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Dieter Kurtenbach: There's no silver lining to the most pathetic Giants team in a decade

Dieter Kurtenbach, The Mercury News on

Published in Baseball

There are teams whose cruddiness creeps up on you. One day you check the standings and notice that they’re ten games out of the wild card race.

That was the Giants before the trade deadline.

We knew they weren’t good, but their bad was almost subversive — it was nearly creative. And they did just enough good things to keep casual fans fully off the scent of rot.

But now?

That Febreze bottle is empty and the scented candle burned out — the current Giants’ stink punches you right in the nose, mouth and eyes.

This is baseball’s most disappointing organization, a hollowed-out enterprise dressed in expensive laundry, burning through nine-figure payrolls while delivering minor-league execution to a fanbase whose relentless optimism is being put to the ultimate test.

If you’re wondering how low the indignity can go, well, there’s a simple answer: There are 38 games left. We’re just getting started, folks.

That’s 38 more opportunities for horrific pitching, lifeless hitting and mental blunders galore.

The Giants lost a weekend series — and the overall season series — to the Colorado Rockies.

The Rockies.

Dignity is indeed dead.

Though, to be fair, wins and losses don’t matter for this club anymore. They’ve been out of postseason contention for months, and thanks to MLB draft rules, they can’t even tank properly for a franchise-altering pick.

These final weeks are solely about evaluating young talent and finding out what sticks for 2027 and beyond.

The issue?

So far there haven’t been any real wins, much less leads in that department.

And boy are they a brutal watch in the meantime.

Manager Tony Vitello called his team’s play in Sunday’s matinee loss to the Rockies “junior-college” level.

That’s a scathing indictment coming from a guy who was coaching just one level above that a year ago.

Under any normal circumstance, a big-market franchise face-plant this hard would mean that heads roll this offseason.

Big heads.

Sure, rolling out minor-league callups produces minor-league results. But isn’t the manager culpable when his dugout repeatedly butchers fundamental baserunning and defensive basics?

 

Anywhere else, he would be.

And isn’t the person in charge of the front office on the hook when all but one offseason acquisition crashed and burned? When a major-league bullpen was built without meeting basic building codes? When there’s an obvious disconnect between what the manager wanted on the field and what the brass actually bought him? (See: Harrison Bader vs. Drew Gilbert.)

Of course they would be.

But don’t expect accountability from this organization, though.

Buster Posey and Vitello are staying put. They’re enrolled in a very lucrative (for them) on-the-job training program for two of the best gigs in baseball.

Someone’s head will probably roll somewhere down the hall. A lot of good that will do.

As the late Jerry Tarkanian famously said: “The NCAA is so mad at Kentucky they’re going to give Cleveland State two more years of probation.”

And because the Giants really don’t like firing people — Bobby Evans is still on the payroll and with the team eight years after he was dismissed as the team’s general manager — there’s frantic jockeying behind the scenes right now to avoid being this season’s Cleveland State. May the best person win.

In the meantime, fans must endure another six weeks of this slog, which might just be a precursor.

There will be more promotions from Sacramento and Richmond. And like having toddlers at home, it’s charming and rewarding to watch them grow — as long as you ignore the broken lamps and juice stains on the carpet, which is easier said than done.

And in the meantime, the messengers of the organization will spend that time hyping the team’s much-improved farm system, perhaps the last bit of hope they can sell with this organization.

Because, my goodness, did you see what the Single-A kids did last night?

That shift tells us everything.

Remember: The Giants didn’t restock their farm system at the trade deadline because of some master vision.

They did it because they couldn’t win games in the present, so they traded today for the vague promise of tomorrow.

And maybe it will work and this young, impressive crop of prospects will usher in a new, glorious era of Giants baseball.

Someday.

But never forget that the point of professional baseball is to win games.

Right now, that “tomorrow” looks so very far away.

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©2026 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at mercurynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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