Giants' youth influx reminds Baer of dynastic championship core
The Giants are playing some of their most exciting baseball since 2021, thanks largely in part to a youth movement years in the making.
That second part might sound familiar to San Francisco fans who watched their favorite team capture three World Series titles last decade -- and Larry Baer also sees the similarities between the team’s current influx of young talent and the one that led to a dynasty.
The Giants CEO appeared on “The TK Show” this week, where he told The Athletic’s Tim Kawakami how the ascension of young stars like Patrick Bailey and Casey Schmitt this season remind him of when Bay Area legends such as Buster Posey, Madison Bumgarner, Tim Lincecum and Brandon Crawford, to name a few, began making waves in the big leagues.
What followed, of course, was magic – and a trio of championship trophies.
“First of all, it’s very hard to wave a magic wand, right? You’ve got players coming through, and you don’t know, and you make bets on free agents,” Baer told Kawakami. “... [It’s] kind of, you know it when you see it … If you go back to those days of the three championships, it was a crop that came basically in the same relative time frame, ‘08, ‘09 … It kind of feels that way now, frankly.”
Schmitt burst onto the scene May 9 at Oracle Park, and the rookie shortstop homered in his second at-bat. The Giants are six games above .500 since then and only have improved since, especially with the arrival of catcher Bailey.
In just his second start, Bailey hit his first MLB home run, helping jumpstart a San Francisco tear where the team has posted a 14-9 record since his May 19 debut. Along with other rookies, including reliever Ryan Walker and outfielder/catcher Blake Sabol, the future is bright.
And, Baer noted, there’s more to come, with red-hot outfielder Luis Matos and top pitching prospect Kyle Harrison making waves in Triple-A. Carson Whisenhunt, a left-hander the Giants took No. 66 overall in the 2022 MLB Draft, recently dazzled in his Double-A debut, too.
“... I just think that Farhan and the group have presented sort of a snapshot of where we’re going, which is encouraging,” Baer told Kawakami. “Very encouraging for the fans and hopeful, and we’ve seen the fans respond.
“They really like the young players, and certainly through the years we’ve also shown an inclination to replenish and support the younger player movement with more veteran players that have track records that can combine with the youth.”
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The Giants failed this past offseason to sign promised big names, but perhaps the resulting opportunities for the organization’s young players turned out to be the breath of fresh air San Francisco needed after a paltry 2022.
Because as history has shown, it’s a formula that works.
“You put all that together, and you’ve got a core that kind of feels like it felt back in that era that we were talking about, back when there were championships,” Baer said.
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