As I write this, the Giants are 4-8. They have had to spend $400 million in long-term contracts during the off-season, which was made necessary by a series of drafts that produced few players ready for the big club.

What happened? At a minimum, they fired the wrong guy.

There have been 40 managers in the 138-year history of the Giants franchise. Ranked by Giants winning percentage, the first two were Hall of Famers Hughie Jennings and Rogers Hornsby, who managed for two years and one year, respectively. The next two, Jim Mutrie and Bill Joyce managed in the 19th century. The fifth was Hall of Famer John McGraw, who managed the Giants from 1902 to 1932. The sixth and seventh were two more 19th century managers, Hall of Famer John Ward, and Jim Price.

#8 and #9 were Alvin Dark and Herman Franks who managed the Giants in the 1960s. On their roster, they had Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, 8x All-Star Harvey Kuenn, Jim Ray Hart, the Alou brothers; and Hall of Fame pitchers Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry with All-Stars Mike McCormick, Jack Sanford, Billy O'Dell, Johnny Antonelli, Sam Jones, and Stu Miller. No one on the 2023 or 2024 Giants rosters can hold a candle to those players.

#10 was Bill Terry, who managed in the 1930s. He had FIVE Hall of Famers on that team, including himself, Mel Ott, Carl Hubbell, Freddie Lindstrom, and Travis Jackson. See any Hall of Famers on the 2023 squad? This year's squad? The 2021 squad that won 107 games? Maybe Buster Posey, but frankly, I think Posey ends up like Bill Freehan...should be in, but he'll be out. I didn’t even mention pitchers like Freddie Fitzsimmons (217 career wins), Clydell "Slick" Castleman (15-6), All-Star Hal Schumacher or six-time All Star, Jo-Jo Moore.

#11 was Leo Durocher, who managed from 1948 to 1955. Leo had Hall of Famers Mays and Johnny Mize and multi-year All-Stars Sid Gordon, Whitey Lockman, Eddie Stanky, Al Dark, Bobby Thompson, Hank Thompson, Monte Irvin, Don Mueller, Wes Westrum, Sal Maglie, and Larry Jansen. See any Hall of Famers or multiple-year All Stars on this team? Maybe Patrick Bailey...but not yet, certainly not after Bailey led the league in both passed balls and errors by a catcher in just 82 games caught last year.

#12 is Gabe Kapler.

At .543, Kapler has the 12th-best career winning percentage among the 40 Giants managers and the highest since Herman Franks and Al Dark managed five Hall of Famers and eight multiple-year All-Stars in the 1960s. I can only imagine what Kapler’s winning percentage would have been if Buster Posey had played during the COVID season, the season that the Giants finished one game out of the playoffs when they were forced to play Joey Bart and Chadwick Tromp at catcher. Kapler has a better regular season career winning percentage for the Giants than Felipe Alou, Humm Baby Roger Craig, Bruce Bochy, Dusty Baker, and 17 of the 25 Giants managers from the 20th and 21st centuries. And let's not forget that Kapler came in after Bochy had coached the team to consecutive 64-98, 73-89 and 77-85 records the three years prior to Kapler's arrival. When the cupboard was bare, Kapler improved the team by 30 games between two full seasons 2019 and 2021 (2020 was a 60 game, COVID season). An improvement of that size has only happened 14 times in post-1901 MLB history. In short, Kapler pulled miracles out of a hat on multiple teams that lacked talent. He hired a coaching staff who dramatically improved his ballplayers.

So rank on Farhan all you want. In the 10 years between 2014 and 2024, Giants 1st round draft selections had the lowest aggregate WAR of all 30 MLB teams. That’s on Brian Sabean, Bobby Evans and Farhan Zaidi. And in 2023, Kapler did whatever he could to keep the best pitchers in the game, resulting in a very low percentage of innings pitched by starting pitchers. He had no choice. And he did the same with position players. He had no choice but to platoon, seeking every edge through matchups.

From this, we can draw four conclusions. First, the Giants fired the wrong guy. They should have fired Zaidi. Second, they hired the wrong guy in Bob Melvin. They replaced Kapler (career winning percentage .526, SF Giants winning percentage .543) with Bochy-lite Bob Melvin (career winning percentage .515). Melvin, who couldn't win in San Diego with EIGHT multiple-year All-Stars Gary Sanchez, Xander Bogaerts, Jake Cronenworth, Manny Machado, Juan Soto, Yu Darvish, Josh Hader and Matt Carpenter. And let's not forget Fernando Tatis, who made "just" one All-Star team, but Tatis finished 3rd and 4th in separate year MVP votes. Let’s not forget that San Diego had pitchers Blake Snell (just one All-Star team but Cy Young winner and has TWICE led the NL in ERA, including in 2023), Joe Musgrove (three consecutive winning seasons and an All Star), Michael Wacha (24-6 last two seasons and a former All-Star, 87-54 career record) and Trent Grisham (2x Gold Glove CF). And eight of the Padres' nine starters are age 30 or younger.

With respect, I don't think Bob Melvin is the answer.

Third conclusion. Farhan knows he’s on the hot seat. That’s why he spent a record amount of money on free agents this year. He had no choice, given the failure of his drafting (and of the two prior SFG GMs) who for some reason fail at drafting solid players. So we get expensive free agents (and expensive ticket prices) Soler, Conforto, Cobb, Ray, Chapman, Lee, Murphy, Rogers, Hicks, etc. That doesn’t even include the failures, the should-have-kept-thems and one-and-dones Manaea, DeSclafani, Gausman, Haniger, etc.

Attendance will be interesting. The Giants averaged over 40k for the Padres games, and slightly less than 25k for the Nationals games. We'll see if fans come out to the yard.Last year, just over 2.5 mms. fans, an average of 30,866 per game.

Fourth conclusion? Johnson and SF Giants management has extended Farhan by a few years and gave Melvin a three-year contract. I doubt Melvin has a .500 winning season, based on the track records of Zaidi and Melvin. It’s going to be a long, grim three years until they get fired.