Who gets credit for building the 2025 Giants? Is it Buster’s team or Farhan’s?

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Back in 2014, the Astros were lousy. They’d lost at least 106 games in each of the previous three seasons, and as you might expect, everyone responsible for building those teams was fired. A new front office was brought in, though, and they caught the eye of Sports Illustrated writer Ben Reiter, who wrote a front-page story on their modern ways. Some wisecracking editor decided to put “Your 2017 World Champs” on the front cover, and the internet had a lot of fun with the outlandishness of it all. Only the bravest, handsomest souls dared to defend the idea.

The 2017 Astros won the World Series, alright. It wasn’t that much of a surprise by then, because everyone had time to get used to the idea that they were greatly improved, but the audacity of Sports Illustrated paid off. It’s like they knew what was coming.

The magazine and author earned their victory laps, and it really was one of the most remarkable examples of a publication being right after going out on a limb. Except, hold on, there are a couple of footnotes. The old Astros front office was led by Ed Wade, and he was in charge when Jose Altuve, George Springer and Dallas Keuchel were brought into the organization. There’s no 2017 World Series for the Astros without those three. It wasn’t the first time that Wade left a team with parting gifts, either. He was the GM in charge when Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Shane Victorino and Cole Hamels came into the Phillies organization, but he was fired before they formed a championship core.

It’s not an uncommon story. When the Dodgers won eight straight NL West titles, they did so with the help of Clayton Kershaw, Joc Pederson, Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger, all of whom were brought into the organization by farm director Logan White and general manager Ned Colletti, who was previously the Giants’ assistant GM. Some rather rude Giants fans on disreputable blogs started calling Colletti “Agent Ned,” as if he was still working on his old team’s behalf. Except he was there when the Dodgers drafted Kershaw, who has allowed roughly one earned run against the Giants in his career. (Back in 2013, I believe.)

The lesson here is that rosters are fluid, and that it’s rare for every single move to flop for any front office. Pick any championship team, and unless their front office was in place a decade before, you’ll be able to trace that roster’s roots back to people who got sacked.

You’ve probably guessed where this is going. The Giants are off to a fast start this season, and at the risk of being controversial, the biggest reason for this is that a lot of their players are performing well. They’ve used 29 players so far this year, and here’s who was in charge when all of them were acquired:

That’s right. Not only is Buster Posey in dead last, but he’s behind Brian Sabean, who hasn’t run the team for over a decade. So if you’re looking for the architects of the 2025 Giants, you have three different options who are more responsible than the current person in charge.

Sabean stepped down from running the day-to-day operations for the Giants after the 2014 season. (Brad Mangin / MLB via Getty Images)

And I’m here to beg you — beg you — not to think about baseball teams like this.

You can give credit where credit is due. The Jung Hoo Lee signing was both risky and inspired, and it’s fun going back to looking at articles from both before he signed and after. That’s a win for the Zaidi partisans. (Full disclosure: I’ve been yelled at on the internet at different times for being a Zaidi apologist and a Zaidi basher. I’m mostly just trying to get back to whatever book I’m reading.)

That doesn’t mean you can’t give the current front office and coaching staff some of the credit for Lee’s success this season. They’re the ones who worked with him in spring training as he returned from a shoulder injury. Zaidi also made a forward-thinking move when he traded Mitch Haniger’s underwater contract for Robbie Ray’s contract, so he gets all them WARs that Ray has been worth. Except, wait, wasn’t Zaidi the one who signed Haniger in the first place?

Now consider Posey, but as a player instead of an executive. If we did this exercise back in 2021, Sabean would rightly get a lot of the credit for his draft picks’ contributions to that 107-win team (including Posey, Brandon Crawford and Brandon Belt, of course). Except that’s ignoring the contributions of everyone involved with the 2021 Giants, from the president of baseball operations on down. It’s ignoring the coaches tasked with making the players the best possible versions of themselves. It’s ignoring the team around them, both on and off the field. When Bobby Evans traded for Evan Longoria, you can imagine Zaidi wondering what in the heck the Giants were doing. When Zaidi was running the Giants, he was a part of the team tasked with making Longoria as productive as he was.

Sabean gets all the credit for Logan Webb in the kind of binary analysis in the above tables, except Webb didn’t start throwing his sinker until after he was drafted. That came under Zaidi. But now he’s throwing a cutter and more of his four-seamer, and he’s also reworked his changeup, all of which has boosted his strikeout rate to a career high. That came under Posey. Evans didn’t throw him into the Longoria trade or any other trade, if we’re looking to get all four execs involved.

So which one gets all the credit for Webb making the 2025 Giants better? And, wait, it was Zaidi who brought in Matt Chapman initially, but it was Posey who sat down with him and worked out an extension, but it was Zaidi who was still technically the …

Stop it. Please, please, please don’t think about baseball teams like this. The current front office is letting Bob Melvin treat Mike Yastrzemski more like an everyday player than a platoon player, and he’s responded with his best season in years. You can’t prove that he’s succeeding because his playing time is less irregular, but you also can’t prove that he’d be having this much success this season if the previous regime was still in charge. Maybe he’d be even better! It’s impossible to untangle these threads, and you lose brain cells when you try.

The -0.3 combined WAR from Posey’s acquisitions isn’t ideal, but you can also focus on those 29 players the Giants have used this season. Only Lou Trivino has been removed from the roster for a reason other than injury, and the continuity has to have an effect. An intangible, impossible to measure effect, sure, but it’s probably doing something. And if we’re talking about intangibles, is there a number to put on the clubhouse joviality of Willy Adames or the example-setting commitment of a 42-year-old future Hall of Famer like Justin Verlander? Maybe. Maybe it’s just like their WAR, but I’m skeptical.

Complain about front offices. Praise front offices. Call for changes to be made, or call for extensions to be given. Just don’t pretend that everything good or bad can always be assigned to one — and only one — front office. It’s more complicated than that, and it always will be.

(Top photo with Posey (middle) and Zaidi (right) at Posey’s player retirement press conference: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)

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