Kurtenbach: Selling Arraez, Ray is easy. Is Buster Posey brave enough to go bigger?

The good news for the San Francisco Giants at this All-Star break is that things can't get much worse.

The bad news is that the 2026 Giants always find a way to dig themselves into a deeper hole.

At 15 games under .500, a playoff berth isn’t just miles away. It’s in a different time zone, pointing back and laughing.

This is a completely lost summer.

Tony Vitello's maiden voyage as a major league manager is a smoldering, uninsurable shipwreck.

Rafael Devers’ first full year playing by the Bay is a high-priced tragicomedy.

And Buster Posey's second year running baseball operations?

Well, how would you describe spending Mercedes money on a rusted-out Oldsmobile?

The question isn't what broke. We don't have enough ink, bandwidth, or liquor to conduct the autopsy this bloated corpse of a season.

The question now is how the Giants can make the most of a bad, no-good situation.

And I'm not talking about some miraculous second-half run. Contrary to the opinion of the theres-a-lotta-season-left folks in the organization, a miracle run in the final 66 games absolute ceiling for this unwatchable slog is clawing back to break-even.

In other words, right back where this team started - a standard we all agreed wasn’t good enough anymore.

No, it’s time to face reality. The August 3 trade deadline is looming, and it demands a sacrifice.

Who can they jettison? Who will take their expensive castoffs?

I won't call this the singular defining moment of Posey's front-office tenure. He's already made plenty of defining messes.

But this is a massive pivot point for the president of baseball operations. It might be the pivot point for the entire organization’s next decade.

Because for nine of the last 10 years, this franchise contently floated in the tepid waters of .500. They presented a facade of competence that actively conflicted with the possibility of being great.

Even their one successful season felt completely illogical. It was a statistical anomaly wrapped in an inexplicable fever dream.

Perhaps this season from hell is just the inverse. Maybe this complete collapse is a hideous one-off.

Or maybe the bill for a decade of aggressively chasing the middle has finally come due. Maybe it's the inevitable byproduct of refusing to pick a lane and being content with simply not being awful.

When you spend 10 years hanging out on the middle rung of a ladder, you convince yourself there's less room to fall.

But you still end up at the bottom.

And the Giants’ rung just violently snapped.

So what can they do? More importantly, what should they do?

I've advocated for a cleansing fire. Burn it down, salt the earth, start over.

I doubt that's going to happen. That would require the powers that be in the organization - Posey’s fellow co-owners - to accept reality.

But there's no excuse not to make aggressive, painful pivots right now.

To Posey’s credit, and detriment, too he hasn’t been afraid to take big swings. Sure he's swung for the fences, spun around twice, and missed the ball entirely.

And yes, he’s been reactionary while failing to properly read the market or to do his full homework.

But you can't argue the man lacks stones. He's got the audacity to make a splash.

Now we find out how much of his own pride he's willing to swallow. Big of a splash are those stones going to make when they drop into the water?

Only now, the bold, sharp moves aren’t to sell the idea that the Giants are a contender, but to admit that they are not and will not be anytime soon.

The easy part is waving goodbye to Luis Arraez and Robbie Ray.

Those are two veterans on expiring deals who should generate better-than-expected markets in a trade environment where there are few sellers but plenty of buyers.

They should bring back strong, positive returns for a farm system that has steadily improved but can always add more talent. Those are the no-brainer trades, with multiple expected avenues to get them done and maximize return.

Even Posey and his crew can’t mess those moves up.

But how much further is Posey willing to go?

How deeply is he willing to gut this Frankenstein’s monster of a roster? Because right now, the Giants are trapped in a nightmare they paid good money - not great, but good - to create.

Does he have the creativity, the sway with the bosses, the clear sense of direction to find buyers (with serious discounts, of course) for Willy Adames, Matt Chapman, and Devers?

Can he sell high on a Jung Hoo Lee, a Casey Schmitt, or even Logan Webb?

Posey is unfirable - he’s part of ownership, he asked for the job and received it without a proper process, and while his reputation has taken a hit lately, he is still a franchise legend and future Hall of Famer.

That’s incredible, despot-level power. He should wield it for the ultimate good: properly building a team not in an effort to rebound in the coming weeks, or even next year, but for the next decade, with hopes the good times kick in a bit earlier.

Some people might call that a rebuild - a word that is verboten at the corner of Third and King.

Whatever you want to call it, it’s the righteous path forward. And Posey might be the man to do it.

Posey didn’t build his legacy as a player by ignoring the scoreboard.

It's time to look at the one hanging over the 2026 season.

The game isn’t just over, it’s rotten.

But is Posey - the man who built this mess - cunning and ruthless enough to clean it up?

We’re about to find out.

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