Back to the Drawing Board: San Francisco Giants Have a Decision to Make

After missing out on Giancarlo Stanton, it’s back to the drawing board for the San Francisco Giants, and they still have to decide if they want to rebuild or retool for 2018.

It’s been over a month since the baseball season ended, and even longer than that since the Giants knew they were out of it in 2017. Going as far back as before the July trade deadline the question has remained — rebuild or retool?

During the season I thought the obvious answer was to trade every veteran who was tradable and try to rebuild this thing in a hurry. Well, they hardly did anything at the deadline, and instead we’re left with the same team that lost 98 games last year.

It seems like the hope from the front office is that all the players who had down years in 2017 will rebound in 2018. I’m not exactly comfortable with that logic.

They made Stanton their top priority this offseason in hopes that he would be the one to turn this thing around.

Now that we know he’s not coming to save us, what is the front office going to do?

In all honesty, we aren’t going to get much in return for our aging veterans to help fill out a depleted farm system.

And it doesn’t really make sense to sign any free agents with a qualifying offer attached to them because we would lose our second and fifth picks in the draft. And this is a draft where we don’t want to lose any picks.

That means we would have to make most of our moves through trades, and we’ve already mentioned how poor our farm system is, so it will be difficult to out-bid other teams in trades.

If that’s the case, then it makes sense to not doing anything major this offseason, and wait until next offseason when we’ll have one of the best free agent classes ever.

I know that’s not what a lot of Giants fans want to hear, but it’s reality.

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We’ve experienced great success over the last decade, but what it took to create that success is starting to backfire.

We haven’t done well in drafts, and we’re stuck with some bad contracts.

I still think the front office wants to compete in 2018, and that’s great. But I don’t want anyone to get their hopes up, because what it would take at this point seems impossible.

We still need upgrades all across the outfield, as well as at third base. It wouldn’t hurt to add some pitching depth, especially in the bullpen.

Instead, it might make more sense to try and move some guys like Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija and see if we can’t bring back some good prospects to help rebuild.

It’s a tough decision, because I know the front office and the fans want to win now, but it just seems impossible.

Next: How the San Francisco Giants Lost Giancarlo Stanton; How They Could Have Landed Him

Either way, this next week could determine the direction of the franchise for the next several years. Check back with Around the Foghorn as we keep you up-to-date on all the happenings at the Winter Meetings.