Farhan Zaidi took over after the 2018 season. He has been very direct about building an organization (not just the big club, but from top to bottom) very similar to the dodgers. One that is very invested in player development (improve existing players, help young guys develop, find diamond in the rough), deep farm system (which helps supplement the major league team when needed, and allows you to trade from the minors without missing a beat), and obviously a good major league team.
This wasn’t going to happen overnight. It's likely he pitched ownership on a 3-4 year plan. 2020 and the pandemic probably turned that into a 4-5 (maybe 6?) year plan, as most of their top prospects were at the low minors and therefore more impacted by a lost year of development. This Plan would mean they’d want to be very targeted with their free agent acquisitions so that whoever they sign is still likely to be good by the time the whole system is in place (~2023). In the mean time they’d mix and match and find undervalued players so that the big club isn’t embarrassing, because Giants ownership would not approve a full tear down and rebuild. They’d build the system up, and if the right free agent came along they’d be willing to pounce, but otherwise they wouldn't spend for the sake of spending. Then they would line up bigger moves with what they’re expecting their window would be when the prospects were ready for promotion.
Now for the accident. Everything went right in 2021. The matchups worked. The platoons worked. The undervalued guys played extremely well. Posey came back after a year off, knew he didn’t need to leave anything in the tank, and had his best season since 2016. Crawford and Belt stayed (relatively) healthy and had career years. The bullpen was unsustainably good. The 2021 team wasn’t lucky, but they did overachieve from the standpoint of literally every button they pushed worked.
That said, the team was flawed. A repeat was unlikely, and the front office didn’t want to alter their long term plan - or at least sacrifice the future for the present for guys that they had questions about whether they’d actually help in that 23-24 timeline. That’s why they gave Rodón a 2 year deal with an opt out after the first. That’s why they didn’t re-sign Gausman, who is having another great year, but might not align with the window they're planning for since they are notoriously cautious of long term deals for pitchers. They were seemingly out on Semien and Castellanos, right handed bats that would have solved a short term need, but that might not age very gracefully (and honestly none of these guys are having great 2022 seasons, let alone future seasons). They might not even be super keen on Judge, unless they can get him on a shorter, absurdly high AAV deal (which he is understandably unlikely to take) just because their track record shows that the age component scares them for the back half of the contract (for the record I'd love to be proven wrong on this).
Unless they go all in this offseason, it seems like they're setup to break the bank for Soto when he reaches free agency. This would line up pretty well with some of their younger talent moving up the ranks and breaking with the big club. If someone becomes available before that, sure, but they don’t yet have that farm system to be able to trade from and still feel good about the depth. It is possible that they'll feel the pressure to be more active this offseason due to a disappointing 2022 - at least compared to their overachieving 2021.
The one downside is that the accidental 2021 inadvertently set the wrong expectations for fans. They were ready to win now! How fun was that?! Answer: extremely. And then 2022 was a bummer, but that doesn't seem to have altered the big picture at all. After all. In Farhan We Trust
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