SF Giants fans may prevent team from doing what it should've done years ago

With how bad this season has gone for the SF Giants, there has been talk and speculation about a full-scale rebuild. That’s what happens when a team invests half a billion dollars into three players who are grossly underperforming, but the reality of a rebuild is much tougher to imagine and Giants fans may be the reason why.

In a recent article from Andrew Baggarly in The Athletic, he wrote one line that is really important when thinking about the chances of a rebuild: “Here’s the simple truth: the Giants are doing too well at the gate to subtract their most popular players. So it’s hard to imagine Webb or Jung Hoo Lee going anywhere.”

That’s very important to remember. The Giants rank No. 6 in MLB when it comes to attendance numbers. The Giants average over 37,000 fans per home game. Fans are showing up to the yard despite the fact that the product on the field has often been lacking.

This isn’t to blame fans or imply that they’re foolish to go watch the team, but it is a reminder that ownership does not have a ton of incentive to blow everything up. They’re making a lot of money and fans are showing up so from their perspective things are just peachy in San Francisco despite the 33-47 record.

Maybe they’d like the idea of a rebuild because it would mean less payroll and more money for them, but they’d probably be afraid that trading off all the team’s best assets would lead to less people showing up to games.

That’s why the Giants may have to undertake more of a selective rebuild. They can sell off some assets but selling them all off would be too difficult and would probably turn off fans too much. Would trading Matt Chapman lead to a fan revolt? Probably not. Would trading Jung Hoo Lee? Yes, the Hoo-Lee-Gans would likely not be thrilled by that one.

Giants probably should have rebuilt years ago

The truth is that the Giants probably should have undertaken a rebuild long ago but they didn’t. Even during the Farhan Zaidi era he was tasked with trying to field a competitive team every season. There has never been a time in recent memory where the Giants were just perfectly content to stink for a while and ownership is probably still afraid of that prospect.

Would fans still show up to the ballpark if Nate Furman was the everyday second baseman and Landen Roupp was the team's best starter? Maybe, but that is not a very fun prospect to think about.

The Giants are going to be sellers at the deadline and they’ll have to say goodbye to some guys, but as long as fans are showing up and ownership is making money the team is not going to be cleaning house anytime soon no matter how badly some fans may want that.

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