Picture the Giants’ offseason as a gigantic chessboard, with each possible move representing a direction the team can take. There’s a move that gets Mike Gerber into the system, and there’s also a move that gets Bryce Harper into right field. Move your bishop deftly enough, and you can swing a deal to get two top-50 prospects for Madison Bumgarner. A standard chessboard means there are 10120 possible moves, give or take. Nearly infinite, for all practical purposes.



None of those permutations are going to make you absolutely certain the 2019 Giants are a 90-win team. None of them will give the Giants a farm system in the top half of baseball.



The biggest problem, though, is that this isn’t quite a traditional chessboard. On one side, there are rooks and pawns, bishops and knights. But on the Giants’ side, they have:



One (1) thimble from a Monopoly set



Three (3) twist-ties



Seventeen (17) pill bugs, and,...