You knew the Giants were going to be sellers. You didn’t know just how committed they were going to be to the sale, though. As it turns out: pretty danged committed. Now this was a trade deadline with some spice. Remember the season you spent months wondering what the Giants were going to do at the deadline, only for them to present you with a single AJ Pollock, like a cat leaving a wounded bird on the doorstep as a gift?You’ve earned this kind of deadline, and with any luck, you’ll still be unpacking this sucker in 2036.Let’s rank the trades, then, if only to show off how there aren’t a lot of wrong answers at the top. It was a deep and varied deadline for an organization that needed exactly that to make up for a miserable season.We will start with the only head-scratcher of the bunch, though.5. Braves get Tyler Mahle, Giants get RHP Anthony MolinaThis was an ominous deal to kick off the deadline. The Giants were in an enviable position at the top of a seller’s market. They were one of the only teams with starting pitching that was guaranteed to move, so teams didn’t have to worry about last-minute surprises or changes of heart. Just hours before the Mahle trade, the Rays gave up a relatively hefty package for another starting pitcher rental, Freddy Peralta. Maybe the Giants were going to do something similar with Mahle.Instead they got a reliever with major-league experience. Most of that experience is bad. Molina’s strikeout rates aren’t impressive, and it’s not because he’s a sinkerballer. He doesn’t have a Baseball Savant-tickling pitch that coaches can dream on — a high-spin curveball, or a fastball with induced vertical break, or a gyro-knuckler or a what-have-you. He is, in almost every sense, Just A Guy. His upside is somewhere between Anthony Molina and a healthy José Buttó.The Giants were excited to add Buttó to the bullpen last season, even though he didn’t have a repertoire that stood out. Since then, the organization’s ability to construct a functional bullpen has been called into question. And how. So it’s hard to match their excitement over another right-hander with a high-walk, low-strikeout, moderate-stuff profile. You’ve seen it before.The deadline improved quite a bit from here, though.4. Padres get Robbie Ray, Giants get RHP Miguel Mendez, INF Joniel HernandezA couple of things can be true at the same time: This was the Giants’ fourth-best trade of the day. This was still a very, very good trade relative to pre-deadline expectations.Rental pitchers are volatile market. It was a different front office, but the Madison Bumgarner stagnation from the 2019 deadline is hard to forget. Sometimes teams just don’t want what you’re selling.Even considering all of that, Ray’s value was more confusing than most. His ERA (3.08) was sparkly, but the underlying metrics (4.42 expected ERA) suggested it’s been a mirage. That’s a pretty big discrepancy, so it was hard to tell if a team would trade for him as a potential Game 3 starter or as an innings sponge to help them crawl over the regular-season finish line.The return suggests a pitcher that was in demand for a lot of different postseason rotations. In exchange for 10 starts of Ray over the next two months, give or take, the Giants got two prospects worth dreaming on. Mendez has spent most of his season in Double A (although he’s rehabbing a shoulder injury in Low A right now), and his arm is unquestionably of major-league quality. The offspeed pitches need work, but it’s a fastball that should flummox hitters for a long time:If he stays healthy, it’s hard to see how Mendez doesn’t at least make a Giants bullpen one of these years.Hernandez might be the most fascinating addition of the entire deadline, a both-cheeks swing of an acquisition that might take the better part of a decade to connect. If it doesn’t work out, it’ll remind you of every other teenager-for-veteran trade you’ve already forgotten. If it works out, though, the Giants will benefit from the karmic redistribution that the Padres have had coming to them since they acquired Fernando Tatís Jr. for James Shields. It’s like how Bryan Reynolds was the actual player to be named later in the Javier López trade, if you’re thinking on more of a cosmic timeline.Hernandez was signed for $1.4 million out of Cuba this January, the prize of the Padres’ international class. The odds are against him, just like they’re against every prospect who can’t legally vote, but it’s hard not to love the quick hands and raw tools:Now remember that this haul began with Mitch Haniger and Anthony DeSclafani signing multi-year contracts. And you thought that those deals wouldn’t work out. Silly baseball fan.