It’s clear that the G-Men are using this September run of games to evaluate the talent that is going to form the core of the 2025 Giants.  Grant McCray is a rookie with awesome power, as witnessed by his dingers in the games at San Diego.  Fitzgerald is the shortstop of the future with a glove, an arm, and a power bat. We should have brought him up in May. Patrick Bailey may be worn down from a long season but the bat, the glove, and the baseball smarts are there, and Ramos is leading the teams with a .273 average. On the pitching side, Birdsong has had the yips now and then, but the talent is clearly there and he should be ready for the starting role in the rotation next year.

From the beginning of the season, we all knew that the Giants had to work to match up better with LA, San Diego, and the Snakes.  The NL West was always going to be a challenge. However, the attempts to get younger and more athletic (while promising with youngsters like Patrick Bailey and Fitzgerald) haven’t been enough.  Who can be blamed – the most obvious candidate is Farhan, but ownership has its issues also (passing on big-time contracts to stud players).  Today we are in 4th place in the NL West, one game under .500 and 13 games back.  That is not a good place. In the last 2 weeks, we dropped series to the Mariners, Braves, and Brewers.

While it’s been a difficult two weeks, we took a series against Cincinnati (2-1), the Nationals (3-1), and Detroit (2-1)  but split with the A’s and lost the series to the Braves (1-3). Right now we are hanging in there in the wild card race, but barely. The sports press is calling for the head of Farhan on either a spike or a trimmed-down Louisville slugger.

The Czars Blog waited until the Trade Deadline was past. We are now in the dog days of August and steaming towards the September showdowns.  The moves made by Farhan were at the edges.  The G-Men stood still, trimmed payroll (Solar back to the Braves), brought up more kids from Triple-A, and added a couple of pieces to cover defense and backup positions. The press was alive with the expectation that Snell, the Cy Young award winner with the big contract, would be traded for prospects.  That didn’t happen, and there are good reasons (aside from the stellar no-hitter against the Reds on July 27th). He is a central cog in the run that may just yet happen. As of today, the Giants are 57 and 57 and at .500.

The G-Men played atrocious baseball (in the sense it seemed they were always trying to dig out of holes they dug for themselves) immediately before the current brutal stretch heading into the All-Star break next week. Four home games against the Cubs looked winnable enough on paper, but the Cubs, while looking inept, still have lots of talent and are right in the thick of the Wild Card race with the Giants – so taking 3 out of 4 was a bonus. Then the three home games against the team from LA were exactly as difficult as we expected but we won two (and I was at the 11th-inning meltdown game – not a great night). The three road games against the Braves will be exactly as daunting as you expect (so winning the first game last night was cool). And if you’ve been living under a black-and-orange rock this season, the upcoming three road games this week against AL Central-leading Guardians (I still want to say Indians, but that is just not politically correct) may be the most difficult assignment in baseball this side of four road games against Cleveland. But, at the end of yesterday, we are in 3rd place in the division and 2 games under .500 – there is plenty of time to right the ship.