There’s only one question to ask when it comes to the Giants’ role in the Bryce Harper free agency saga: Are they players, or are they being played?

Either way, it doesn’t look good on the organization.

The Giants — led by new president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi and CEO Larry Baer — have made two house calls to Harper in Las Vegas this month. The Giants are now unquestionably part of this incessant and to-this-point futile saga to find baseball’s most marketable star a place to actually play baseball in 2019, joining a cast that features the late-arriving Los Angeles Dodgers and fading long-time favorites, the Philadelphia Phillies.

Following the first meeting with Harper, I wrote that something was off about the team’s interest.

But now that the Giants are officially involved, I’m able to put my finger on that lingering scent that arrives anytime San Francisco is linked to Harper — it’s desperation.

Scott Boras, Harper’s agent, might be using that desperation to drive the price up for the Dodgers. He’s certainly played unsuspecting teams like that before.

That’s the best-case scenario.

Because if the Giants are a legitimate part of the mix to land Harper, that’s a problem. Such a pursuit would be completely incongruent with the vision Zaidi laid out when he was hired — one that valued rational, methodical decisions and prudent spending.

Don’t get me wrong, despite being a longtime member of Billy Beane’s Oakland front office, Zaidi isn’t immune to spending money — the Dodgers certainly tossed cash around in his four years there as general manager.

But there’s a reason Harper is still a free agent. Guys like Zaidi have taken over baseball, and they know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that 10-year, $350-million contracts — the kind the Giants, Phillies, and possibly Dodgers are reportedly discussing with Harper — is bad business for teams.

Guys like Zaidi also know that you cannot buy your way out of the kind of long-term problems the Giants have. San Francisco has a bottom-five farm system and a rapidly declining core that’s won only 137 out of their last 324 games. Harper won’t fix the former and, as excellent as he might be, one outfielder is unlikely to make much of a dent on the latter problem.

Don’t forget: The Giants tried to spend their way back to the World Series after 2015, back into the NLCS in 2016 season and then back into the playoffs following 2017. How’d that work out?

The Giants are currently wearing a half-dozen albatross contracts around their necks. The worst? Probably Evan Longoria and his 89 OPS-Plus — he’s owed $67.5 million over the next four years. But hey, the Giants won nine more games last year!

There’s also the $63 million over the next three years to 33-year-old starter Johnny Cueto, the nearly $40 million over the next two years to 34-year-old starter Jeff Samardzija, and a cool $38 million to 33-year-old reliever Mark Melancon.

Oh, and Brandon Crawford — the 32-year-old shortstop with a 92 OPS-plus the past two years — is owed $45.5 million over the next three seasons, and Brandon Belt is being paid roughly a $1 million for every home run he hits (he’s owed $17.2 million for the next three years).

Those contracts rightfully cost Bobby Evans his GM job and led to a modern-day, Moneyball-with-cash thinker, Zaidi, being handed the keys to the organization.

But now, only a few months into Zaidi’s tenure, the Giants want to add another albatross?

Harper might be 26-years-old — about as young as you can be as a big-time free agent — but decline is inevitable, and with a decade-long deal, you’re locking in prime prices for what in all likelihood will be past-prime performance.

San Francisco should be trying to get off bad money, replacing those costly but ineffective players with cheap equivalents, and rebuilding the farm system in the process. Once the base is set, you spend money to augment. That’s how the last four World Series champions have done it.

The Giants aren’t even close to getting to a base, so Harper isn’t part of the formula — not yet, anyway.

So the only way a signing him makes any sense for the Giants is if ownership is in a state of panic in an effort to keep up with the Joneses, both in their division (the Padres and Rockies just handed out $250-plus million contracts for star players, with the Dodgers poised to do the same for Harper), and in their backyard.

Back-to-back bad seasons have no doubt cut into the Giants’ bottom line — there are legitimate questions if the Giants will be able to draw three million fans in 2019 — and with the Warriors moving to Mission Bay in the fall, the orange-and-black stranglehold on The City is coming to an end.

Signing a star like Harper will make the Giants relevant locally, regionally, and nationally once again — there’s no doubt about that — and he’ll certainly put some butts in the seats.

But how long will that last?

A few months? A year? Two years, if the Giants are lucky?

And then where will the team be? Probably in the same spot it’s in now — eschewing methodology for another get-rich-quick scheme. Only then, they’ll probably have to spend more of that nearly half a billion in revenue they bring in every year.

Splashy free agent signings might garner buzz, but winning games is the only thing that really matters when it comes to relevance and attendance. Adding a star outfielder won’t change the Giants’ fortunes when it comes to winning — this isn’t the NBA.

Luckily for San Francisco, there’s a formula for winning in this era of Major League Baseball and Zaidi knows it.

But ownership should let the man they hired to change the way the team does business actually change the way it does business. Because as much as this is his team, I highly doubt his plan includes giving out 10-year contracts.

And if ownership isn’t on board with that plan — if they’d rather duct-tape over the problem than actually do the difficult task of properly rebuilding — then the Giants’ fate is probably sealed.