What are the San Francisco Giants Going to do with Johnny Cueto?

Maybe the biggest question for the San Francisco Giants this summer will be, what are they going to do about Johnny Cueto?

Things were a lot clearer when the season began. The Giants were viewed as contenders with Madison Bumgarner and Johnny Cueto leading the rotation.

Well, if there is one thing I’ve learned about baseball in my life, its that you can’t predict baseball.

Bumgarner decided to get on a dirt bike during an off at the beginning season and has been out for most of the year now. Meanwhile, Cueto has an ERA of 4.57 and the Giants are one of the worst teams in the National League.

Everyone predicted that was going to happen, right?

At the beginning of the season the talk was about whether or not Johnny Cueto was going to opt-out of his contract – with the likely answer at the time being yes – and can the Giants re-sign him.

Now, the question is whether or not the Giants will trade Johnny Cueto. And will Cueto even opt-out of his contract with the year he’s having.

There is still a lot of season left for Cueto, so he can certainly turn his numbers around. But as it stands right now, I’m not positive he’d get more on the open market than he’s already guaranteed with the Giants over the next five years.

He’s scheduled to make $21,833,33 the next two years with that amount increasing by $1 in the 2020 and 2021 seasons, and then he has a $22 million team option in 2022 with a $5 million buyout.

That’s a good hunk of cash for someone who is on the back-half of their career with a four and a half ERA.

The easy answer for me is that the Giants need to trade him.

However, what team is going to take on Cueto without knowing if he’s going to opt-out? And what kind of prospects is a team going to give up knowing they could be on the hook for all of that money, or that they might only have him for half a year?

This puts the San Francisco Giants in a very difficult situation when determining Cueto’s future with the club.

My personal hope is that Cueto puts a couple of good starts together and raises his trade value so the Giants can part ways.

At this point, I think Cueto would be dumb to opt-out. It would make me sick to turn down that much guaranteed money without the reassurance in knowing more was coming my way. Of course, I don’t make near the amount of money that he makes.

I don’t want anyone to think I’m completely giving up on Cueto either. I think he can still be a very good pitcher this year and beyond, but I’d rather him do it on someone else’s dime.

The San Francisco Giants have bigger issues to deal with. Like how are they going to make this team a contender again.

I personally am of the group who thinks they need to blow it up. Everyone but Bumgarner and Buster Posey needs to go.

Next: What the 2017 MLB Draft Means for the San Francisco Giants

If I’m the San Francisco Giants, I’m making a ton of phone calls after Cueto’s next good start trying to pawn him off to someone else for a decent prospect.

Either way they go, it won’t be fun for the fans. But something needs to happen with Cueto, and it need to happen quick.