San Francisco Giants: Is it time to reconsider being sellers at the deadline?

The San Francisco Giants are playing their best baseball as of late and now sit just 5.5 games out of the final wild card spot. Should this affect their strategy come the trade deadline?

The San Francisco Giants have seemingly awoken from a season-long slumber and have played some of their best baseball of the season over the past few days.

The offense has exploded for a whopping 40 runs over their past four games while the pitching has, for the most part, held it’s own.

San Francisco has been backed by a top-tier bullpen that’s among the best in the league while the starters have done their part to keep the team in games.

Altogether, this looks like an incredibly different ballclub than we have seen for the majority of this season. While the plan all along has been to sell at the trade deadline, could this recent hot stretch alter the Giants plans?

Now, this seems like a crazy, spur-of-the-moment conclusion to come to. After all, the Giants have won just four games in a row and prior to that, the team had lost five of their last seven contests.

But it’s not just the fact that they’re winning — it’s the way they’ve been winning.

The Giants outfield in 2019 has been a revolving door of waiver claims and Triple-A call-ups, but their recent crop of outfielders could yield more solutions than previous attempts.

Since being recalled from Sacramento on June 21st, outfielder Alex Dickerson has been tearing it up at the plate. The 29-year-old was designated for assignment by the San Diego Padres back in early June and he was able to get some revenge against his former team over the past few days.

Dickerson is slashing .353/.436/.706 in 12 games since joining San Francisco and his 12 RBI total is one of the highest marks for the team over that timespan. While it’s still too early to jump to any conclusions, it’s been nice to see Dickerson make the most of his opportunity.

The same could be said for both Mike Yastrzemski and Austin Slater who have both impressed in limited action thus far.

Again, we’ve seen this before with the Giants. A Triple-A standout gets called up and rakes at the plate for a month or two only to fall off a cliff and never be heard from again.

Hello Mac Williamson.

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But in this case, we’re talking about three players — each with varying degrees of playing time —each impressing thus far. Perhaps they all eventually fall off, but the Giants will likely ride the wave as long as they can.

And they’ll continue to do the same with their bullpen that remains one of the best in the MLB. Will Smith has been absolutely dominant as a closer converting on all 22 of his save opportunities and hosting a stellar 2.16 ERA to go along with a 0.810 WHIP.

He has been flanked by the trio of Reyes Moronta, Sam Dyson, and Tony Watson who each have ERA’s of under 3.00, at the time of writing. The starting rotation has been headed by Madison Bumgarner, Jeff Samardzija, and Shaun Anderson who have each put together strong outings as of late.

And even when Anderson failed to make it out of the fifth inning on Wednesday night, the rest of the team was there to bail him out.

Now, the Giants are still just 39-47 so it’s important not to get ahead of ourselves here. But in a top-heavy National League, San Francisco suddenly finds themselves just 5.5 games back of the second wild card spot.

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With the Chicago Cubs continuing to struggle — having lost seven of their last 10 games — could the Giants conceivably make a run at the postseason?

Realistically speaking, it’s highly unlikely.

Even the worst of teams find themselves on momentary hot streaks from time to time. Towards the end of June, the Miami Marlins rattled off four straight victories. And even the Baltimore Orioles won four straight in the very beginning of the season.

The point is that winning streaks come and go.

Now, if the Giants could continue their hot stretch well into July and climb the standings even further, then we could begin to talk about whether this team should really be sellers at the deadline. But for now, plans should remain unchanged.

The San Francisco Giants should still plan on selling whatever pieces they can come the end of July as the deadline approaches. Their recent hot stretch is fun, but it’s nothing groundbreaking just yet.

Let’s not be victims of the moment. Instead, let’s just enjoy the moment.