SAN FRANCISCO – Larry Baer will not ride down Market Street and pick paper confetti out of his hair this year.

Not too deeply into this disappointing season, the Giants’ CEO knew along with everyone else that his team would not contend despite a payroll that ranks in the top five among major league clubs.

A team expected to win 90-plus games instead must win five of its last 11 to avoid becoming the second in franchise history to lose 100. When teams fail in spectacular fashion, major changes often follow. When those teams fail in the face of high expectations, those changes are often made at a wholesale level.

The confetti falls on just one team every season. Now it’s the Giants’ turn to pick up a broom.

Baer reflects on a season that went sideways, the end of the sellout streak, the Giants’ strategy in the short to medium turn and his level of confidence in his longtime baseball architects:

Q: The narrative that seems to be solidifying among the front office, coaches and players is that your fortunes in 2018 will largely rest on your core guys turning it around. Is that the way you would characterize it?

A: Yeah, in part that, but I also think if you really look at our season, being a pitching intensive team, and we’ve put a lot of resources and trust in the pitching, a third of our core pitching was really upside down this year. Right? You’ve got Bumgarner, Cueto, Melancon and Will Smith. That’s four out of 12. And so I think you’ve got to look at it that way, too.

Now, I’m not naïve to think that given the record we have this year, you’ll blink your eyes and it turns around immediately. On the other end, don’t end the sentence there, because I was talking to Matt Williams, and he’s talking about how last year, Arizona was a 90-loss team. They’re going to be the mirror reverse of what they were last year and they didn’t change their personnel much. They had a few tweaks here and there, but not a ton of changes. Matt was saying that everything that could go wrong for the Giants this year went wrong, just like it did for the Diamondbacks in 2016. This year it fell into place for them, and Greinke was good and Pollock didn’t get hurt the day before the season, and blah blah blah.

Anyway, I’m not proclaiming that’s what is going to happen, but I am saying that we believe with the talent level, we can get back. Now, we will do things and what we do will be product of organizational meetings and analysis – you know, who we put on the team and who we move and all that. The core guys, obviously, we do have to get better performances out of the core guys. But I mean, the pitching, if you put an emphasis on pitching as we have, and a third of your pitching was unavailable this year, that’s … I mean, that means something. And people tend to forget about Will Smith because he wasn’t around all year. But we traded for him and counted on him and he’s a big part of who we are and who we will be. He wasn’t there this year and that exposed our young lefties.

Q: Let’s talk about how you view the Competitive Balance Tax. You crossed the actual payroll threshold ($195 million) for the third consecutive year in 2017. Knowing the penalties go up for repeat offenders, and you already have more than $150 million committed to players, are you looking at the 2018 CBT threshold of $197 million as a hard salary cap for next season?

A: No. It’s not going to be a hard cap. But it is something that has implications that go way beyond having to write a check. For instance, when you lose a player to free agency, for a CBT team, the compensation is a fourth-round pick. If you’re not a CBT team, it’s a sandwich pick. That’s a big difference. Your international slot money is less if you’re a CBT team. I mean, there are just a lot of differences. Your revenue sharing components change if you’re a CBT team. And this is all in addition to the fines. And the whole thing is, we’ve been in the CBT for three years. Being in the CBT doesn’t assure you of anything. It doesn’t assure you’ll win more games.

We’ve had an unusual window here to evaluate the team and the players and begin the planning for next year, and we’ll talk about those things in the press conference after the season in two weeks. But in general, what we’re doing is a commitment to winning and the baseball execs are very focused on putting together the plan to do that — understanding what we have, what we don’t have, and go from there.

Q: With potentially three playoff teams coming out of the NL West this season, to what extent is it realistic that you can compete in the short term?

A: That’s what we’re going to evaluate and determine at the end of the season. But as we’ve said, last year, we were in the playoffs and the Arizona Diamondbacks lost 93 games. So we’re not freaked out by the fact that three teams in the division are going to the playoffs. If Arizona felt that way last year, they would have done things differently. The whole point is, our baseball people will do their evaluations and they’ll get back with what the evaluation is: with our pitching and with what we have, can we get right back in it and be a contender next year, with Bumgarner, Cueto, Melancon and Smith for a full year? But I’m not going to make any proclamations about that. I want to be clear about that. I’m not going to say we can definitely do it. I’m going to go on what the baseball people say is their evaluation after two months of taking a hard look at it, knowing we weren’t going to be a contender this year.

Q: The sellout streak has ended but the ballpark is mostly full most nights and crowds remain engaged when the team performs well. Do you envision a more challenging offseason in terms of renewals, etc.? And if you’re operating at less than full capacity in the future, or you forecast a dip in revenue on the baseball side, at what level do you believe the franchise can operate in terms of payroll?

A: It’s a fair question. Everything we’ve sensed so far, whether expressed in season tickets or sponsorships, we’re talking about very marginal decreases. We think from a revenue standpoint we’ll be pretty much as whole as we’ve been in the past. We just don’t see the drop off. Fans are hanging in there. We have 31,500 season-ticket holders and our initial soundings are they’re coming back. The sponsors are strong and loyal and they’ve had so much success and good results. So we don’t feel that it’s material, nor would it materially affect our decisions.

Q: And then you have the Mission Rock project, which in the longer term, could be the ballast in your boat, so to speak.

A: Yeah. So it’s strong. I mean, if we had five years in a row like this … but people understand we’ve been able to withstand the cycles and bounce back. If you take a look at 25 years of the ownership or even the last 10 years, we’ve bounced back. If you look at some really bad years, the two that come to mind are 1996 and 2008, we bounced back well after both of those. You can say that was a long time ago, but frankly, you’re talking about the same people here: it’s Brian Sabean, Bobby Evans, Jeremy Shelley, Dick Tidrow. In ’08 it was Bochy, and in ’96 it was Dusty. Same guys bounced back. So I think all of that is relevant.

Q: Leading into that, it’s been two years since the team shuffled the deck in the front office with Bobby Evans overseeing day-to-day operations as GM. Since then, three of the four halves of a season have been markedly unsuccessful. What is your evaluation of how that restructuring has gone, and does it need to change at all? Do you need to look at Brian Sabean doing more of his former duties?

A: I think we’re fine. Well, we’re obviously not fine with how the performance went this year. But I don’t think it’s a commentary on the structure, because a lot of the biggest issues have been either injuries or decisions about putting guys on the team that preceded the restructuring. So I don’t view it as a commentary on the structure. And look, we’re pretty collaborative. When you sit in the trade deadline room, even though Bobby’s the one that is day to day, Brian is there and Dick Tidrow and Jeremy Shelley, John Barr on the draft. So it’s all the same people, really. These are the same people that brought you the championships. It’s just that one is on more of a 24/7 clock than before. These are the same people. We didn’t bring in a new GM from the outside, we didn’t bring in a new manager from the outside, we didn’t bring in a new player personnel person from the outside. These are the same people that brought you a championship.

Q: Does that same sentiment and level of confidence apply to Bruce Bochy and the coaching staff?

A: If you’re talking about what’s the plan for next year, that is something Brian and Bobby will have to address after the season. Absolutely, Bruce Bochy will return. The coaching decisions haven’t been made. They will be made collaboratively after the season.

Q: You’re currently hiring a baseball analyst, and while you don’t trumpet it, there are several things that your front office does from an analytical standpoint to inform your player personnel decisions. Are you still looking to improve in that area? Do you feel like you’re a step behind in terms of statistical modeling?

A: We’re behind, but we feel we’re always advancing and this year we’re going to continue to advance more. You’re right, under the radar we’ve done a lot of it. But we’ll be expanding. We’re toward the top in what we do and how we do it. To stay at the top, you’ve got to keep expanding. There’s so much more at your fingertips now and opportunities to utilize it, so we’re going to expand.

Q: Madison Bumgarner is without question your most valuable asset in terms of talent, club control and contract obligations with two $12 million club options remaining. Is there any scenario that you could see ownership signing off on trading Bumgarner as part of a system reboot?

A: I don’t see it. I’ll just say … I cannot envision it.

Q: What is the temperature among ownership after such a disappointing season with such a high payroll Have executive committee meetings been lively?

A: I’d say the temperature, and I’m reflective of the temperature, is that we feel good about the future of the franchise. We feel good that we’ll be able to bounce back. We feel like this has been a frustrating and disappointing year but we’ve got a lot of resolve and just as we’ve done in ’11 or ’13 or 15 after losing seasons, or ’96 and ’08 after really losing seasons, I mean, we’ve been doing this 25 years. So everybody’s fine and everybody is resolved to get the team back to where we want it to be.

Q: Do you sense that Giants fans are more or less understanding of the current struggles after three World Series championships?

A: I detect zero fan confusion about the commitment. We can talk about execution, we can talk about the play, we can talk about injuries, we can talk about a lot of things, but I don’t think people are confused. I mean, we’ve got the fourth highest payroll in baseball – fourth or fifth depending on how you move it around. We’re throwing everything at it.

Q: How does the ballpark being paid off, and no longer paying $17 million in annual debt service, affect your strategic decisions?

A: We’re essentially using those same resources to work on the Mission Rock project. The annual obligation is basically the same, or how I think about it. That’s very important for us. It’s not just a nice real estate development. It’s the front door to our ballpark, or back door depending on how you look at it. It’s super important that the neighborhood in which we exist is high quality.

Q: When will shovels be in the ground to transform Lot A?

A: We hope to start construction in the first part of 2019. This is a phased project, and that would be phase one. There will be a public park in phase one, for pre- and post-game picnicking. There will be restaurants around it. There will be residential in the first phase, and some office space. And you know, residential is sorely needed in the city, and 40 percent of ours is affordable. Without getting into the weeds, it’s subsidized through an exact formula that we have to comply with in terms of what the rents can be, tied to income. I mean, public school teachers are living 2 ½ hours out of town, going to and from. It’s crazy. We’re really proud of what we’re doing, and the city needs it dramatically.