4 mistakes that have cost the SF Giants dearly this season

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After things were looking pretty promising for the San Francisco Giants heading into the trade deadline, the month of August has not been kind. With last night's loss to the Braves, they have now lost five straight series during this brutal stretch of their schedule and have gone from firmly a wild card team to having to make up a 1.5 game deficit to even make it to the playoffs.

Some of the credit has to go to the teams the Giants are competing against as those last five series against Texas, Tampa, Atlanta (2x), and Philadelphia are against some really good baseball teams. Plus, other teams in the wild card race like the Cubs and Diamondbacks have been playing really good baseball of late. However, there is no denying that the Giants have played poorly lately and much of that can be traced to missteps the team has made throughout the 2023 season.

Here are 4 mistakes that have cost the SF Giants dearly this season

There are certainly different types of mistakes a team can make. Sometimes, a decision looks great in the moment and can turn into a disaster with the benefit of hindsight. In other cases, mistakes can come from failures to evaluate talent both on and off the roster correctly which is tough to get right at times. There are also the decisions that have been total head-scratchers from the moment they happened and are still hard to understand even now. The Giants have had all of the above happen in 2023 and the team has been lesser for it.

Let's take a look at 4 major mistakes the Giants have made this season that have been very costly in 2023.

Failing to add a superstar last offseason has really hurt the SF Giants

This one is hard to blame on the team or the front office. Going into the offseason, the organization knew that they needed to add some top flight offensive talent. While the Giants' roster was interesting and had some exciting young players in the minor league pipeline, it was pretty clear that hoping that the lineup was better than the sum of their parts wasn't a realistic strategy.

So, the Giants tried their damnedest to sign a superstar last offseason. Their courtship of Aaron Judge was very public, but it became clear that Judge was just using San Francisco's interest as leverage in his talks with the Yankees. The Giants very nearly signed Carlos Correa before his physical caused that deal to thankfully fall through. If nothing else, one can't say that the Giants didn't try to go for it.

However, baseball is a results-oriented business and the Giants failed to deliver on a key team need. Sure, they signed Michael Conforto which was kinda nice, but he hasn't moved the needle much this season and he just hit the injured list with a hamstring injury. All in all, not adding one of the big name free agents from last offseason has really hurt their chances in 2023.

The Giants very clearly overestimated the strength of their starting rotation

While the Giants' pursuit of a big time bat was well documented last offseason, it was somewhat surprising that they didn't look harder at adding some better starting pitching depth especially Carlos Rodon leaving town. Before anyone asks, no: signing Ross Stripling doesn't count.

This one feels like a problem in evaluating the organization's strength at starting pitcher. Logan Webb is legitimately awesome and no one should argue otherwise. However, the rest of the rotation even before Anthony DeSclafani hit the injured list wasn't particularly inspiring. It is possible that the Giants thought that Kyle Harrison would be ready sooner than he was, but banking on a pitching prospect going into a season where the team very clearly wanted to go for it seems like an unwise choice.

The SF Giants basically standing pat at the trade deadline was a colossal error

While the first two mistakes on this list were important, the biggest mistake the Giants made in 2023 was how they handled the trade deadline. The Giants were in the thick of the race in the National League West and even if they were convinced that there was no way they could hold off the Dodgers, they were still heavy favorites to snag a wild card spot if they could just shore up their roster a bit.

Instead, the Giants essentially stood pat with their only move of consequence at the trade deadline was to trade for the often injured and past his prime AJ Pollock who, to the surprise of no one, is hurt again. No reinforcements for the bullpen, no meaningful help for the offense.

To be fair to Farhan Zaidi and co., the level of talent available at the trade deadline this year (especially on the offensive side) was historically bad and prices were pretty silly in some cases. However, there were guys like Jordan Montgomery, Keynan Middleton, Kendall Graveman, Paul Sewald, and Scott Barlow that would have made this Giants team better without mortgaging their future too much. Unfortunately, that didn't happen and the trade deadline became a colossal missed opportunity.

Giving Joc Pederson the qualifying offer has not worked out well

This one is tough because Joc Pederson was really, really good for the Giants in 2022. In 433 plate appearances last season, Joc slashed .274/.353/.521 with a 146 wRC+ with San Francisco last season. Evaluated in a vacuum, that sort of production is usually rewarded by a team wanting to keep a guy around and the Giants did so by giving Joc the qualifying offer which he promptly signed.

Sadly, that hasn't really worked out for the Giants as Joc has put up just a 116 wRC+ and a .799 OPS in 93 games this season. Far from a disaster to be sure, but probably not worth the nearly $20 million that Pederson is taking home this season.

On the one hand, Joc has underperformed this season and the Giants probably should have considered his inconsistency at the plate (particularly with his hit tool) over the course of his career before handing him the QO. On the other hand, Joc is great for team vibes regardless of how he is hitting and there didn't seem to be any opportunity cost in giving him his money as the Giants were still shopping at the top of the free agent market regardless. All in all, this is a deal that hasn't worked out the way San Francisco hoped, but probably didn't mess things up on it's own too much.

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