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The San Francisco Giants just finished up what could be baseball's last major gathering in a very, very long time. The recently concluded general manager meetings in Las Vegas were the last official date on the baseball calendar before Dec. 1, which is when the current collective bargaining agreement expires and when the owners are expected to lockout the players.
What happens after that, and when baseball might resume, will be anybody's guess.
So how do the 97-loss Giants look heading into this great unknown? Like a team that's still trying to figure things out.
The Giants, along with all teams, face some urgency in the coming weeks as they try to assemble a roster before Dec. 1 that might resemble what they want their team to look like whenever baseball reopens its doors. There might be an abbreviated spring training, a shortened season – again, no one knows. But whenever baseball restarts, teams will want to be ready.
The Giants obviously have some big needs. Those 97 losses weren't a fluke. The most glaring are on the pitching staff: both starting pitching and bullpen relief (quickly shutting down Randy Rodriguez in the Arizona Fall League in his comeback attempt from Tommy John surgery was a reminder of just how much help they need).
Will the Giants make any significant moves in the next few weeks? Will they sacrifice any of their young prospects to make a deal? President of baseball operations Buster Posey said he's trying to pull off a balancing act.
"You're trying to thread the needle," he said, "of having the big league team in the spot they can win but also understanding that some of our top players in our system are probably two or three years away."
The Giants will never, ever, ever say they're in a rebuilding mode. But we'll say it: They should be in rebuilding mode. It seems like the perfect time. They're coming off a terrible season, one that only improved slightly and became a tad more interesting when the team – mostly due to injury – went younger. No one knows what next season will look like, but it may end up being truncated and weird. Seems like a perfect opportunity to rebuild and give those young prospects serious playing time.
Going young may also be better for manager Tony Vitello, whose background is as a college coach. Vitello also popped up in Las Vegas, part of his offseason of going hither and yon. He told reporters he's been on planes constantly since the season ended in late September. Much of his travel has involved returning to college: soaking in the Tennessee adulation at a Vols game in Knoxville, sporting a "Yee Haw Brewing" hat on the sidelines of a USC game next to Lincoln Riley. Up next, Baton Rouge, where he'll hang out with Lane Kiffin when LSU hosts Texas.
All these trips seem to underscore that Vitello is way more comfortable with the college scene than he is as a major league manager. But he indicated there's an ulterior motive to his trips. He's trying to learn different forms of leadership and he thinks "football coaches are the craziest human beings in the world." He went on to talk about how losing one football game is like the end of the world.
But that point only emphasized how completely different college football coaches and major league managers are: there might not be two more different head coaching jobs in all of big-time sports. College football coaches have a 12-game schedule. They're little dictators, controlling every aspect of their program. Managers have 162 games to navigate and, especially these days, are largely not in control of their personnel or the weightiest decisions. It requires a far more subtle touch.
One would think Vitello might be better off picking the brain of Dusty Baker or Bruce Bochy – or Natalie Nakase. After all, he was spotted wandering through the Valkyries victory parade. Instead he's tapping into Riley, a coach battling for his job, and Kiffin, one of the slimiest, most unethical coaches in all of sports. But, hey, they're probably fun trips.
The field of play wasn't the only place the Giants took an L this year. Principal owner Charles Johnson, the biggest sports donor in the last election cycle ($2.6 million) also took huge losses, as a result of the blue tsunami that swept the country on election day. He funneled money into Republican committees and candidates who were overwhelmingly rejected by the voters.
One Republican ousted from office was Cindy Hyde-Smith, who lost her Mississippi Senate seat to Scott Colom, the first Black Senator in the state since reconstruction. You might remember that Johnson and his wife contributed to Smith's special election in 2018, despite outrage over the tone-deaf politician saying that if another booster "invited me to a public hanging, I'd be in the front row." Johnson asked for his donation back after the outcry but it didn't stop him from gifting $500 to her campaign in August 2025.
That could be one more reason for the Giants to rebuild and go younger in this strange upcoming season. After dumping money into losing candidates, the principal owner might want to save some cash.
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This article originally published at Giants should embrace a rebuild as baseball heads into labor war, uncertainty.
https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/giants-embrace-rebuild-baseball-heads-004725662.html
