Farhan Zaidi took over as the head of baseball operations for the San Francisco Giants this year, and it's as if the circumstances of his first trade deadline have been pitched into a blender, with nobody really knowing -- including Zaidi -- what concoction will emerge over the next 10 days.
Think about all of the ingredients that will go into Zaidi's decision on whether to buy or sell the likes of Madison Bumgarner, Will Smith, Tony Watson and others.
1. The Giants were really awful for about the first two months of this season, losing 33 of their first 54 games, a 99-loss pace.
2. The Giants have been outstanding of late, winning 14 of their past 17, including seven in a row before their loss on Saturday. They are 49-50 overall, climbing with the help of players that Zaidi and his front office have recently added: Mike Yastrzemski has a .787 OPS; 29-year-old left fielder Alex Dickerson, acquired from the Padres in a deal on June 10, is batting .403 since joining the Giants; 31-year-old infielder Donovan Solano, signed as a free agent during the offseason, is hitting .330. The Giants' outfield is very different than the group they started the year with.
3. They have just about no shot of winning the division, unless the Dodgers decide to go on a two-month vacation and forfeit their remaining schedule. L.A. is widely regarded as baseball's best team right now, holding a 15-game lead in the NL West. The Giants are in third place, 16 games out of first.
4. Because of the Dodgers' division dominance, the Giants' only postseason hope is to crawl through a wild card portal and somehow get through October -- which is exactly what they did just five years ago, when Bumgarner carried them to a championship, a memory that is still fresh for Giants players, staff and fans. Zaidi did not live that experience, but he is well aware of its lasting power.
5. Giants manager Bruce Bochy is in his last year of a career that will culminate with him making an induction speech in Cooperstown, and there is building sentiment that everything happening now should be part of a grand encore.
6. Bumgarner is a legacy player, as important to the Giants' franchise history as Mariano Rivera is to the Yankees, as Edgar Martinez is to the Mariners. And he's been pitching much better of late, having seemingly gone through a transformation similar to that of CC Sabathia -- throwing more off-speed pitches, a shift that has improved the effectiveness of his fastball.
In Bumgarner's last start against the Mets, 65 percent of his pitches were off-speed, one of the highest ratios of his career, and he allowed one run over nine innings (in a game the Giants eventually won in 16 innings). Over his past five starts, opponents have hit .219 against Bumgarner with a .343 slugging percentage.
7. Some executives believe that by the time we get to the last hours before the trade deadline, there will be a lot of starting pitchers and relievers available, and if that's the case, then it could depress the possible return that the Giants or any other seller would get. It's possible, one evaluator indicated, that if San Francisco decided to unload some relievers, it might get offered Grade C prospects.
So it will be left to Zaidi to sort through all of that, to weigh the legacies of Bochy and Bumgarner and the wild-card factors, and to decide whether to buy or sell. As of Saturday evening, sources said, the Giants were intent on riding out the current wave of wins and seeing where it takes them. San Francisco has eight games before the 4 p.m. ET deadline on the last day of July -- today's series finale against the Mets, three home games against the Cubs, three in San Diego next weekend, and then a road game in Philadelphia the night of July 30.
If the Giants continue to play well, it's possible they will add before the deadline -- not expensive pieces necessarily, but players like Dickerson, who might represent upgrades. And if the winning stops, San Francisco could become sellers, with Bumgarner standing as the marquee trade chip.
If Zaidi does become a seller, he must decide whether any particular offer for Bumgarner is that much better than what the Giants would get if the lefty walked away as a free agent -- a draft pick, assuming that San Francisco would extend a qualifying offer of about $18 million -- to justify the swap of a legacy pitcher.
No one yet knows what the Giants will do before July 31. The only sure thing is that their recent stretch of success has created a great set of complications for Zaidi to consider.
• Bumgarner has a partial no-trade clause that gives him the power to block deals to the Braves, Yankees, Astros and five other clubs, as reported by Ken Rosenthal a couple of months ago:
Madison Bumgarner's eight-team no-trade list, per sources:#Braves#RedSox#Cubs#Astros#Brewers#Yankees#Phillies#STLCards
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) May 11, 2019
Bumgarner chose teams strategically; list comprised solely of contenders that might want to acquire him from #SFGiants, not teams he wants to avoid.
In light of the Giants' recent surge, one source says he wouldn't be shocked if Bumgarner turned down a deal just to continue to be part of something he loves for the rest of his deal. He could use the no-trade clause to extract some cash out of the Giants -- a going-away present, you could call it, a final chunk of change for a player who has been worth far more to the franchise than he has been paid during his time in San Francisco.
But keep in mind that there would be incentive for Bumgarner to accept a trade to another team. If that happens, he'll no longer be tied to draft-pick compensation as he goes into free agency. In recent winters, other players have come to believe that being tethered to compensation has hurt them in the open market.
News from around the major leagues
Rick Shapiro built many relationships in his time as a lawyer for the Players Association, productive work alongside agents in arbitration cases and negotiating elements of the collective bargaining agreement with baseball officials, sometimes contentiously. But over time, he had lost influence within the leadership of the union, and Players Association chief Tony Clark informed others Friday that Shapiro had been let go.
Moving forward, it remains to be seen what kind of working relationships the union leadership will forge: with agents, who have enormous influence in steering the perception of their clients; with Major League Baseball executives, who have been frustrated in the recent past with the communication and collaboration between the two sides; and most importantly, the players, who will need to be mobilized into labor action, in one direction or another.
The union possesses enormous negotiation leverage right now, because if Major League Baseball is to institute the changes that it believes are necessary to improve its product, it needs the players. If there is going to be an international draft, the union must agree. If the festering problem of tanking is to be dealt with -- and there are plenty of folks on the team side who want changes on that front -- that can only happen through negotiated terms. The impact of the last CBA has been disastrous for the union, but it stands to reason that some of the lost financial ground can be recovered in the upcoming talks.
The one significant and dangerous pothole for the Players Association to avoid, under the current circumstances, is an extended work stoppage that would stress the solidarity of the players. No union has attempted this in this age of social media, when the frustrations of individual players could seep out through Instagram, Twitter and other platforms.
During baseball's earlier work stoppages, the owners often fragmented, but in 2021, it may be far more challenging for the players to maintain a coalition through a prolonged fight, and the kinds of relationships that Shapiro had fostered will be needed. There are those on the players' side who believe this is an enormous loss.
• Kevin Gausman will be restored to the Atlanta rotation for its Sunday Night Baseball game against the Nationals, and his next two outings could have major implications on what the Braves do before the trade deadline. Acquired from the Orioles before last year's deadline, Gausman absorbed the analytics that were presented to him by the Atlanta coaching staff and started attacking the upper part of the strike zone with his fastball, and in 10 starts posted a 2.87 ERA for the Braves down the stretch.
But this year, he regressed, increasingly relying on just his fastball and splitter and allowing 17 earned runs in 8⅓ innings over his last three outings from May 29 to June 10 before going on the injured list. During his rehabilitation, Gausman has added two pitches -- a curveball that he'll probably try to use to flip in for strikes at far lower speeds than his fastball and splitter, and a cut fastball that veers into the hands of left-handed hitters and away from right-handers.
If Gausman struggles, that will heighten the Braves' need to add rotation help. Going into this season, the staff believed that among its many young pitchers, a handful would emerge and establish themselves in the rotation -- and Max Fried and Mike Soroka have been excellent. But along the way, Gausman, Mike Foltynewicz and Sean Newcomb all had surprising struggles. Newcomb was sent to the minors, later returning to a relief role, and Kyle Wright, Bryse Wilson and Touki Toussaint have floundered in starts. Dallas Keuchel, signed as a free agent last month, has helped to stabilize the rotation, which ranks 16th in the majors in starters' ERA at 4.53.
If the Giants become sellers, Bumgarner could make a lot of sense as a two-month rental for Atlanta, among other teams, and if the Braves focus on players who will be under team control beyond this year, then Marcus Stroman, Robbie Ray and Trevor Bauer might be some of the better fits available in the market.
But keep in mind that the Braves are currently suspended from the international free-agent market because of violations that occurred under former general manager John Coppolella, and because of their limited budget, they don't really have access to the market of high-end free agents. Second-year GM Alex Anthopoulos must continue to hoard as much of the best young talent as he possibly can -- the team's wealth of excellent, developing arms, like Wright -- and these are the assets that other clubs presumably target.
• There are expectations within the Washington Nationals' clubhouse that the club will pluck at least one and perhaps two relievers out of the trade market in the days ahead. The Nationals have played tremendous baseball since mid-May, led by Anthony Rendon, Juan Soto and the team's rotation, but the bullpen continues to be spotty in its performance.
• The Reds are nine games out of first place in the NL Central and 6.5 out in the wild-card race, and they have pieces that interest other teams if they decide to become a seller. But to date, the Reds have not signaled to the industry whether they'll be sellers or buyers before the deadline.
• Jayson Stark, a great friend and a former colleague here at ESPN, is being honored in Cooperstown this weekend. That's really cool.
Baseball Tonight Podcast
Friday: Alex Rodriguez offers stories and insight about new Hall of Famer Mike Mussina; a conversation with Edgar Martinez, a 2019 inductee; David Schoenfield discusses the great Aaron Boone rant; listener Rena Wang presents the bleacher tweets.
Thursday: Alex Rodriguez tells has stories about longtime teammate Mariano Rivera; Sarah Langs brings the numbers; Keith Law discusses the suspensions handed down on Noe Ramirez and Brad Ausmus.
Wednesday: Joel Sherman talks about the trade market -- and the starting pitchers, in particular; Rodriguez offers anecdotes about Edgar Martinez; Paul Hembekides has great numbers on Bryce Harper.
Tuesday: Boog Sciambi scoffs at the notion that baseball has a home run problem; Marly Rivera talks about the struggles of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and the dominance of the Dodgers; Sarah Langs plays The Numbers Game.
Monday: Conversations with Mookie Betts and Cody Bellinger; Tim Kurkjian on the excellence of the Dodgers, and an unforgettable weekend for the Angels; Todd Radom's weekly quiz.