OT: SF Giants 2024

[wco81]

I've been holding off on posting about the Giants until they're about 30-40 games into the season.

But I just saw this item.

A small minority stake in the San Francisco Giants has been put up for sale at a valuation of $4 billion.

The Giants are owned by around 30 partners, including former catcher Buster Posey and investor Arctos Sports Partners. Charles B. Johnson, 91, a former chief executive officer of Franklin Templeton Investments, holds the largest stake at about a quarter.

The stake is less than 5% and related to estate planning.

The Giants were purchased in 1992 for $100 million. Since building Oracle Park in downtown San Francisco, the Giants have become one of the more profitable teams in the MLB.

https://baseball.realgm.com/wiretap/57917/Giants-Selling-Minority-Stake-At-$4-Billion-Valuation

Attendance and local TV ratings should be interesting this year.

Attendance has been on a downward trend for a few seasons. To their credit, they've spent in free agency though it hasn't started out well -- Snell.

Declining attendance would hurt profitability, even though they own Oracle. But if they do find a buyer for the minority stake and get that $4 billion valuation, it just puts into perspective, since the team was purchased in 1992 for just $100 million.

Johnson family is already very rich though, so even if the team could sell for that much, it can't be the biggest motivation.

[wco81]

So about 30 games, almost .500, second place in division -- which isn't saying much.

New hitters haven't made big impact yet.

Starters are doing well but bullpen is struggling, despite getting nothing so far from Snell.

$300 million committed in the offseason, mixed results so far after a month.

https://www.nbcsportsbayarea.com/mlb/san-francisco-giants/mlb-season-start-five-numbers/1730934/?partner=sailthru

[Swift21]

Chapman may end up opting in. He's been that bad.

[wco81]

So 91 games in, 44-47, 4th place in the NL West, 3.5 games behind the last WC spot.

Team is hitting .244 with 90 HRs and 402 runs scored. Marginally better than last year when they hit .235 and had 174 HRs.

Pitching staff has 4.44 ERA, has given up 90 HRs, has 1.36 WHIP. Last season 4.02 ERA, 173 HRs given up, 1.25 WHIP.

Team spent a ton of money in the offseason, results about the same so far.

Heliot Ramos is having a nice season, though he's only played 54 out of 91 games. Much better than his previous MLB stints. At 24,, seems like he's been in the Giants system forever.

Kyle Harrison has 4.24 ERA and 1.38 WHIP

Marco Luciano is in AAA hitting .230 with 3 HRs.

Joey Bart is with the Pirates, hitting .240 with 4 HRs.

The kids down in the minor leagues are doing either badly or mediocre stats.

This franchise is hopeless, time to make a change.

[HiRez]

That's weird because "estate planning" was also the reason given that the Celtics were put up for sale. Is this some new way to avoid saying something else, like "they stepped down voluntarily to spend more time with their family" or "she's visiting her aunt in Canada for the next 9 months"?

[Nvnervous45]

Not hopeless, we're just stuck with the dodgers and their $380 million payroll.
Bailey is a stud at catcher, at least defensively and above average on offense.
Ramos is tied for the team lead in rbi's with 42 and hr's with 13.
I have high hopes for whisenhunt and Bryce Eldredge (the 6-7 mashing 1st baseman). Rebuilding a team through the draft takes a lot of time and luck. I was fortunate to see a warriors and giants dynasty in my lifetime after 40 years wandering around in the desert.

[wco81]

Not hopeless, we're just stuck with the dodgers and their $380 million payroll.
Bailey is a stud at catcher, at least defensively and above average on offense.
Ramos is tied for the team lead in rbi's with 42 and hr's with 13.
I have high hopes for whisenhunt and Bryce Eldredge (the 6-7 mashing 1st baseman). Rebuilding a team through the draft takes a lot of time and luck. I was fortunate to see a warriors and giants dynasty in my lifetime after 40 years wandering around in the desert.

Bailey, his average isn't bad. But in high leverage situations, he strikes out. Defensively, I heard the Giants have given up the most stolen bases or are near the top.

Also a possible bad stat, the Giants bullpen has logged the most innings.

They released Ahmed so maybe they will bring Luciano back up.

Whisenhunt and Eldridge are not putting up great numbers in the minors so far.

Giants have been bypassed by big free agents several times in the past decade. I don't know if it's the ballpark (kills power numbers) or the franchise just isn't seen as attractive to big free agents. Even Judge who's from the area and grew up a Giants fan just used the team to bid up how much the Yankees would have to pay him.

He wasn't going to leave Yankee stadium with that short RF porch unless the Yankees really lowballed him and that wan't going to happen either.

[wco81]

Giants sweep the hapless Rockies to reach 53-55 but still 4th place in the NL West and 3.5 games out of the last WC spot.

Meanwhile the only talk about the Giants and the trade deadline is that they'd be sellers, either send Chapman to a real contender or now, talk of selling Snell after he had a 15-strikeout game against the Rockies.

Meanwhile, Dodgers spent a bazillion dollars and lead the NL West but they're not guaranteed to do better than last year so now there's talk of them getting Crochet from the White Sox, a 25-year old starter who's one of the leaders in SOs.

That's because the Dodgers farm system is still ranked at #16 compared to the Giants at #20, despite years of trading away prospects and matriculating several to various major league rosters.

Marco Luciano, who has been hyped up for years, will turn 23 in September and is hitting .243 in the minors with 87 strikeouts in 259 ABs.

Tyler Fitzgerald, an afterthought, is hitting .319 with 9 HRs at age 26 (will turn 27 in September) in just his second MLB season, seems to be the SS for the foreseeable future.

So the Giants aren't even in a good position to be buyers at the trade deadline.

I think we've seen enough, Zaidi isn't it. He's been drafting for 5 seasons now and the farm system is going backwards. They have to clean house, not just Zaidi but every minor league coach and instructor, nutritionists, trainers.

It's a dumpster fire down there.

But Giants owners probably won't do anything because they've won enough WS for their lifetimes.

AT&T needs to be a ghost town. Giants are still #10 in average home attendance at 33,738 though. And they're #3 in road attendance. Who's paying to watch this mediocre product?

[B-King]

Zaidi is horrible. Minor league retreads and two year deals with the option going to the player is a road to nowhere. Dump Zaidi and sell off what we can, Comforto, Snell and Ray.

[Nvnervous45]

Mlb is the hardest sport to identify talent of the 4 major sports. Yes, their are absolute locks like trout and harper, if you are bad enough to draft 1st in a good year, but hitting a major league baseball or throwing one for strikes that doesn't get batted a mile is the hardest thing to project.
The dodgers are beating us every year not because they drafted better than us, they are beating us because the signed 3 of the best hitters in all of baseball through free agency in betts, freeman, and ohtani. They spent big
money on teoscar hernandez, yamamoto, and tyler glasnow. The pads spent on cease, Machado, bogaerts, and traded for soto.
We don't have a single star of those caliber on our roster.
Btw- Ramos, luciano, and matos were all bobby Evans guys, not zaidi and they are barely just making it to the bigs.

[wco81]

It doesn’t matter, none of Zaidi’s draft picks show that much promise either.

Team has to play guys like Matos and it’s questionable that they should be on an MLB roster.

Plus he hasn’t done anything with a minor league development staff which has done nothing with high picks like Bart and Luciano.

Also free agents don’t want to sign here. They just use the Giants to bid up their contracts when they sign with another team.


Another big FA class next offseason and more top players from Japan coming to the MLB. Hard to see why Giants get any of them.

Franchise needs a reboot. Maybe lure an egomaniac like Ellison to buy the team for some ridiculous amount, have him build a new stadium which doesn’t kill slugging numbers and overspend on free agents. Ellison is giving his son and daughter blank checks to become entertainment industry moguls. Too bad they’re not big sports fans so daddy could buy them teams.

[B-King]

A team with huge gaping holes and isn’t competitive, can’t expect anyone to come over in free agency. You have to build a foundation then hope to swing for the fences.

For next season some of the youngsters have some talent and we need another veteran starter. Ray looks good, but not sure he will stay. Snell is gone as he will be the hottest FA pitcher available. Now that Soler is gone they need off Flores too.

Shopping list for next year: a big bat, a starting pitcher and middle relief. Desired position players OF and 1st Base.

[Nvnervous45]

Soto and Kim would be a great off-season. Soto probably won't come because of the park. Kim could want to hang with jung-ho though.

[wco81]

Looks like they mostly made moves to send out salaries while other teams made big trades but someone tweeted that no top 100 prospect got moved despite all these trades.

[GswStorm3]

Hopefully the end is near for Farhan Zaidi.

[wco81]

Hopefully the end is near for Farhan Zaidi.

The only thing that might exonerate him is if the team is keeping him on a short leash financially and he wasn't able to make big changes especially in the farm system.

Bochy "retired" because he saw the franchise was just stuck.

They need new ownership. These owners are like Cohan or maybe Mieuli because at least he won a title once just as the Giants won years ago.

Someone pointed out that in 2010 when they won the WS, they had the lowest team HR total, proving that pitching is everything.

IIRC they got some players get hot that post season, like Uribe and Rentaria who hit big HRs.

But the bigger point is that the game has changed a lot since then, and offense has been much bigger deal in the last decade, as the juiced ball led to huge HR totals throughout the MLB.

You know that they will put out a rabbit ball again, because the sport is struggling for popularity and relevancy. NFL and now NBA have huge TV contracts and now, NBA is basking in Olympics Basketball.

So teams which have sluggers will have big advantage going forward. They either need to move in the fences a lot at AT&T or just raze it and start over, reboot the perception of that park among players.

[B-King]

Zaidi pushed Bochy out to bring in his analytics manager. Analytics don’t help when you lack talent. Loved that Bochy won another one with Texas and find it ironic that we are going back to an old school skipper that played catcher, who managed the Padres. Farhan is just circling in a death spiral. Please someone end his pain and our lack of direction.

We are getting slightly closer, but should have been here a couple years earlier.

[wco81]

That 107 win season, which was such an outlier for most of the players on the roster, has given Zaidi a bit of a reprieve but that's all pretty much gone now.

[wco81]

Giants just gave Chapman a 6-year $151 million extension, at the end of which he'd be 37 years old.

OK, he's hit 22 HRs so he's a model of a FA who comes to AT&T and hits over 20 HRs.

But he's only hitting .247 with 69 RBIs and has 141 SOs in 510 ABs, on 126 hits.

If they didn't extend him, he likely would have signed with another team where he probably would have gotten that kind of money.

I don't mind them keeping him but they should be looking to sign more FAs, unless they're satisfied with being a .500, 4th place team.

They should be looking to extend Snell but he may now be too expensive for them.

But they should be retaining Chapman and trying to add more pop to the lineup, which is still anemic.

A couple of sluggers and several good starters, though Snell seems to be near the top of the FA class.

https://www.mlb.com/news/top-2025-mlb-free-agents

They should at least bid up Soto, because if the damn Dodgers again fail to win the WS despite spending a billion last off season, you know they will try to sign him.

[Nvnervous45]

Pretty much a lost season again due to poor hitting and untimely pitching. Im glad they have security at 3rd base seeing how luciano isn't developing like we hoped.
What I'd like to see next year:
1. End the platoon with wade/flores at 1st base. We need to get a real power hitter over there at a traditionally power hitting position.
2. Get the hell rid of conforto, yaz, etc. Add some sort of power bat out there by any means necessary.
3. Pick up a shortstop like Kim, so we can put Fitzgerald at 2nd and dump estrada.
Long story short: add a real 1st baseman, shortstop, and Lf.
If zaidi can't fill the gaping hitting holes at LF and 1st base next year, he needs to pack his bags. Spare parts over there won't cut it anymore.