Grading the San Francisco Giants' offseason (for now)

An offseason grade for the San Francisco Giants? Nonsense. There’s still offseason left! They can sign Cody Bellinger. They can sign Blake Snell. They can sign Clay Bellinger. They can sign Ian Snell. It’s too early and reductive to give anyone a final grade for the winter.

But you have an idea. Instead of a report card, let’s treat this as a progress report. There’s still time for the grades to get better or worse, but not much, and they probably won’t change that much, either.

Different Giants fans are expecting different things for the team this season, so they’re going to have wildly different grading standards. So we’ll have different grades for different expectations, and remember that most of these are provisional. There’s still a chance for the Giants to shuffle into the Hot Stove League’s office hours and ask if there’s any extra credit they can do.

The provisional offseason grade for the Giants fan who thinks they have (or had) a legitimate shot at the postseason: C-

Trading Mitch Haniger and Anthony DeSclafani for Robbie Ray was a cagey move. It eliminated an outfield logjam of corner outfielders, and it cleared a rotation spot at the same time. It also gave the Giants a trade-deadline acquisition a couple months early, as Ray should be back in the second half of the season after rehabbing from Tommy John surgery. If he opts into his contract, he’ll give the Giants a high-ceiling starter next season.

Ray doesn’t help at all for the first few months of this season, though. The Giants will need wins in April, May, June and July to have a chance at the postseason in a competitive National League, even with the extra wild card.

The Jordan Hicks experiment could work splendidly, and the Giants were probably going to opener their way through the first part of the season without Alex Cobb and Ray anyway. Might as well get someone who can return to his role as a high-leverage reliever if it doesn’t work.

If it doesn’t work, it could cost the Giants wins in April and May. Which, again, isn’t a complaint to brush away. They missed the postseason by six games in 2022 and five games last season. An extra two wins in each of the first three months would have allowed them to squeak in. A “we’ll figure it out” strategy seems like a great way to miss the postseason by a handful of games.

Jung Hoo Lee should help significantly, but apart from him and Hicks, this current 40-man group looks an awful lot like the roster from last season. Dan Szymborski at FanGraphs had a good summary in his ZiPS writeup:

The problem with the hitters is similar to the pitchers in that they’re acceptable everywhere and disastrous nowhere, but don’t have a great deal of high-end upside.

“Acceptable everywhere and disastrous nowhere” isn’t a synonym for “good,” and the Giants still need help preventing and scoring runs. 

Acquiring one of Cody Bellinger or Matt Chapman could get this grade up to a B- or C+. Acquiring one of them along with one of the few available starting pitchers who are in high demand could even get them in the B+ range. As is, it’s been a rough offseason for the people who thought the Giants entered the offseason with a realistic chance to compete with the Marlins, Reds, Cubs, Padres, Diamondbacks and Phillies for a wild-card spot. They’ve gotten a little better, but they needed to get substantially better to have a chance.

The provisional offseason grade for the Giants fan who never thought they were going to compete, regardless of what they did in the offseason: B

There are people reading this who entered the offseason thinking the Giants were so far away from contention that one or two free agents — even the ones the stupid Los Angeles Dodgers got — weren’t going to help them much. There are some folks who correctly assumed that the Giants wouldn’t get those free agents, which meant it was always going to be impossible to spend their way out of fourth place. For these fans, there wasn’t a 16-step blueprint to get the Giants to 90 or 93 wins; the talent deficit was always going to be too much to make up.

While this fan didn’t get the complete teardown, rebuild and tank strategy they might have liked, think about the offseason developments that have aligned with the idea that the Giants need to start thinking more about the future than the present:

• They didn’t get another shortstop to block Marco Luciano, like Willy Adames. Luciano’s bat will be what turns him into an everyday major leaguer, but if he can become even an average defender, he’ll be even more valuable to the Giants. This also gives Tyler Fitzgerald a chance to contribute.

• They moved a right-handed outfielder off the roster, which should give Heliot Ramos and/or Luis Matos more chances for major-league at-bats. The former will likely get the first crack at the job, and the latter will (hopefully) come to spring training stronger than he was last season, and could get regular at-bats if he starts hitting for more power with Triple-A Sacramento.

• Their big free-agent expenditure on the offensive side was on a 25-year-old (Lee), which means he should still be in his prime when the Giants are more serious contenders.

• Their big free-agent expenditure on the pitching side was on a 27-year-old (Hicks), and he also might help a future contending Giants team.

• They cleared room in the rotation for Keaton Winn and Tristan Beck for the start of the season, which means they’ll get extended looks before Carson Whisenhunt, Mason Black and/or Kai Wei Teng force their way into a possible spot later in the season.

It’s that last one that would excite me the most if I were bearish on the Giants’ immediate future. Instead of innings going to Anthony DeSclafani, whose ceiling was somewhere between “meh” and “solid,” they’ll get a chance to evaluate Winn and Beck, who are still unknown quantities. They pitched well enough last season to merit a closer look, but they’re not the kind of blue-chip prospects you drop in a rotation and leave alone, like Kyle Harrison. That means the current arrangement — with Cobb and Ray missing the start of the season, and Ross Stripling and Hicks hardly guarantees to leave Scottsdale in the rotation — should work to the benefit of the last year’s rookie starters. If they hit on just one of them, it’ll have been worth it.

The provisional offseason grade for the Giants fan who just wants to be entertained, dang it: C-

Last year’s team was dreadfully boring. You would like 95 wins and a postseason berth, but you’ll settle for a watchable team that looks like it’s heading in a positive direction. The parallel would be something like the 1986 team, whose motto of “You Gotta Like These Kids” was wonderful and prescient.

Lee should entertain. He makes contact, which means one fewer slow guy with a .330 OBP and a .410 slugging percentage. Those might be Lee’s overall numbers too, but he’ll do it in a significantly less dull fashion.

Hicks will not be boring. His command and control might frustrate, but you’ll tune into his starts and look for signs of progress. He’ll throw pitches that make you cackle, and that’s an important part of the sporting experience.

The Giants will give Luciano every chance to stick, and while he might chase sliders in the opposing on-deck circle, he’ll probably do more than a few encouraging things. He’ll hit the ball harder than anyone else on the roster, that’s for sure.

There should also be room for anyone who hits or pitches their way out of the minors, whether that’s Wade Meckler or Hayden Birdsong, and that should make for a more watchable team. And while new manager Bob Melvin is still going to use openers and platoons as needed, it seems unlikely that he’ll insert himself into your viewing experience as much as his predecessor, for better and worse.

Even considering all of that, the current middle of the order for the Giants is some permutation of Wilmer Flores, Michael Conforto, J.D. Davis, Mike Yastrzemski and others. Again, all of them are major leaguers, and all of them deserve 300-plus at-bats somewhere, but it’s a little rough to watch them simultaneously in the same lineup, especially for a franchise that hasn’t had a 30-homer hitter since Barry Bonds.

The provisional final offseason grade for the Giants fan who wanted a star: F

Win some, lose some. And by “win some,” I meant “win none.” You keep writing things like “Giants + Shohei Ohtani Giancarlo Stanton Bryce Harper Aaron Judge Carlos Correa Shohei Ohtani (the second time)” on your Pee Chee folder, and you keep crossing them out.

The star is going to have to come from inside the organization. Luciano has a shot. Bryce Eldridge does, too. It sure seems like a longshot for anything like this to happen this season, which means attendance isn’t likely to bounce back. Can’t wait for the combination of Juan Soto and Roki Sasaki rumors next year. This time they’ll get their man, for sure.

It’s been an odd offseason in the sense that the fans who are the most pessimistic about the talent level on the active roster should be the happiest about how the offseason has gone. No, Farhan Zaidi or a new president of baseball operations didn’t trade veterans for prospects and commit to a full rebuild, but they signed a couple unique talents in their mid-20s, and they’re in a position to give a lot of playing time to rookies and second-year players. Even if the Giants hover around .500 again, they’ll do it in a more sustainable way, which is the point for anyone who has written them off for 2024.

There’s still offseason left, and I can’t stress that enough. It’s possible for the Giants to acquire another strong position player and a complement to Logan Webb near the top of the rotation. You’re not expecting it, and you’re laughing at the fans who are, but it’s still technically possible.

Until then, the Giants are going to need a lot of internal help in several different areas. Depending on your expectations before the offseason started, this offseason has been surprisingly effective or a squandered opportunity yet again.

(Top photo of Jordan Hicks: Brad Penner / USA Today)