Reviewing the Giants’ trade deadline deals since their last winning season

Barring a 22- or 23-game winning streak at some point, this will be the fifth consecutive season for the San Francisco Giants without a winning record. The last time before this that they had four consecutive seasons without a winning record was 2017-2020, and the mathemagicians among us will correctly point out that this means it’s been almost a full decade of .500 or worse, with a magical 2021 season thrown right in the middle to confuse everyone. Before 2017, the last time the Giants franchise had four straight seasons without a winning record, a 21-year-old kid named Christy Mathewson helped break the streak.

It’s a gnarly stretch for the Giants, then. The team already has one of the stranger postseason quirks going, as they’ve made the playoffs in back-to-back years just once since moving to San Francisco (2002, 2003), but this feels much more ominous.

There is, however, a silver lining, and it’s the same one that lousy teams have looked for since the introduction of the affiliated minor leagues. The farm system is popping. And how. Just from a purely anecdotal standpoint, I don’t remember ever checking the morning box scores for Giants affiliates and seeing as much good news. I don’t remember seeing half as much good news. There are teenagers hitting like veteran All-Stars and encouraging signs from recent first-round picks, pitchers developing as planned and rawer pitchers who are showing signs that they might.

The silver lining extends to the last couple of trade deadlines, too. Gone are the days when the Giants were trading prospects like Caleb Kilian away for veterans like Kris Bryant. Now they’re trading veterans like Caleb Kilian away for prospects. In between these Kilian tentpoles, we have at least a couple deadlines where the Giants were sellers, and it’s time to do a proper roundup on how it’s gone for them.

2022

Traded Matthew Boyd, Curt Casali to the Mariners for Michael Stryffeler, Andy Thomas

Traded Trevor Rosenthal to the Brewers for Tristan Peters

Traded Darin Ruf to the Mets for Nick Zwack, J.D. Davis, Carson Seymour, Thomas Szapucki

Traded Jeremy Walker to the Rays for Ford Proctor

The Trevor Rosenthal trade is one of my favorite trades of all-time, if only because he signed with the Giants two weeks before and never threw a pitch for either team. The player the Giants got, outfielder Tristan Peters, made the All-Star team this year and is having a tremendous overall season. It’s not helping the Giants, who traded him for Brett Wisely, but the initial trade still makes me smile. The Giants probably cut one check to Rosenthal that looked more like a catering bill, then traded him for a future All-Star.

Carson Seymour has appeared in 22 games for the Giants since the start of last season. (Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)

The Darin Ruf trade hasn’t worked out as well as it appeared it might, although Carson Seymour still has a chance to stick in the majors, and Nick Zwack is still in the system after dealing with all sorts of injuries.

Not the best trade deadline, but it also wasn’t a full sell-off. Carlos Rodón wasn’t traded, with the Giants figuring that the resulting draft pick would be worth more than the meager offers they were receiving for a rental. (The Giants got Joe Whitman with the pick, who still has a strong chance of making the majors, so it looks like a fair gamble from here.)

2023

Traded a player to be named later to the Mariners for AJ Pollock and Mark Mathias

The Giants were ostensibly buying, but they ended up with the dullest deadline in recent history. The player, as far as Baseball-Reference is aware, has never been named. He’s just wandering around the minor leagues, responding to “Hey, you” and “buddy,” and maybe he’s hitting or pitching well, but nobody knows what to do with him. He doesn’t have a Social Security Number, so they don’t even have him on the payroll. Somebody should help him.

Otherwise, this wasn’t a very eventual deadline.

2024

Traded Luke Jackson and Jorge Soler to the Braves for Sabin Ceballos and Tyler Matzek

Traded Eric Silva to the Tigers for Mark Canha

Traded Alex Cobb to the Guardians for Nate Furman and Jacob Bresnahan

Another weirdo deadline, with the Giants acting as buyers to get Mark Canha … only for the Tigers to turn their entire season around and make one of the best regular-season comebacks of the decade. Poor Canha didn’t see a lick of winning that year, despite playing for two teams that considered themselves to be contenders. Eric Silva is struggling mightily in the Tigers’ system, so the deal itself wasn’t a disaster. It was just amusing, considering how everything turned out.

The real stunner here is the Alex Cobb trade, which might end up being the most consequential trade of all. Cobb made only three regular-season starts along with two duds in the postseason, but the Giants got Nate Furman, a bat-control wonk who has already made the majors and has a fairly low floor, by infielder standards. If that were the only return, it would still look good, but the Giants also got left-handed starter Jacob Bresnahan, who has become one of the best pitching prospects in the system. The 21-year-old isn’t especially close to the majors, but that’s because he’s currently thriving in the Northwest League, where he’s learning how to throw strikes and miss bats.

It is, of course, hard to get too excited about prospects when they’re that far away, but maybe this will help: Imagine a world where the Giants were good in 2026. I’ll give you a second. OK, maybe more than a second. But in this fantasy world, the Giants would have been buyers, jockeying with other teams for bullpen help. Bresnahan is exactly the kind of prospect who could have gotten them a hotshot reliever, even if they were loath to trade him. In this world, the Giants have already won the 2024 deadline, possibly in service of losing the 2026 deadline. It would have been exciting, though.

This trade and the deal with the Braves is where the deadline really starts to pump up the Giants’ system. Sabin Ceballos is on a David Villar-like slow and steady path through the minor leagues, even though the main part of that trade was clearing Jorge Soler’s salary off the books. What did the Giants actually buy with the savings? There’s no real way to untangle that question, so I’m choosing to believe it went to the bonuses of both Josuar Gonzalez and Luis Hernández. That’s probably not accurate, but the savings definitely went somewhere. Think big. Otherwise it gets depressing.

2025

Traded Tyler Rogers to the Mets for Drew Gilbert, Blade Tidwell and José Buttó

Traded Mike Yastrzemski to the Royals for Yunior Marte

Traded Camilo Doval to the Yankees for Carlos De La Rosa, Parks Harber, Trystan Vrieling and Jesús Rodríguez

Drew Gilbert was the inspiration for this article, as I think I’m ready to make a call: He’s a major leaguer. It’s impossible to call him a future everyday player until he’s at least passable against left-handers, but he’s on the correct side of a platoon (in terms of getting playing time), and he’s doing excellent things against right-handers, with a .274/.364/.426 line, which is roughly 20 percent better than the average hitter.

Don’t minimize the contributions of an ultra-qualified fifth outfielder or an overqualified fourth outfielder. They can be the final piece for pennant-winning teams, mostly unheralded but essential players. Grégor Blanco comes to mind as an extreme example, except it’s not that extreme. That seems like a perfectly reasonable kind of career for Gilbert to settle into, but he’s still young enough to hope for more.

Blade Tidwell’s potential is still very much an open question, and it’s helpful to have already mentioned Carson Seymour earlier as a reminder that the answers can take years to arrive. In a couple years, Tidwell might be a large fastball monster at the top of the rotation, a solid middle reliever, an ineffective spot starter or retired. If Gilbert can play all three outfield positions and hit right-handers (and do so with “vigor” and “spirt” and possibly a slight case of “mania”), he’ll make the trade worth it on his own.

Camilo Doval has already been jettisoned by the Yankees, who traded him to the Pirates a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, the Giants get to keep Parks Harber (currently with a .916 OPS in Triple A), whom you’re likely to see as soon as this season, although he doesn’t have to be protected from the Rule 5 Draft until next offseason. Jesús Rodríguez was having a promising season before going on the IL with right-elbow neuritis, but he should be a part of the Giants’ next season, at the very least.

Yunior Marte (not to be confused with this Yunior Marte) was promoted to Double A this season, which was something of a challenge move after throwing well, but not dominating, a level below. He’s pitched better since the promotion, and he’s at least someone to be aware of.

2026

Traded Tyler Mahle to the Braves for Anthony Molina

Traded Robbie Ray to the Padres for Miguel Mendez and Joniel Hernandez

Traded Erik Miller and Carlos Gutierrez to the Red Sox for Marcelo Mayer

Traded Luis Arraez and Caleb Kilian to the Phillies for Ramon Marquez and Marty Gair

Traded Heliot Ramos to the Yankees for Henry Lalane and Kaeden Kent

It’s obviously far too early to judge this deadline, but the early returns were impressive, which would make for a third straight season in which the consolation prize of deadline prospects turned out to be more exciting than expected.

The total WAR in the majors for all of the new Giants up there, assuming they can’t take credit for Peters? That would be 1.8 WAR, and it’s been distributed like this: 1.8 WAR going to J.D. Davis and 0.0 WAR going to Buttó, Gilbert, Tidwell, Rodríguez, Furman and Seymour. There is still work to do before the Giants can get cocky about their deadline prowess.

From here, though, the Giants have added talent when they needed to, which isn’t how it turns out for all of the sellers throughout trade deadline history. It’s not much, but it’s a substantial contributor to the Giants’ farm system ranking as highly as it has since the days of Madison Bumgarner, Tim Lincecum and Buster Posey.

There will be another Giants game on Tuesday night, possibly as punishment for something you did in a past life. Underneath whatever happens, though, there’s a little bit of hope. We’re still in the middle of the story, with a lot of twist endings possible, but you should take the silver linings when they come. It’s heart healthy, if nothing else.