Remember when the Giants were the team every other front office was trying to figure out how to copy? Three rings in five years, a manager who could do no wrong, a roster full of guys who somehow always came up in October. That version of the franchise is gone, and what's been left behind is starting to look less like a contender in a slump and more like a cap sheet nobody wants to inherit.
Carrabis put the fall from grace in the bluntest possible terms.
The San Francisco Giants went from being an undeniable dynasty to now being one of the least enviable rosters in the game. https://t.co/LVvxAoqGFk
That's a brutal sentence to read if you're a Giants fan, but it's hard to argue with. The pivot from "undeniable dynasty" to "one of the least enviable rosters in the game" is the kind of thing you usually only say about the Rockies or a tanking AL Central club. San Francisco isn't supposed to be in that bucket. They're a big-market team in one of the prettiest ballparks in baseball with a fanbase that expects to be in the mix every October.
The deeper problem isn't even the on-field product — it's that there's no easy reset button. When you've spent years handing out money trying to recapture the magic, you wake up one day with a payroll full of guys you can't trade and contracts no rival GM is touching with a 10-foot pole.
Carrabis pinpointed the part that should really scare Giants fans.
The Giants have about a billion dollars worth of shit contracts that they’d love to get rid of. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s going to be very possible.
And that's the trap. Bad rosters can be rebuilt. Bad rosters that are also financially handcuffed for the next several years? Those take a different kind of patience — the kind fanbases generally don't have. The dynasty banners aren't going anywhere, but the runway to add to them looks longer than anyone in the Bay would like to admit.