SAN FRANCISCO — The Giants are a team still searching for an identity at the All-Star break. They are relying on their young players. Except when they aren’t.
They have a deep well of pitching depth. Except for all those weeks when they’ve scrambled to cover innings. They took on more than $400 million in salary commitments prior to Opening Day while acquiring Blake Snell, Matt Chapman, Jorge Soler, Jordan Hicks, Robbie Ray and Jung Hoo Lee, punting a pair of draft picks and dipping past the luxury tax threshold in the process, while attempting to patch every conceivable leak on their roster.
Advertisement Except the leaks remain. Water-resistant teams do not spend a mere four days in four months above .500.
No, the Giants cannot identify as a winning team at the break. But they cannot identify as a losing team, either. They’ve never submerged deeper than six games under .
500 and they’ve created buoyancy at times when the undertow appeared the strongest. As a result, they remain viable contenders in a National League wild-card race that resembles a tangle of handlebars in a downhill stage. There aren’t many coherent takeaways when it comes to the Giants’ first-half identity.
Even many within the clubhouse remain unsure about what kind of team the Giants are supposed to be. So for now, perhaps the more productive exercise is to rule out what they are not: They are not a pitching and defense team Not every year can be like 2012, when the Giants used five starting .