Sunday BP, 7/15/18

As Sami mentioned in last night’s recap, Bat Flips Are Good. Some, however, are better than others.

It’s the last game before the All-Star Game and the Giants are in a position to be a clearinghouse for the teams that aren’t shoo-ins but still have hopes. This would afford the Giants the opportunity to reload in a way that actually sets them up very well for next season and beyond rather than putting them yet again in a position where they have to hope a few things break there way and their stars perform like they’re supposed to.

Buying a higher ceiling is no crime, and as much as Bobby Evans might be criticized (and I’ll say fairly, based on the fact that Brian Sabean un-half-retired to generally manage the mess), pretty much all of his moves (save Melancon, which seems more and more to have been an ownership edict based on heavy lobbying from the season ticket holders) have been to buy exactly that.

Matt Moore was young and expected to be better. Eduardo Nunez was more of a part-time player who couldn’t find a full-time role but perhaps had the talent to be that kind of player. We see now what they saw in Will Smith. We’re perhaps seeing the worst-case-yet-not-entirely-unexpected-scenarios for both Cueto and Samardzija, but when they were at their respective bests, it was easy to see why they were here.

Basically, Evans inherited an old roster at the end of its run in 2014 (albeit a roster and run he helped engineer) and had to retool on the fly without upsetting ownership and the season ticket holders. Does that mean I think he would’ve done something more drastic like Trade Belt or something? Possibly, we’ll never know, and it’s just as possible if not more likely that he had confidence in the org’s ability to develop talented players at a higher rate.

We see now that the talent hasn’t totally been there over the years, regardless of development speed, but we also see that the Giants have caught a few breaks in the development track this season (Hanson, Rodriguez, Suarez, Duggar, Ray Black) and now maybe this is the time they will build off of that and not expecting Belt, Crawford, and Posey to never age.

The offseason player moves (Longoria, McCutchen, Austin Jackson) were probably Sabean’s plan to fix the PR hit of a 98-loss season. It’s possible the coaching moves were a bit more of Evans’ machinations. Now that they’re into the season and the Giants are doing pretty okay, we’re starting to see Evans flex his muscle more, making moves to both clear salary for CBT purposes and lean a bit more heavily on the available sub-30 year old talent.

I guess what I’m saying is the signs have been there for several years. The Giants had a mini-dynasty and weren’t keen to blow it up, so Evans had to sort of pull some half-measures to try to keep the sucker running. Now that the sucker’s out of juice, maybe he’ll get the chance to remake the major league roster in a way more fully in line with his desires.

Or maybe I’m wrong and the Giants are about to go on a huge winning streak to close out the month.