he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s smart enough to know what he doesn’t know.

Right?

Bringing back Bobby Evans, who helped manage the rise and fall of the team’s relevance seems fine only because of the most basic reasoning. After all, it’s not like he doesn’t have any advice to offer on running an organization or getting the language right in free agent contracts. But his string of decision-making as the top dawg is absolutely one of the reasons why the Giants have been in such dire straits for nearly a decade.

Jeff Berry has a good idea of what’s going on across the industry and how to negotiate big deals with free agents, but he also has a bit of a chip on his shoulder towards the Moneyball crowd. Just listen to this appearance on Buster Olney’s Baseball Tonight podcast from August. He’s outright hostile to the modern “quant” perspective…

And, to be fair, I think there’s some merit to his disgust. There is a groupthink and sickening degree of uniformity in baseball front offices. I don’t see how Berry cracks that by simply advising Buster Posey, but again, it seems fine utilizing the most basic reasoning. Buster Posey doesn’t know a lot and is looking to get help from trustworthy sources; and, since the Giants have to cut costs, hiring millionaires is a good way to buy experience for less as they don’t need a fat salary to survive — this is not an original thought, by the way. Former Giants beatwriter Kerry Crowley floated the idea in a podcast episode with friend of the site Roger Munter.

But the basic positives are outweighed by some significant realities that would seem to be at cross purposes with Posey’s stated objectives. The commonality between Evans and Berry that causes the most nausea in my bloggery stomach is that both of these guys don’t believe in prospects. Bobby Evans traded Matt Duffy and Bryan Reynolds and hitched his career to the hefty contracts of Denard Span, Jeff Samardzija, Mark Melancon, Johnny Cueto, Evan Longoria, and a year of Andrew McCutchen. On the most basic level: prospects are developed to be traded. That’s the mindset that formed his career path. Similarly, Berry, as an agent, is committed to winners with proven track records.

That might get people excited by the notion that the team will trade some pitching (Birdsong, Harrison, Roupp?) for veteran hitting (Christian Yelich?), but I think that dreaming ignores the realities of the sport. Most teams don’t want to win trades, they want to dominate trades. I don’t think most of us would want to trade Bryce Eldridge for Christian Yelich, but Bobby Evans might, and that’s enough to find this alarming. Whatever insight Evans had seemed to evaporate once Statcast entererd the conversation. So, what is the end goal? To win now or be good for years and years?

It’s important to note that Evans wasn’t snapped up by another organization after the Giants fired him. Years and years of industry experience that teams looked at and thought, “Nah.” Jeff Berry retired from being an agent earlier this year because he chaffed against the unfair treatment he got from MLB’s front office groupthink (I’m not exaggerating). This feels like a last chance dance. Will last generation’s leaders serve this generation’s process? They seem to think so!

At the end of the day, they are just advisors and Buster is free to ignore or accept their input as he sees fit. Evans has a lot of familiarity with ownership having certain edicts that contradict the plan to build a sustsainable winner — that can have value. How do the Giants build while contending if they’re not able to invest money in the minor league operation? Evans has danced that dance before! Berry has massaged language to deal with ownership, too — and players and agents. Posey might recognize he can’t ride the rapids alone and has enlisted a whole host of pilots to help steer the ship.

Certainly, by bringing these two surprising figures into the fold, it’s clear that Posey is very interested in having their input — at least for now. Then again, maybe he’s bringing in Bobby Evans thinking that by doing the opposite of what he suggests he’ll actually have the Giants on the right track?