Deadline day doldrums

It's trade deadline day in the major leagues -- the last day of the season on which teams can make trades without having to pass players through waivers first, giving every other team in the majors the chance to block a deal.

For a team as badly in need of total teardown-and-rebuild as my frankly pathetic San Francisco Giants (teams in the major leagues with a worse record = 3; runs scored in the last 23 innings played = 0), the priorities should be obvious: trade whatever role-playing veterans will fetch so much as a bag of batting practice balls in return, and play the kids the rest of the year so that you know what you've got already on your roster before contemplating trades or free agent signings over the winter.

Of course, said priorities assume the collective management of said team has any common sense whatsoever left. Not this group. They're still talking about "competing" next year (for what, "Fastest Exit From The Playoffs Ever"?), still touting can't-hit, can't-field Pirates castoff Jose Castillo as a keeper, and still bad-mouthing their own young players who've never had a genuine chance to prove themselves as major leaguers (see: Dan Ortmeier, Nate Schierholtz, Emmanuel Burriss, etc., etc.).

I've been a fan of this franchise for 40 years and this is the most brain-dead, incompetent front office I have ever witnessed. The 1985 team that lost 100 games was more fun to watch than this one -- at least you had a sense that crew knew they were bad and were trying to get better. This ship just looks completely lost.