It’s going to be an interesting next few days for the San Francisco Giants as the front office figures out what direction they want to take the franchise ahead of the upcoming trade deadline.
Based on their record, they should probably become sellers considering they are six games under .500 and 5.5 back from the final Wild Card spot entering Friday’s contest.
However, with their president of baseball operations reportedly on the hot seat if this group doesn’t get into the playoffs based on how much money was spent this offseason, that could prevent the Giants from shipping out assets.
The hope is their new-look rotation will provide the needed boost for them to make a push late in the year, especially with Blake Snell looking like his two-time Cy Young-winning self and Robbie Ray being fabulous in his team debut.
There is some expectation that San Francisco will play out the remainder of the season and hold onto the star left-hander despite him generating some trade interest.
Whether that comes to fruition will be seen.
In the meantime, though, the Giants were dealt a blow to their rotation as Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area reports their young starter Keaton Winn will undergo elbow surgery next week that will sideline him for the rest of the year.
His elbow has reportedly been “bothering him for two seasons,” so this will allow him to get the issue fixed and come back to the mound feeling 100 percent whenever that might be.
Winn was selected by San Francisco in the fifth round of the 2018 draft. He showed well during his first two years of professional baseball, posting a 3.70 ERA across his 41 outings and 25 starts.
Unfortunately, he didn’t pitch again until 2022 after COVID canceled the 2020 minor league season and he underwent Tommy John surgery in 2021.
Still, Winn kept climbing his way up the ranks until he made his Major League debut last summer.
He was expected to be a major part of this rotation going forward but will now be missing another chunk of time in his career. There has been no timetable announced for when he might be back on the field, so hopefully he can make a quick recovery and be ready for the start of 2025.
