Get ready for the second half of San Francisco Giants baseball. Note the lack of an exclamation point.This isn’t a threat, but it’s not not a threat. The idea makes you more than a little uncomfortable. A second … half? Another stretch of Giants baseball nearly as long as that one? Let me get my affairs in order.And yet, I regret to inform you that it’s possible for the Giants to entertain you in the second half. They’re not going to bolt back into contention, but they could certainly win enough games where you get mad at them for not doing the same thing in the first half. At least two recent seasons had the reverse order, with a strong first half coming before a disastrous second, sequences that led to both Gabe Kapler and Bob Melvin being dismissed. It would be more than a little funny (and entertaining) for a second-half charge to save some jobs.Let us assume that they do not go on a second-half charge, however. Let us assume that the wins do not fall from the sky and rouse a sleepy team back into the national conversation. That would be just as bad as the first half, right?Not necessarily. There are ways for the 2026 Giants to get you excited about the 2027 season, and they’re not far-fetched. Start with the most obvious.Winning the trade deadlineIf you’re cynical, take a lap. The Giants won last year’s trade deadline even if you look only at the players already in the majors. Drew Gilbert and Jesús Rodríguez may never be everyday players, but they look like major leaguers of some variety, and they most certainly could be everyday players.They also won the 2025 deadline if you only look at the players in the minors, like Parks Harber and Yunior Marte. (Trades in June don’t count. That’s not the trade deadline. Stop yelling at me.)Heck, they even won the 2024 deadline somehow, even though all they did was add Mark Canha for some reason, while trading Jorge Soler and Alex Cobb. That’s an odd mashup of moves, but they still got Sabin Ceballos (Soler trade), a streaky-but-promising third baseman, and Jacob Bresnahan (Cobb), who might be their best left-handed pitching prospect. Eric Silva isn’t even embarrassing them this season in the Tigers’ system over the Canha trade.The Giants will almost certainly trade Luis Arraez, almost as much to solve the Casey Schmitt/Matt Chapman logjam as to get premium prospects, but the prospects shouldn’t be shabby, either. They have space under the luxury tax to send cash with Arraez and get better prospects, although that might be more of a strategy with Robbie Ray. And they should have leverage if they wanted to trade Heliot Ramos while he’s still underpaid, especially in a trade market hungry for outfielders.Either way, the goal here — when it comes to enjoying next season, at least — is to acquire a player compelling enough to make you just a little more excited for 2027, whether he heads to San Francisco right away or goes to Sacramento ahead of a potential September callup. Maybe there are players, plural. Maybe they rebuild their entire rotation and bullpen with a series of trades, and future generations will tell tales of this deadline.