Maybe being smart isn't enough?
Is this true? Oh, I don't know. But does it feel true? Absolutely.
Look, I know the Giants front office is smart. They’re a bunch of smart people doing smart things smartly. They’re reimagining how a baseball team is run. They’re masters of what they do because of their smartness and all. They won 107 games a couple years ago! Remember the 107 wins? It’s because they’re smart and they’ve weaponized their smartness to make the franchise smart and smarten up the roster and ensmarten player development and smartenize their minor league system. They’re so, so smart, you guys.
But what I’m presupposing is: what if they’re also dumb?
Smart people can absolutely also be dumb. Richard Nixon ruined his legacy and his Presidency by ordering a break-in that gathered information he did not need to win re-election in a landslide. Thomas Edison thought it would be a great idea to electrocute an elephant in order to keep people from appreciating the merits of alternating current. Brian Sabean, an eventual three-time World Series winner, signed a decrepit Miguel Tejada to play shortstop, and then, when that didn’t work, traded for an equally decrepit Orlando Cabrera. You can be smart and competent and still have blind spots.
And I think it’s become very apparent that the Giants’ blind spot is that they think they’re smarter than everyone else.
There’s a certain level of arrogance you have to have to run a front office, and I’m not getting on the Giants for having that. “We can find the good players other teams can’t” is a perfectly reasonable thing for a competent FO to think. This team thinks it too, which, fine, great. That’s how they got a Yaz and a LaMonte Wade Jr and maybe Paul DeJong will hit .350 with 9 homers for the Giants before the year is up. Okay, sure, no problem.
But the Giants think they know everything better than everyone. They think they know roster construction better than the rest of the league. They think they know their players better than those same players do. They think they found the secret sauce to develop players, and no one else gets it, and they just need to be able to do their thing as long as possible and it’ll work.
That’s how they’re going to transform their minor league system into a northern version of the Dodgers machine that just pumps out regular after regular. That’s how their secret plan to Make Alex Wood Great Again is going to eventually pay fruit. That’s how they’re going to maximize every roster spot in a way that no other team would. That’s how they’re going to perpetually be a powerhouse franchise.
The fact that all of this only kind of works in no way diminishes their enthusiasm.
Yes, it obviously went spectacularly well in 2021, and Farhan & Co (minus Pete Putila) have been living off that for a couple years now. But 2021 was a fluke year, before the league had figured out how to adjust to the Giants’ particular brand of bullshit, and now that they’ve had a couple years to figure it out, steal what they can, and handle everything else, all those advantages have dissipated. All the platooning and leveraging of the minor league system that year gave the team advantages that they don’t have anymore and won’t have going forward.
Going forward, there’s only one way to create a long-term advantage: They’ll just have to be a more talented baseball team than most of their competition. Which, right now, they aren’t.
Look at the team’s record with the rookies they’ve called up this year. I know I’ve been harping on this for several weeks and I also hope I’ll stop soon, but the rookies who’ve shown up in the majors mostly haven’t been ready. Brett Wisely? Not ready. Casey Schmitt? Hot start, but not ready. Luis Matos? Not a particularly hot start, and not ready. Patrick Bailey: Ready defensively, certainly, but offensively…maybe. Wade Meckler? He had two hits yesterday, so I’m ready to jump on the bandwagon!
All of these players — other than Wisely, who had barely any AAA time when he made the Opening Day roster — got off to hot starts in AAA and then immediately got called up because the Giants thought, hey, maybe they’re done. Maybe they’ve finished baking. Other than Bailey, whose main value comes from his defense, that was never true. So why did they think it? And why did they keep thinking it about this guy after it wasn’t true about that guy? Why didn’t they learn that this shit wasn’t going to work?
Because they thought it would. Because they thought it should. Because they thought they had it figured out when no one else did. Because they thought that their development strategies meant that guys didn’t need to prove themselves in AAA or even really learn in AAA. Because they thought that their system worked, and the proof of their system working was all these players they’d graduated, and since the system worked the players they’d graduated must have been good. Breaking new ground by developing players through tautology.
Then there are the veterans already on the roster. I don’t know what system would work for Alex Wood, but the one the Giants are using isn’t it. To be fair, he has been very clear about his desire to be a starter, and his performance as a starter has been very clear that that is a bad idea, which leaves the team stuck. He’s seemed generally most effective as a long man out of the bullpen (on the Alex Wood scale), and the team is desperate for anyone who can give them length in a game, so obviously they’re using him as a normal reliever whose last three appearances have all been 1.1 innings or less.
He gave up two hits in each of those first two short appearances, and two walks yesterday, but also didn’t have any earned runs on his record, so I guess the team is counting that as a success?
It’s not just Wood, though. In August, JD Davis has been awful. Blake Sabol has fallen apart. Austin Slater recorded two hits yesterday, and they were his first two of the month. Have the Giants really earned their reputation as Good Swing Fixing Guys (complex industry term, very inside baseball, don’t worry if you haven’t heard it before)? Thairo Estrada’s had a nice month, but with a .400 BABIP, so some regression is likely. Michael Conforto and LaMonte Wade Jr have been good but not great. Wilmer Flores has found the Fountain of Youth, and we’re happy for him. Patrick Bailey has finally brought his strikeout rate down, which is great.
And then there’s Heliot Ramos. It seems pretty clear that there’s some disconnect between Ramos and the Giants. They might well believe in his raw ability, but there is some part of the complete package that they have given up on. Ramos actually has the highest wRC+ of any Giant this month, and while his strikeout rate was high in his 17 PAs, Wade Meckler and JD Davis both have higher ones in more playing time.
No, Ramos somehow doesn’t fit the team’s system, and because they’re smart, they know that fitting that system is the only way to succeed. The front office has made it clear that it’s tremendously unlikely that he’s a part of the team’s future, but why? Do they just really not believe in his swing decisions? It seems strange to give up on a young player with a lot of talent.
But they must know what they’re doing, right? If the Giants give up on someone, they must have a good reason. Again, they are smart, and it’s not like a smart team would just decide to not try with someone, would they?
Well, do you remember Gregory Santos? He had a big fastball and a nice slider, and in the few games he appeared in as a Giant in 2021 and 2022 they didn’t lead to good results. Well, the Giants traded him to the White Sox for Kade McClure over the offseason, and McClure had an ERA around 6 in Sacramento before getting injured this year, and Santos has pitched 58 major league innings with an ERA under 3.
Santos apparently did not fit the Giants system, and they got rid of him for a song, and now he’s a strong, productive major league reliever. The system was wrong on him. The system has been wrong on a lot of guys this year. The system will be wrong again.
The Giants do all these unorthodox things and we give them the benefit of the doubt because they’re smart. Well, sure, they’re smart, but they’re also wrong sometimes. Everyone is wrong sometimes. Is this going to work? Is the franchise going to take the next step and become elite again? Well, 2021 says they will, and every other piece of evidence says that they’re nothing special.
Maybe the Giants take the leap next year. Maybe the year after. Or maybe there is no leap. This team has done plenty of good things this year, but I don’t know how you look at this team and conclude anything other than: Sure, they’re smart. But they’re not that smart.