Today I come to you with three questions:<\/p>\n
1) Why is there air?<\/p>\n
2) What is the meaning of life?<\/p>\n
3) What the hell is wrong with the San Francisco Giants?<\/p>\n
The first two are easy. The third \u2014 not so much.<\/p>\n
As of this writing, the Giants are reeling. Suddenly pitchers are unable to locate home plate and hitters seem to have forgone the popular Torpedo bat in favor of the sponge rubber variety. This team is looking like it not only is in desperate need of help, but also discovering that there might not be any help available \u2014 anywhere.<\/p>\n
I continue to applaud Buster Posey and the new baseball operations crew for boldly attempting to fix things by signing two established major league hitters to long-term contracts, and then pulling off the biggest trade heist in recent history. He also signed a Hall of Fame pitcher who he knew had something left to contribute.<\/p>\n
Then, just when he started ripping the ball, Matt Chapman also ripped his fingers and found himself out for more than a month. Willy Adames left all his hits and all his power behind in Milwaukee. Justin Verlander came into this year with 262 career wins. We\u2019re into July, and Verlander currently has \u2026 262 career wins.<\/p>\n
The truth is, I defend Posey on every move he\u2019s made. Chapman is valuable even if he\u2019s not hitting homers every at bat. His glove is maybe the best in baseball. Adames is slowly beginning to turn things at the plate. The bottom line is, good hitters hit. And he\u2019s a good hitter. Verlander has actually pitched well. He\u2019s been victimized by virtually no offensive OR defensive help.<\/p>\n
As to Rafi Devers? Right now he looks like he\u2019s lost. Maybe it\u2019s ongoing jet lag. Or maybe it\u2019s that giant chaw he\u2019s got in his cheek. Could be throwing him off balance. He\u2019s been a major league hitter for a decade \u2014 I\u2019m guessing he\u2019ll remember what a key hit feels like.<\/p>\n
So, up goes the cry \u201cDO SOMETHING BUSTER!\u201d Now here\u2019s a real problem. Perhaps the biggest issue that the new President of Baseball Operations has to deal with is that he can\u2019t make a deal without something to offer up that\u2019s of use to any other team in Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start with this: beyond Logan Webb and Bryce Eldridge is there anybody on the Giants current 40-man roster, or anywhere in its minor league system who any other team in baseball covets enough to give up something that could help?<\/p>\n
Marco Luciano, the team\u2019s former top prospect? He\u2019s hitting .222 at Sacramento with 13 home runs \u2014 but 102 strikeouts in 284 official at bats. Grant McCray? Eleven home runs and a .252 average but, alas, 104 strike outs in 321 at bats.<\/p>\n
Hot new prospects? Shhhh, don\u2019t tell anyone, but other than Eldridge, the G\u2019s don\u2019t have a single player in the top 100 prospects in Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n
Their minor league system is ranked 28th out of 30 teams. After Eldridge, the Giants\u2019 top five prospects are pitcher Carson Whisenhunt, who\u2019s been good, but with a 4.55 ERA at Sacramento this year. Numbers three through five are young players \u2014 two in the Arizona rookie league and one at San Jose. Carson Seymour, who they just brought up and then sent down, was rated their 20th best prospect.<\/p>\n
Detroit is considered the best minor league system in major league baseball right now. The other four of the top five are Tampa Bay, Boston, the L.A. Dodgers and Seattle.<\/p>\n
So, here\u2019s me scratching my chin and thinking the Giants, who have had one winning season and one playoff appearance in the last eight years are always drafting relatively high. And yet they have but a single player considered to be one of the 100 best minor leaguers.<\/p>\n
The Dodgers, who are in the playoffs every year, are the number four minor league system and currently have six players in the top 100.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s wrong with this picture?<\/p>\n
Looking back on the Giants\u2019 recent number one picks, Heliot Ramos \u2014 their number one selection in 2017 \u2014 is an everyday player who has become a successful number one selection.<\/p>\n
The next year, the Giants took Joey Bart \u2014 the \u201cnext Buster Posey\u201d \u2014 with their number one pick. Obviously he wasn\u2019t and was ultimately traded to Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because two years later Farhan Zaidi drafted Patrick Bailey number one and he quickly usurped Bart. Two number ones, one catcher.<\/p>\n
Since Bart\u2019s selection, with the exception of Bailey and Eldridge (in 2023), who could forget Hunter Bishop, Will Bednar, Reggie Crawford, and James Tibbs? Those were the Giants number-one picks up to this year.<\/p>\n
Bishop has been injured most of his career and is right now toiling in mediocrity in Sacramento.<\/p>\n
Will Bednar, too, has been injured since he left Mississippi State after the College World Series, and is at Richmond where he\u2019s had limited duty as a relief pitcher.<\/p>\n
Reggie Crawford was, like Eldridge, a two-way player whom the Giants ultimately decided was better served as a relief pitcher. Since being drafted in 2022, Crawford has missed time with mononucleosis, an oblique strain, a lat strain, and a labrum tear which required surgery and has cost him this entire season.<\/p>\n
Eldridge was 2023\u2019s top pick and because of injuries, his arrival in San Francisco will now probably be tabled until next year.<\/p>\n
And James Tibbs, who had his 12 home runs at High-A Eugene, was shuffled off to Boston with Kyle Harrison and Jordan Hicks.<\/p>\n
So here we are desperately seeking help from somewhere, and Buster Posey is left being asked to go \u201call in\u201d with only a pair of deuces in his hand.<\/p>\n
At least if they were \u201cAces\u201d he might have a chance.<\/p>\n
Barry Tompkins is a 40-year network television sportscaster and a San Francisco native.\u00a0 Email him at barrytompkins1@gmail.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today I come to you with three questions: 1) Why is there air? 2) What is the meaning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,162,10007,4,7164,378,66,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-150309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-giants","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-giants","10":"tag-marin-sports","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-newsletter","13":"tag-san-francisco","14":"tag-san-francisco-giants","15":"tag-sanfrancisco","16":"tag-sanfranciscogiants","17":"tag-sf","18":"tag-sf-giants","19":"tag-sfgiants","20":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114792486961450839","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}