Kawakami: Fast start is first step for Giants’ revival. Can the winning bring a superstar?

Everything looks vibrant and cohesive. Everybody looks happy. Everyone at Oracle Park the last handful of days has seemed pretty pleased — especially after three walk-off wins during this opening Giants homestand, culminating in Sunday’s victorious comeback from an early 5-0 deficit.

It’s been a good start to the Buster Posey era so far, absolutely, 100%, no doubt.

Now imagine Kyle Tucker added to this group next offseason. Or maybe Kyle Schwarber. Or Luis Robert Jr. acquired at this year’s trade deadline. Wouldn’t that send a jolt of lightning through the Bay Area baseball consciousness and the entire MLB universe?

Well, yes, it would. And yes, that’s exactly the big-picture goal — create a winning atmosphere that makes everybody happy to be here and gets other stars interested in joining the adventure. Win now to set up winning even more in the future. Contend with the Dodgers on the field so you can occasionally beat the Dodgers in the race for superstars in the future.

But first, of course, the Giants just have to continue playing solid baseball. Right now, they’re 9-3, currently just behind the 10-3 Padres and just ahead of the 9-4 Dodgers in the NL West. Their hitters didn’t look so good for long stretches during the just-concluded Reds series, getting shutout on Monday and Tuesday, but they broke out with eight runs in the final five innings on Wednesday. And the pitching has been reliably strong — the Giants have a 2.78 team ERA, currently second best in the league behind the Mets.

That’s about as good as anybody could’ve expected from the Giants and that’s certainly enough to give everybody involved with the Giants a bit of propulsive energy heading into a big road trip starting Friday in Yankee Stadium.

What’s missing is the same thing this franchise has missed since Posey retired after the incredible 2021 season: a centerpiece hitter who can carry the team for stretches and possibly through several postseason rounds.

The Giants have chased a star for many years, going back to the Farhan Zaidi era free-agent pursuits of Bryce Harper, Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, and others. Just last offseason, after Zaidi’s firing, Posey briefly checked in on Juan Soto, though there was no way the Giants were going to come close to the eventual $765 million deal Soto got from the Mets. Posey also made a pitch to pitching sensation Roki Sasaki but lost him to the Dodgers.

None of those players wanted to come to the Giants for various reasons, but it’s not hard to guess the primary one: It’s been hard to envision winning championships here. The Giants weren’t good enough and didn’t feel good enough as the big free agents passed through.

So how can the Giants change this dynamic? Win a lot. Make sure that other teams see them celebrating those wins. Get it all going into the playoffs. And then add the best players they can every offseason.

“I think the obvious answer is … we’ve got to take care of business on the field going forward, right?” Posey told me on my podcast back in January. “I mean, I think you’re in a better position if you go and get in the playoffs, make a deep run in the playoffs — it’s going to be attractive.

“So that’s really where, to me, the focus has to be. Let’s look at ’25, what’s in front of us, and go take care of business on the field then hopefully we’ll be in a good spot.”

Posey started the process last offseason by signing Willy Adames and plopping him into the middle of the infield and the batting order. Adames hasn’t done much so far, but he seems entirely thrilled to be in the middle of this, which will matter when it comes time to try to land other top players. Before that, Posey was instrumental in the long-term deal for Matt Chapman.

Neither one is a superstar. Neither is hitting much right now. But Chapman and Adames are big upgrades from the previous players at those positions, they’ll be in San Francisco for a while, and other players will definitely take note of this. Especially if the Giants keep winning.

The Giants currently rank 15th in team OPS, at .693, just about the same place they’ve been in the past few seasons. They can put together a run of situational hitting and pull out plenty of games when their pitching holds up, but they’ll rarely out-slug teams. Right now, the Padres are eighth with a .761 team OPS and the Dodgers are sixth at .774.

Posey’s team needs somebody who can hit the kind of good pitching the Giants saw most of the Reds series. They need somebody who has a chance against the kind of great pitching the Giants saw from Hunter Greene in the opener.

The Giants’ top non-pitcher in fWAR so far is Jung Hoo Lee, who ranked 37th in the majors at 0.6 going into Thursday’s action. (Logan Webb is the team’s top fWAR player, ranking 21st at 0.7.) The Dodgers have three players in top 33 in fWAR — Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Tommy Edman. The Padres have three in the top 34 — Fernando Tatis Jr., Jackson Merrill, and Manny Machado. The Diamondbacks have Corbin Carroll, who is leading the majors with 1.3 fWAR. And just in case you were curious, the Cubs’ Tucker is No. 2 at 1.2 fWAR.

Maybe the Giants will get a lift from the return of designated hitter Jerar Encarnacion from his broken left hand in a few months, but they’ve already been getting incredible production from Wilmer Flores at that spot. Maybe prospect Bryce Eldridge will be a foundational piece at first base once he’s in the majors, maybe by the end of this season. But the Giants will need more.

Pitching health and depth is always volatile from year to year. Defense is important. Team camaraderie is crucial. But great hitters are the first thing you need to remain at the top of the standings year after year. Great hitting is the only way the Giants can challenge the Dodgers year after year. They did it in 2021 with Posey and Brandon Crawford having their final great seasons, which was the last time the Giants had a higher team OPS than the Dodgers.

Since then, the Dodgers and Padres have kept adding. And the Giants haven’t.

Can they aim for Tucker, who is due to hit free agency this offseason in the middle of his prime? He’s a lofty target — Tucker’s price tag is zooming after Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s new $500 million deal with the Blue Jays. But the Giants have had the money to spend in the past for Harper, Ohtani, and others. They just couldn’t get those guys to take the money.

Or can the Giants put together the kind of prospect package that might pry loose an available star on the trade market and then convince the star to remain long-term, the way the Mets did a few years ago with Francisco Lindor and the Dodgers did with Betts? In the recent past, the Giants didn’t have either the farm system or the winning reputation to pull that off.

We don’t know if they have those things now. But every victory celebration and every big performance by a young player brings the Giants a little closer than they’ve been in more than a little while.