The Art Of The Tank, Part 2: Can The Giants Reinvent Rebuilding?

What is the best way to turn around a struggling baseball team? As 2019 comes to a close, several teams find themselves hoping to discover the answer. In Part 1, we examined the Baltimore Orioles, who under General Manager Mike Elias hope to emulate the slash and burn approach that succeeded for the Houston Astros- totally bottom out for several years, accrue as many no.1 draft picks as possible, and resurrect the club from the ashes. However, other teams are hoping to avoid the pain that this type of rebuild will inflict on their fanbase, and are pursuing alternative approaches that they hope will yield similar results more quickly.

For the San Francisco Giants, a decade that had arguably been the franchise’s best in history still ended in bitter disappointment. Having won three World Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014, the club came crashing down to earth beginning in 2017, finishing that year with the majors’ second worst record. After a similar result in 2018, the Giants brought in Farhan Zaidi, who had previously been General Manager of the rival Los Angeles Dodgers, to serve as their new President of Baseball Operatons. Zaidi’s first job in baseball was as an assistant to the Oakland A’s Billy Beane, of “Moneyball” fame.

What made Beane’s approach famous in the early 2000s was his ability to find players with then-undervalued skills such as on base percentage for a bargain price. Less well known but no less important to the Oakland A’s success is Beane’s aversion to Astros-style tanking. Since Beane took over the team’s operations in 1997, never once have they bottomed out to the point of having a top five draft pick, and only three in the top ten.

The Giants front office surely knows that fans in San Francisco, accustomed to regular championship contention, would have little patience for an Astros or Orioles-style rebuild. In order to make up for this, they have sought to acquire young impact talent in a variety of creative ways. The most impactful of these seeks to leverage an advantage that teams like Oakland cannot- namely San Francisco’s financial resources, which few in the league can match.

This offseason, the top two free agents available were star third baseman Anthony Rendon and ace pitcher Gerrit Cole. Several franchises were desperate to sign at least one of them, none more so than the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. With his team having only made the playoffs once in the past decade despite featuring superstar Mike Trout for most of those years, owner Arte Moreno was reported to be “all in” to improve the club by signing one of those free agents. But Cole and Rendon would command hefty price tags, and the Angels had payroll space that needed clearing to meet those.

Enter Zaidi and the Giants, who pulled off a trade with Anaheim that has become one of the most significant under the radar moves of the offseason. They were willing to help the Angels by taking on the contract of Zack Cozart, a onetime all star who was mostly injured and ineffective in Anaheim, a move which freed up $12 million in payroll space. But the prize the Giants really wanted out of the deal was Will Wilson, an infield prospect who had been selected in the first round, 15th overall by the Angels in the 2019 Draft out of North Carolina State. The Giants had considered drafting Wilson with their own pick at 10th overall, but instead chose Arizona State outfielder Hunter Bishop.

Thanks to their willingness to absorb the short term pain (Cozart has only one year remaining on his deal) of a contract for a player who will likely not contribute in the majors next season, the Giants essentially purchased themselves an extra first round pick in the last draft, which in baseball is not supposed to be possible. The contrast with Baltimore’s essentially letting the second best position player on their roster go for nothing is stark.

While the Giants clearly know that they are a rebuilding club, they have also not given up on moves that could potentially help improve the team in 2020. To fill the hole in their rotation left by the departure of Madison Bumgarner, the team has signed multiple free agents at bargain prices that could prove to be undervalued by the market. The first, Tyler Anderson, has a track record of success in the majors’ toughest ballpark for pitchers , Colorado’s Coors Field. In 2016 he put up a 3.54 earned run average and 2.4 wins above replacement, and in 2018 he featured as part of the Rockies’ playoff rotation. However, a knee injury turned his 2019 into a lost season, and the Rockies placed him on waivers at year’s end. The Giants claimed him and then signed him to a new deal with multiple incentive clauses that will reward Anderson hundreds of thousands of dollars for meeting certain innings pitched thresholds.

The Giants struck a similar, though slightly richer, one year deal with Kevin Gausman, another bounceback candidate. Gausman, a power pitcher who featured on Baltimore’s posteason teams from earlier in the decade, struggled in 2019 and was moved to the bullpen by the Cincinnati Reds by year’s end. Last year, Zaidi signed a similar deal with starter Drew Pomeranz, who began the year in the rotation but later was moved to the bullpen, where he performed well and was traded at the deadline for promising shortstop Mauricio Dubon, who may start for the Giants as soon as next year. Gausman could return similar value if he ends up in the bullpen, or even more if he returns to form as a starter.

More moves of this sort may be yet to follow for the Giants this offseason. Fans speculate about the Giants taking on another contract in exchange for attaching valuable young players, such as Boston’s David Price. The team may even add one of the remaining premium free agents, with outfielder Nick Castellanos a rumored target. A Castellanos acquisition in particular would send a strong message to fans, many still mourning the loss of Bumgarner, that while the Giants have their eye on the future, they will not simply punt 2020 away. At the start of this decade, the Astros innovated new ways to win that required putting out an unwatchable product for the fans for years. If the Giants’ approach is correct, they may have discovered a new way to rebuild without tearing the team down to its foundations. Baseball fans everywhere should hope that the Giants’ innovative approach makes “tanking” a thing of the past.