MLB.com selected one team in each division as the team that needs to fish or cut bait, and in the NL West it's the Giants. As noted:
"Three years of frustration after the 107-win season of 2021 culminated in the firing of Farhan Zaidi and the h"iring of Giants legend Buster Posey to run baseball operations. The vibes may be a lot better in San Francisco — having a smiling certain Hall of Famer who is adored by the fanbase tends to help — but one can’t help but wonder if the leash is going to be just as short for Posey as it was for Zaidi.
Posey seems to have much of the same issue getting superstars to take the Giants’ money as Zaidi did, and the additions he has brought in, Willy Adames and Justin Verlander, seem more like supporting pieces at this point of their career than stars. The biggest problem is that the rest of this division has powered up: The Padres were the best team in the NL down the stretch, the Diamondbacks are excellent and added Burnes, and the Dodgers are, well, the Dodgers. Bringing in Posey adds an expectation that this team is going to try to win right now. But, well, look at this roster, and look at the rosters of those three division rivals. Does this look like a team that is going to win now?"
To me, it seems they're implying the 2024-25 offseason was more of the same, that the Giants just put different lipstick on the same pig. Particularly telling is the evaluation of Adames and Verander as supporting parts. I have to agree. Verlander WAS great but he's a 42-year-old stop gap. Adames is a heck of a player. It's not enough.
Buster has failed (so far) failed in two major areas IMHO: Snell wasn't replaced, and the lineup still has no centerpiece. Position-wise it's not a decidedly bad team and the left side of the infield is probably the team's strength. although strikeouts are likely to be an issue. The rotation is worse and depends on a lost of question marks. The rest of the team is decidedly mid since we don't know what we'll get from Lee, and Ramos has a breakout year but we don't know if he's gonna be the May-July guy or the player who struggled down the stretch.
The 2025 Giants appear to be exceptionally "mid". They are not built to compete with the top teams in the division.
Trading Taylor Rogers freed up even more salary but it appears it's gonna get banked, not spent. The projected payroll now sits and about $150m, which means they've chopped a quarter of their salary from last year. If it's a make-or-break year, they seem determined to break. This team is not build to compete in 2025.
19 comments
I’m at the point of why bother and I think most of the league is the same way
It’s going to be 3-5 years before the Dodgers decide they don’t want to spend all the money to buy the league anymore
Rebuild the farm system and upgrade in July if it looks like they have a solid roster for the playoffs.
The game is ruined by Manfred and LA for now
Imo the next 2-3 years are the make or break years for Posey. It’s ridiculous to expect Posey to be able to solve all of our problems in a single offseason.
As to your point of the lack of centerpieces, Posey’s probably trying to get one the younger guys to develop into that. Obviously Eldridge is the obvious candidate, but guys like Harrison, Birdsong, Whisenhunt, and Matos can develop into good players that will help attract a FA centerpiece (think Tucker next season). And don’t write these guys off either. All of them are younger than 25 years old and still have plenty of time to break out.
They just dumped a good reliever to save 6M … they are not viewing this as a make or break year.
This is another 500 team.
Make or break seems a bit too much. Important growth and validation year for a lot of guys? Yes.
Is Fitzgerald a flash in the pan or legit 2nd baseman for the future?
Is Ramos a guy that breaks the LF curse or just a nice rookie year?
Can JH Lee be healthy and show himself to be a potential star?
Can Bailey’s bat play all year or is he always going to be defense first?
Can Birdsong Hold his stuff across a whole season?
Can Harrison take a leap to be a number 2 caliber arm?
Can Hicks hold his stuff all year and be a legit 3?
Can any of the other young guys (Luciano, Schmitt, Matos) grab a position and never look back?
If even half of these happen we’ll be in a very interesting spot for both this year and the future.
This team still feels directionless. You either need to stack talent either by trade or FA. Do not waste $325mil and the prime years that Adames and Chapman have left. Or tear it down. This Rebuild and compete and half-assing both sides of it doesn’t really work. Pitching is volatile in general and even after the trade of Rogers I still think this pitching staff still has a lot of upside. The offense on the other hand is pretty mediocre without much upside. A full season of Lee should improve. Ramos might improve. Fitzgerald maintaining his production with a 31.5%k rate feels a little unsustainable. Hopefully Bailey can go from bad offensive Kirt manwaring to a good offensive Yadier Molina. You saw the very best adames in 2024 and probably a top 3 season last year in chapmans career. It’s time to trade away Flores, Wade and Yaz and replace them with better offensive options. I like all those guys but they are aging players with a very limited future with a giants team that doesn’t look very competitive with them. They could be decent options to supplement a stronger roster that’s in a better position to contend. I think trading rogers was a step in the right direction. The Giants need to have a plan, choose a direction they want to go and stick with it! Stop simultaneously half assing a rebuild while half assing trying to compete.
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More like break even lol. We haven’t made a push for the playoffs we been mid it’s not make or break it’s just freakin COMMIT OR TANK
How is this a make or break year? Impossible to take the division and we’ll need a ton of stuff to go our way to get a playoff spot. It’s not like much is expected of us.
.500 season?
I don’t think the loss of Snell made our rotation worse. You might be thinking about his ERA after he got healthy last year, particularly after the all star break…and true, he did not give up a lot of runs, but he also did go deep into many of his starts. I know 6 IP is about average these days but I don’t think he averaged that either. He was responsible for a lot of wear on the bullpen. I think Verlander makes there rotation better as long as he stays healthy. He has things to offer Black, Birdsong, Roupp, and Harrison that don’t show up in a stat line. We didn’t get Corbin Burnes, but in a few years, we may have our own homegrown version.
Most superstar HR hitters aren’t going to sign with SF (I think Ohtani may have under the right circumstances but we’ll never know for sure) because of how Oracle Park is built and the fact that the ball doesn’t usually travel well here. Pitching and defense isn’t necessarily sexy, but we can win with it. I’d have to look and see, but I think up through the years this team was winning—through about 2016–Posey was probably our top HR guy. I mean, he donged one off of the facing of the second deck in Cincy, but we were doing well with 4-ish guys hitting 20-25 HR’s a season. Eldridge may be the real deal when it comes to HR power, but he hasn’t taken a swing while on a major league roster yet.
I think the fact that Buster is an owner is going to give him a longer leash than Zaidi got. Posey has to help write the checks for the transactions that he makes. That doesn’t mean that sports talk websites and fans won’t want him to step down if we don’t start winning in the next few years, but I think he’ll be able to weather that storm. He was a WS winning, MVP caliber catcher because by the time it came time to throw the first pitch of the game, no one was more prepared than him.
It’s young guy summer. They’re unlikely to be very good this year but they’re going to play the youngins and figure out who is a major leaguer and who isn’t. Kind of like when you decide to cook an entire week of meals with whatever bullshit is already in your fridge & pantry instead of going shopping. It sucks but it is what it is. This should have happened more the last two years but they jerked people around and prioritized platooning bums.
It’s already a break for me. Another $600+ to Xfinity just isn’t going to happen so this will be the first year in a long time we won’t be watching most games.
The make or break year was 2022 and it’s broke. This is a 73-77 win team.
You guys are being overly negative for no reason. There’s for the first time in what seems like a while the team is building starting to build an identify and not just sign random FA’s for 1-2 year contracts. We have prospects that have shown what they’re capable of. Fuck we just technically had rookie last year be an all star and another one absolutely MASH the shit out of baseballs the entire second half. We arguably have the best left infield in all of MLB. We have a handsome center fielder that we know he’s extremely athletic and talented and didn’t even get to play a full season. We have other prospects that we need to see how they do and it can only be done by letting them PLAY. Let the kids PLAY and we can see where we need to fill those holes !
It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. They couldn’t compete with the Dodgers if they tried. Which they aren’t.
Ehhh Giants are in a weird spot… the division it tough padres/dback/🤮dodgers have really good teams and it will be hard to think 1 off-season will get us competing against them. Those teams have been built with multiple offseasons /trades
Imo the giants need to see what kind of young players they have and see what they can build off of.
They also need to build the farm.Dodgers/Padres have had good farm system for while or at least a bunch top prospects which allowed them to build up their team or trade for players. We dont have a farm system so trading almost doesn’t seem like an option. Are best bet is to sign for players but if you dont offer the best contract/ a competitive squad its kinda hard to see the giants to be the destination to go to.
Unpopular opinion – The Giants have had one of the best off seasons in MLB. I think from a WAR perspective, it’s top-5, iirc
I feel like we’re going to see this copy pasta very often this season:
This is a good, honest .500 baseball team. We play .500 ball goddammit. Salt of the earth, punch the clock, even win/loss ratio baseball. We lose a couple, guess what? We’ll win a couple, too. But don’t get too excited or let it go to your head. No long winning streaks here, no sir. That’s hubris, which this blue collar, hard working everyman team doesn’t have. A few wins in a row, these guys, true to form, will balance it out with a couple a losses. Yes sir, that’s my 2025 Giants. A good, honest .500 baseball team.
Not sure why MLB dot com would think that, but calling this a make-or-break year for Posey is silly. Firing a PoBO after 1 year would be absurd and would only guarantee we would never hire another good candidate ever again.
We’re 5 years behind the Dodgers developmentally. Going to take a while to get anywhere close to their level. In the meantime, i’m fine with them not spending huge $$$ on guys who aren’t going to move the needle. Felt like the last couple years Farhan spent just to say ‘Hey look guys, i’m doing something!’ and it didn’t work out.
I’m actually quite intrigued by this team. There’s a lot of young players scattered around who have an opportunity to make a leap. Hearing a lot of good things about Harrison and Hicks this offseason. Would’ve been nice to get Burnes but he didn’t want to come here. Not many other FAs out there that I would consider worth investing in, except maybe Alonso on a shorter deal. Likely won’t make the playoffs this year but i’m fine with it if we can finally develop a core to build around instead of just throwing pieces together and hoping it sticks like we did under Zaidi.