SF Giants: Recent Success Won’t Affect a Madison Bumgarner Trade

The SF Giants are suddenly in the Wild Card race and there has been speculation about if the club will be buyers, but their plans will remain the same meaning they will still be in sell mode.

When the SF Giants entered the season, the conversation was about the destination of Madison Bumgarner on August 1, but today it is entirely different.

The Giants have won the last 12 of 16 games and have crept up on the leaders in the National League Wild Card race as they are just 3 games back of Philadelphia.

But Farhan Zaidi needs to face reality. They were never going to be a contender in Bruce Bochy‘s last season, and that still holds true.

More from Call to the Pen

• Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
• Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
• Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
• Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
• 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals

There are 8 teams within 3.5 games of the Wild Card, and every one of those teams has a better team than the Giants.

The Giants have the third-worst run differential in the National League and despite the recent surge are still 3 games under .500.

ESPN’s Jeff Passan wrote in his latest piece that the Giants won’t be making a decision based off of late success. “San Francisco’s recent success isn’t throwing a wrench in the team’s trade-Bumgarner-and-all-the-relievers plan,” Passan said.

Although President of Baseball Operations Farhan Zaidi is taking a never say never approach to the situation, I am sure he is not going to drive off course just because the team has won a dozen games in the last 16.

Madison Bumgarner will be traded, and it is just a matter of where he will be traded. He is the biggest trade piece in the league ahead of the deadline, and he will bring back major league ready players and high upside prospects that will be ready in the near future.

The Atlanta Braves have a ton of prospects and young arms who are already in the big leagues and teams like the Yankees and Astros are hungry to get a coveted postseason legend like Bumgarner. Those two teams will trade top prospects for him so the Giants should take advantage of it.

The SF Giants will realize that this team is acting like a contender, but is really a pretender.

This story was written before the Giants' game on 7/17 vs the Rockies.