Your 2023 Giants: To Zaidi or Not Series - Giants Not as Good as [fill in team blank]

The Giants fanbase, from the view of The Athletic's comment pages for the Giants, are in an uproar about Farhan Zaidi's stewardship of the Good Championship Giants.  The Zaidi Haters complaints include but are not limited to:

• Five years is enough to rebuild a farm system and the team
• 2023 season was a disaster
• The farm system has not made any progress
• They are not as good as Texas, LAD, Atlanta, etc.
• Zaidi is in love with platoons and openers
• Zaidi can't sign the best free agents; there's no stars
• What's the plan?

This is the seventh and last in a series examining each complaint.

ogc thoughts

Okay, I'm going to tackle the complaint about the Giants not being as good as the Rangers, D-backs, Dodgers, Padres, Braves.

Texas Rangers

Jon Daniels was the GM, and after the team suffered their sixth losing season in 2022, he was fired even before the season ended, as many Rangers fans would have wanted and demanded.  However, Chris Young, who was their GM during all that time, and also someone fan would think is strongly associated with that bad record, took over.  Which means that it was a planned succession and not a change in management.

The Rangers, meanwhile, went through a wrenching six year period, after their prior competitive cycle ended in 2016, much like the Giants did.  Whereas Zaidi keep the Giants at roughly .500, plus the glorious 2021 season, after the transition year of 2019, where we said good bye to Bochy, in those six seasons, the Rangers had a .429 winning percentage, which works out to averaging 69 wins and 93 losses over that period. Meaning that they really sucked, especially compared to what the Giants went through.

But in their seventh season, the team broke through and won the World Series, which is why the Giants fans are now pointing at their success. While ignoring the six seasons of averaging 93 losses that they had to go through, in order to finally have their success.  It's fun to revel in the success that they had, but it wasn't fun being their fan from 2017 to 2022, watching a really bad team and never really having many good moments, like a pennant chase.

Arizona Diamondbacks

Giants fans love Corbin Carroll, he's the bomb!  Especially compared to Hunter Bishop, the prospect the Giants picked before Arizona got Carroll.  Five years and nobody good in the majors yet!!! But it takes time to bear the fruit of the harvest.

Mike Horner took over in 2016, and had his first draft in 2017. Carroll didn't blossom until 2022, and had his first great season in 2023.  But after five years, that is, end of 2021 season, Horner didn't have any great player drafted yet!  The best they got was Daulton Varsho, who played okay in 2021, about the same as Patrick Bailey, but to Giants fans' logic, they got nothing good from their farm system. Fire Horner now (at the end of 2021)!!!  Ooops, he was fired, but Carroll blossomed in late 2022, and blew the doors off in 2022.

Giants fans love the beauty of a Corbin Carroll, but it took him 3 years to reach the majors (which is actually pretty fast, especially for an 18 YO draft pick) and 4 years to become the great player Giants fans are clamoring for.  It took Bailey, Schmitt and Harrison 3 years to reach the majors. And maybe they don't blast off in 2024, their fourth year, but that doesn't mean they are busts, as long as they improve season by season. Developing good players take time, we were very lucky with Cain, Lincecum, Posey, Bumgarner, Belt, and Crawford.  Sandoval took five years to reach the majors, six to become the Panda.  

Loss Angeles Dodgers

There is a lot of SoCal envy going through a huge swath of Giants fans, changing them from orange to green, and I won't (can't) argue that they haven't been successful in winning the division almost every season he's been the VPBOps. Which is fine is you want to relieve Giants fans agony during the 60's, always falling short of winning the World Series, which they mostly did except for 2020.

And while they won in 2020, I consider any season that is not the full 154/162 game seasons to be nothing more than an exhibition. That's because none of the teams went through the gauntlet of grinding down their players to nubs by the end of the long, playing 6-7 games a week for 26 weeks, horse race.  And the Dodgers, like the Giants, depend on a lot of good players who tend to get injured (heck, they have a history of it when they signed!) at some point of the long season. Instead, in 2020, only 60 games, two months.

I feel that the Dodgers' strategy is great for winning in the regular season, not so much in the playoffs or going all the way to the trophy.  I believe in great pitching, and the Dodgers (and the Giants) rely too much on the "finding guys to get to 162 starts" tactic, which risks your playoffs because you can't control which of your pitchers will be healthy enough to pitch when the playoffs roll around. 

That's why I want the Giants to sign Sonny Gray, as soon as possible, then they can concentrate on one of the young aces, Yamamoto, Snell, Montgomery, and securing one of them. That's a rotation of FA Ace, Webb, Gray, Harrison (who might be an ace or ace adjacent in 2024, he has pitched that well in the minors), plus Cobb at some point, with DeSclafini, Stripling, Winn, Beck (this would also enable the Giants to trade Winn, Beck, or other young pitching prospects, for a good young player) as depth.

San Diego Padres

I haven't really like Preller since he traded for Matt Kemp and his albatross contract, and then had the idiocy of also throwing in good players back to the Dodgers. They won the trade both ways!!! 

Hired in 2014, in nine seasons, he has had only 3 seasons at .500 or higher.  Giants fans were fed up with Zaidi after five seasons, where the Giants were mostly at or above .500 from 2020-2023, but Preller started with five losing seasons, and six out of seven, averaging roughly 91 losses in those 7 seasons. Had Giants fans been in charge, Preller wouldn't have made it to his first winning seasons in 2020.

Atlanta Braves

Alex Anthopoulos took over as President, Baseball Ops and GM for the 2018 season.  While his predecessor left him with a four year losing streak, it's my understanding that it was a planned succession, and he did leave him with some nice prospects in Ronald Acuna Jr, Michael Soroka and Austin Riley, as well as good (in 2018) players in Freddie Freeman, Ronald Acuna Jr. Mike Foltynevicz, Julio Teheran, Sean Newcomb, AJ Minter, and Arody Vizcaino.  AA started with a freakingly good team that did not play that well in the prior four years, but had Acuno blasting off in 2018, making for a great season for them.  

Zaidi had nobody on par with Freeman or Acuna Jr. for the 2019 season, let alone all the other players listed above.  He had to made do with what he had, and changed a really bad 2017-18 team into a nearly .500 team in 2019.  Of course AA did a lot better, he was handed a team that was ready to take off with a super prospect who was ready to take off, and they did.

They were also similar in drafts.  Like AA, Zaidi had a very bad first draft. AA found nobody in 2018, FZ found nobody in 2019.  AA in the following year found Michael Harris II; whereas FZ drafted Patrick Bailey, Kyle Harrison, and Casey Schmitt, which is arguably better right now, and a clear win for Zaidi, if Harrison develops as expected.  AA found Spencer Strider in his third draft, as well as Bryce Elder, FZ, so far, Mason Black, Vaun Brown, and Landen Roupp, so AA is clearly ahead now with Strider.

However, Harrison looks to become on par with Strider.  Strider did great, reaching the majors when he was 22 YO and playing a great first full season as 23 YO, then a Cy Young level as 24 YO.  Harrison reached the majors at age 21 YO, and will have his first full season in 2024.  

I get scoffing at the comparison at first and last glance, given what Strider has accomplished.  Guess whose stats are whose between these two AA seasons (Strider barely played in AAA):

• 22 YO:  AA league, 4.86 ERA, 14 games, 4.1 BB/9, 13.4 K/9, 3.24
• 20 YO:  AA league, 3.11 ERA, 18 games, 4.2 BB/9, 13.6 K/9, 3.26

I'm sure you surmised that Strider had the first row of stats, Harrison had the second.  So Harrison performed very similarly in terms of peripherals as Strider did, but did it as a 2 years younger player, as well as doing much better in ERA. Giants fans seem to be ignoring Harrison's potential while complaining hard about this season, but he has done everything one would expect an ace potential starting pitcher should be doing in the minors, and he also did very well in his short stint in the majors.  I'm excited to see what he does in 2024.