A Rebuild So Quiet, We Never Noticed

Giants analyst and former pitcher Shawn Estes unveils the secrets of the team's success

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In the summer of 2019 — if you can remember back that far — the San Francisco Giants were at a crossroads.

It was Farhan Zaidi’s first season as President of Baseball Operations. Zaidi had spent the previous four years as the General Manager of the Dodgers, and before that he spent 10 years learning while climbing the ranks in the A’s front office.

His return to the Bay Area marked a new direction for the Giants — a course correction after some lean seasons and regrettable decisions that followed the franchise’s most recent postseason appearance in 2016.

The 2019 season also marked the final year for manager Bruce Bochy, the future Hall of Famer who led the team to three World Series championships during his 13-year tenure. The fans loved Boch; the city loved Boch; the game loved Boch. Everyone still loves Boch.

On June 1, 2019, the Giants had the second worst record in the NL. One month later, their position hadn’t changed.

Postseason hero Madison Bumgarner, owner of a seven-inning no-hitter earlier this season, was about to hit the free agent market. He was an appealing two-month rental for many contenders.

Trading him would have been an unpopular move that fan bases have resigned themselves to — shipping off a local hero who no longer fits into the plans of an organization under new management in exchange for a couple of young prospects who arrive under scrutiny and skepticism, parting gifts for contestants who don’t win the big prize.

Bumgarner was the Ken Jennings of Giants baseball during the Bochy era; these prospects would be the home edition of Jeopardy! (Feel free to tell me who you think Mike Richards is in the comment section below.)

So who were the prospects the Giants received in return for Bumgarner? Who was the new talent acquired that unceremoniously signaled a new era of Giants baseball?

Nobody.

No trade ever happened. From June 30 - July 23, the Giants went 17-3.

With a 52-50 record, the NL West was still far out of reach — the Dodgers ran away with it — but they were within two games of the Wild Card.

The Giants never did climb higher than two games over .500 in 2019, and they never drew closer than two games back of the second Wild Card spot. They traded some bullpen pieces on July 31, signaling somewhat of a capitulation, but the everyday core remained.

Somehow, going for it in 2019 is paying dividends in 2021.

I recently spoke with former Major League pitcher Shawn Estes, who is currently an analyst for the Giants on NBC Sports Bay Area. Estes spent his first seven seasons in the big leagues with San Francisco before playing for the Mets, Reds, Cubs, Rockies, Diamondbacks, and Padres.

Safe to say he knows a thing or two about the NL West.

“I think everybody felt that it was going to be a rebuild situation,” he says of the Giants’ direction in 2019. “And it was just very encouraging to see that they didn’t go that route.”

Of course, that route seems to be the preferred path recently, but it’s impossible for all rebuilding teams to find success. The Giants wisely set out in a different direction.

“You don’t know if a fan base will allow a rebuild, but I felt that this was a fan base that just wouldn’t allow it, and how they wouldn’t have allowed it is they would have stopped showing up,” Estes adds.

In 2017, the Giants posted their first non-sellout in 530 games (the streak began on October 1, 2010 and is still a National League record). By 2019, the ballpark was attracting about 8,000 fewer fans per game.

As Estes explains: “Ownership felt that… we don’t ever want to talk about a rebuild, we want to call it more of a reload.”

Part of the new age of roster construction can be as much marketing as it is player development. Executives speak of carefully timed yet unpredictable waves of prospects reaching the big leagues to join well curated free agents, and the combination will lead to sustained winning and the validation of a process.

Yet in an era of tanking and contagiously uncompetitive rosters, too many teams push endless euphemisms for intentional decisions to field a less-than-capable team over the course of many years.

I find that the catchier the slogans — and the more often they end up on t-shirts — the less genuine and effective the rebuilding efforts wind up.

To that end, I never read about a Giants’ rebuild, reload, or reconstruction. In the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, the team missed qualifying for the expanded playoff format by one game.

This year, they’ve already clinched a postseason appearance.

Let’s not forget: the objective is to win games — and championships — at the Major League level. No parades have ever been held for claiming Baseball America’s best farm system.

That said, the Giants’ current success has coincided with a restocking of minor league talent that now has them in the top half of baseball, according to BA. Entering the 2019 season, the Giants’ farm was ranked 28th overall.

These Giants have the best record in baseball. The only trouble is that the second-best record belongs to the rival Dodgers, who trail San Francisco by one game heading into Friday’s games.

Contributions have come from nearly everywhere.

Statistically speaking, the Giants are near the top of almost every significant offensive category, pitching category, and defensive category.

“If you're going to look at a complete team where there’s not a lot of weaknesses, you don't have to look any further than the stat book,” Estes says.

This Giants team has a combination of veteran players proving that they’re not over the hill, younger players out to earn continued playing time, and role players looking to hold onto their roster spots. We haven’t even mentioned the career years that starting pitchers Kevin Gausman and Anthony DeScalfani are having.

The stars can align for this kind of team — and become suddenly elusive the following year.

But there seems to be markers for sustainability that transcend the statistics.

“I don't know if it’s one of those things where it’s just a fluke year for a team that wasn't expected to do much,” says Estes, “or if there’s something more to it, you know, that Farhan’s figured something out.”

As Estes continues, though, the evidence mounts that this Giants effort is the product of preparation, coaching, chemistry, roster strategy, and culture. In fact, this kind of winning is sustainable.

Team-first superstars

“Kris Bryant is a superstar,” Estes says of the Giants premier acquisition in advance of the trade deadline. “But the guy can play every outfield position, and he can play every infield position. I mean he really can — maybe other than shortstop, and I think he could probably even do that. And he’s okay with that. He’s a character guy, he’s unselfish, but he’s kind of like a big deal, right? That’s the type of guy that Farhan is going to continually try to get, and so I think it’s sustainable because they do have help on the way in from the minor leagues, too.”

A revised and well-received hitting philosophy has also paid dividends. The Giants lead the NL in homers with 222 (Toronto leads all of MLB with 233), and the team is tops in baseball with 88 two-strike home runs. By comparison, the Blue Jays have only 58 homers with two strikes on their batters.

Estes credits the two-strike damage to the trust between players and coaches. He sums up the organization’s outlook this way: “We’re okay if you strike out, but we want you to strike out swinging at a good pitch.”

That scenario might sound simple, but it requires trust flowing between the players, coaches, and front office staff. Trust can often be a separator between championship teams and talented rosters that succumb to a dysfunctional environment.

Estes points out that manager Gabe Kapler — who was much maligned during his two years at the helm in Philadelphia (but who isn’t in Philly?) — was quick to admit that without buy-in from the veterans in the clubhouse, the new initiatives wouldn’t have worked.

Buster Posey, Brandon Belt, and Brandon Crawford all have multiple rings from the Giants’ World Series championships. Their support and trust positively impacted the culture under Zaidi and Kapler.

In addition to the manager, the Giants’ website lists 16 coaches that are part of the Major League team. There’s a fine line between too many cooks in the kitchen and thoughtful, customized instruction, and that number of coaches would have drawn jeers from the traditionalists not too long ago.

Posey, at the age of 34, is having one of his finest offensive seasons, and Crawford — by many metrics — is enjoying the best season of his career at the plate.

Both Posey and Crawford have made swing adjustments after receiving suggestions from the current group of coaches.

Again, it comes back to trust.

“They had to trust guys that sometimes weren’t even as old as them,” Estes says of Posey and Crawford. He also compliments the coaching staff for being unselfish and prioritizing collaboration.

“It’s been such an amazing thing to see unfold this year — that collaborative effort from top to bottom — and then the product on the field has been so good.”

Perhaps the Giants have found the secret to beginning their next consecutive sellout streak.

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