Disarray. Chaos. Rock Bottom.
I picked this game up on the radio when they were down 7-0. Driving around, ticking off errands….now it’s 10-0. I keep listening. And I’m like, “why am I listening to this? I bet the bone is playing something rad on 107.7”. So I click over there and Thuderstuck was rockin’ the airwaves and all of a sudden I was happy again.
I can’t imagine paying money to see this joke of a team.
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
This is the biggest team nosedive in my memory. It is totally sad for the whole organization and fans. I guess there are so many things to point fingers at that i’m not sure we can clean it up within the next couple of years. I feel real bad for Buster but when it comes down to it he’s a big part of it. The most disturbing aspect for me is our minor league system.
I’ve always considered ranking the farm systems to be kind of a crapshoot, but MLB ranked us at 28th at the start of the season and now 18th since Buster made the trades. Again it is a bit of a crapshoot, as you can see in 2024 we started at 17 but by midseason our system had been downgraded to 23.
18. San Francisco Giants
2025 preseason rank: 28
2024 midseason rank: 23
2024 preseason rank: 17
2023 midseason rank: 14
Good stuff Loco
agree. That is some nicely syncopated ledger analysis.
August – Die we must
Into Simon & Garfunkel this week…
Willy, Gage, Pat Bailey and Teng.
Probably took me longer than it took you. Genius!
What kind of gummies do you take?
The hair speaks to me Loo, the hair.
This was supposed to be under the street drummer. Sorry about that.
Maybe Adames contract year numbers from 2024 return 2026, ala Adrian Beltre. Had 1.017 OPS for Dogs in 2004, got his bag (5 year deal that doubled salary) from M’s and had .717 OPS in first season, followed by 3 straight of plus .780/25 HRs. I’m sure there are other cases where player signed a big contract with new team and floundered only to eventually rebound…or not.
Beltre was more juiced in 2004 than an Ocean Spray factory…
John Denver&RFK certainly knew all about Ocean Spray..
Roy halladay too
Don’t forget Fernandez, Olin, and Crews.
now that the A’s are gone, the Giants have the major market monopoly. They have to spend to compete with ny la et al. The long term contracts make sense. More may be necessary. Thats the real difference between Buster and Farhan.
Buster certainly seems less squeamish about them. Zaidi did sign Correa, and technically was responsible for extending Chapman (again, I’ll bet the NTC was the sticking point that Buster smoothed over). Buster’s shown more of a willingness to trade, but I’m not sure that wasn’t at least in part circumstantial. They’re offering me lower tier prospects for Rodon, we can still turn it around with one good streak, remember the glory of 2021!
well the A’s quit while Farhan was still around so the institutional shift started then, I suppose. But Buster was installed to exploit the new biz opportunity. .
You’re thinking of JFK Jr., Kat who took his wife and sis-in-law down with him. Or maybe Teddy coming up ant-small for Mary Jo at Chappaquiddick. Although the kitchen at the Ambassador in LA probably had some Ocean Spray in the fridge…
Off day digression: Friend of mine says Helter Skelter motive would be laughed out of court today and Charlie would’ve walked…
This is about 8 yrs out.
https://www.swlaw.edu/sites/default/files/2017-04/2%20Eye%20of%20the%20Beholder.pdf
A college buddy’s dad was on staff at Vacaville and got to know Manson. He confirmed that Charlie was not a nice person. He also knew the Birdman, and found him to be an equally unpleasant sort.
remember the kalx radio promo Manson did? About the time Larry Baer was announcing A’s games as a student.
I haven’t read this
https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/talos-press/9781628728934/creepy-crawling/
but the author is someone who used to participate regularly in a music crit Facebook group I mostly lurk in. I’ll bet the book is pretty entertaining.
Indeed!
https://archive.org/details/audklv20210305charlesmanson1985kalxinterviewatvacaville
yeah that’s the source of the promo. Concluded with a weak maniacal laugh iirc.
https://x.com/Bruce_Jenkins1/status/1955491042670875006
Melvin excused Ramos’s weird spiked throw back to the IF as an emergency hack he had to make because he realized that no one was covering 2B, which is where he wanted to throw. Koss fuck up? Unbelievable to see such shit on a daily basis.
Have they fired moribund fuck yet?
As loco says above, the elephant in the room is the farm system. Other than Eldridge there is no viable, potential help in the upper minors. Compare that to how the Padres just emptied nearly a dozen minor leaguers before the deadline into those trades that have completely juiced up their major league pen and roster. What are the Pads doing that the Giants don’t to consistently stock and restock their farm with real talent ? This farm system position player suckage has been going on for a long long time..
i’m going on record right now as predicting Eldridge is gonna be wildly underwhelming. We are building him up cause there is nothing else to get excited about
Here’s hoping he turns out as good as Belt did!
I hope they save that debacle for next year. I’m still grappling with the whisenhunt whiff.
Are we talking Lance Niekro, Damon Minor, J.R. Phillips underwhelming? They’ll probably trade him and he’ll grow into some 1B version of Adam Duvall depending where he lands…
Now that’s the kind of fatalism I can relate to.
The top rated prospect in Mason Miller- J P Sears trade, of 4 SD dealt, was Leo DeVries, who is 18 and hit .245 in A+ ball for Padres. The Giants best guys far as I know are in AA and lower. San Jose team doing well and promoted couple others.
Beyond canning Melvin, Snarkk and others have called for a top to bottom revamp of the org. I think we’ve vaguely taken for granted that there was wholesale restructuring in 2018, and that each time a new big boss takes over it’s time to clean house. I asked ChatGPT about the changes in player eval and dev staff w/ FZ:
What changed in the minors (player development & coaching)
Takeaway for the farm: Structures, titles and methods were revamped (e.g., org‑wide pitching director; analytics‑literate hitting leadership; new affiliate staffs). But the anchor of the department, Haines, was a pre‑Zaidi holdover who was elevated rather than replaced.
What changed in scouting
So…were there “lots of holdovers”?
Yes—especially in amateur & international scouting and at the top of player development.
Bottom line
Zaidi’s Giants did not wipe the slate clean. They reorganized: inserted new leaders where they wanted different methods (pro scouting lead, org‑wide pitching, integrated hitting/PD), trimmed parts of pro scouting, but kept and promoted key legacy figures (Haines, Barr, multiple international leaders). That mix produced a hybrid model rather than a top‑to‑bottom replacement of the staff.
BTW, if you do a search on what’s made the best orgs successful over the last 15 years (LA, Tampa etc.), one of the top commonalities is the integration of analytics and scouting. That’s one thing Zaidi did implement. My neighbor, the LA front office guy, told me the SF analytics group under Z was very well-regarded. That’s probably why Buster didn’t touch it, other than to take it out of the players’ faces. Hey, maybe that’s what’s wrong with the clubhouse — they miss seeing those guys!
meantime, from an Alaskan journalist in Anchorage:
“five Russians in nice suits at the Wal-Mart on C Street. They were in the liquor store loading up. One of them had six bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label!”
IDK if such a ranking exists, but I’d like to see a ranking of teams whose 26 man roster is most resultant of farm system strength. That is, what is the percentage of stable roster players in a series of seasons (name your time series) who are either graduated farm hands or results of an executed trade that used farmhand capital as the major or only exchange asset(s). No straight FA acquisitions involved. Admittedly, probably a hard stat to nail down. But, it would tell us which organizations were best at turning success in the farm into success on the major league field…
Granted, you could have an entire 26 man roster generated from the farm, and still have a crap team with a crap record. That’s one polar result. But, I’m first interested in the farm-to-majors success rate. Then, you can spin in actual on-field wins/losses results on top of that…
I’ll put something together later, if someone doesn’t beat me to it — heading out for dinner now.
Here ya go…
Only a guess, but I would imagine LA is at or near the top of MLB development of their minor league prospects. Someone mentioned Padres – I agree with that guess as well. Same deal with KC and Tampa Bay.
I also stand by what I said the other day about the Giants abandoning certain parts of Latin America for years and years (although that may have changed with Zaidi). Japan? S. Korea? Who knows? Other than Lee, I don’t see any effort towards scouting, much less signing players from these regions.
I could be wrong about this, but weren’t the Giants under some sort of penalty with MLB where they could draft out of the Latin American pool for a few years? I probably have it wrong, but I thought I read something about that a few years ago.
Out of yesterday 8 mainstays of Padres lineup the only guy from their farm system is Merrill.
The Dodgers are the same way–Will Smith and Pages are about it for farm guys that are ML starters They’ve been same way for years–Betts Freeman Ohtani Teo Hernandez Muncy–all the better hitters came from elsewhere. their highly rated farm guys that underwhelmed like Gavin Lux and James Outman were sold off.
Article in the Athletic about how rare losing 13/14 at home is. Only 15 times in the modern era. The best winning % ever for a team that has done it is .488. We can root to be the best shitty team ever:)
At least I have the Mets for laughs…
Juan Soto looks 35 years old to me…
Shout out to xoot for assisting me on a legal matter related to my stepfather’s passing. Thank you!
In the past, Snarkk, Chi, Flavor, Twin, Pawlie, and Willie have done favors for me – just want to say how appreciative I am of them and everyone else here. Giants may not be doing well at the moment, but everyone’s friendship and fellowship is constant. Most of you I have “broken bread” with. Thank all of you for being here.
my pleasure. Now get some rest! You’ve been working hard.