What’s next for Giants after dealing Slater?

This story was excerpted from Maria Guardado’s Giants Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Trade Deadline is less than three weeks away on July 30, but a roster shakeup is already underway for the Giants.

The Giants cut ties with two veterans this week, trading outfielder Austin Slater, the team’s longest-tenured player, to the Reds on Sunday and designating shortstop Nick Ahmed for assignment on Tuesday.

President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said he viewed the moves as “a vote of confidence” in younger players such as Luis Matos, Brett Wisely and Tyler Fitzgerald, each of whom is poised to take on a bigger role with Slater and Ahmed no longer in the mix.

Zaidi drove to Oracle Park on Sunday night to personally break the news to Slater, San Francisco's 2014 eighth-round Draft pick who emerged as a valuable platoon bat over his eight seasons with the Giants. Slater has batted .275 with an .804 OPS in 756 career at-bats against left-handed pitching. But he struggled after coming back from offseason surgery on his right elbow, and he hit .200 with a .574 OPS over 43 games this year.

“Just a consummate pro in terms of a guy who had a pretty specialized role with us and did it really well,” Zaidi said. “He was one of the best in baseball, I think, at the role he had for us. All these guys at this level want to be everyday players and want to get that chance to prove themselves. Hopefully he gets that chance in Cincinnati.”

The 22-year-old Matos is expected to replace Slater as Mike Yastrzemski's right-handed-hitting platoon partner in right field. Wisely, 25, and Fitzgerald, 26, will split time at shortstop in place of Ahmed, a two-time Gold Glove Award winner (2018 and '19 with the D-backs) who won the starting job out of Spring Training but batted only .232 with a .581 OPS over 52 games with San Francisco.

The Giants hope the injection of youth will improve their athleticism and ultimately help boost their playoff chances down the stretch. They entered Wednesday two games under .500 (45-47) -- “a real source of dissatisfaction,” Zaidi said -- but they remain only 2 1/2 games back of the final National League Wild Card spot. They could be primed for a big second half now that their battered rotation is finally getting healthy.

Blake Snell delivered his best start of the season after returning from the 15-day injured list (left groin strain) on Tuesday, and the Giants are expecting to get Robbie Ray (Tommy John surgery recovery) and Alex Cobb (left hip surgery recovery) back from the 60-day IL shortly after the All-Star break. The pitching reinforcements should address San Francisco’s most glaring deficiency and potentially lessen the need for the club to pursue significant upgrades on the trade market.

“We feel like you go around our team and we have guys at every spot that we feel good about,” Zaidi said. “Our rotation, which has probably been the biggest issue for us, we've got a slew of guys coming back. When you think about having Blake and Robbie Ray and Cobb back, we might not even have enough spots for everybody who's pitching well for us. We might need to think about how we're going to sort through all of that. But right now, I think we made a couple changes. We're playing well. Like every team that's in the race as you get into July, you start thinking about those things, but no specific thoughts on needs or what we might pursue right now.

“We have some positive momentum going on,” Zaidi added. “We’ve got to find a way to get better. Turning to some of these internal options, these young players that we think can continue to inject this team with energy and help us -- I think it's a fair statement to say that giving them as much of an opportunity in these last few weeks before the Deadline will help inform what we do.”