Thursday BP: Where to go from here?

It’s been an awful few weeks for the San Francisco Giants. Around the same time that the team decided to not sell at the trade deadline, the Giants decided to play the sort of baseball that makes you think they might never be good again.

Since the All-Star break, they’re 6-14 and have been outscored by 37 runs.

They showed the blueprint for a successful series against the San Diego Padres, which would have had them right back in the playoff hunt, but instead blew it on both Tuesday and Wednesday, falling to 7.5 games out of the Wild Card race. Fangraphs gives them a 2.6% chance of making the playoffs, which feels rather optimistic.

They’re running out of time, and appear to have already run out of talent.

So now what?

Given Farhan Zaidi and Scott Harris’ love of 40-man maneuverings, and the large number of Rule 5-eligible players in the organization, you can count out any chance of calling up prospects for the hell of it. There will be no Kyle Harrison in San Francisco. There won’t even be a Shane Matheny.

At some point the prospects that are on the 40-man can start to get more playing time. Barring a winning streak, I’d expect a phantom-IL’ing for Brandon Crawford, Evan Longoria, Thairo Estrada, or Tommy La Stella so that David Villar can return to the roster and play every day. Randy Rodriguez will probably make his debut, and perhaps we see some more Sean Hjelle starts.

And all the while you’ll miss 2021. I have no answers to the question I proposed in the headline.

What time do the Giants play today?

The Giants are, mercifully, off.