Is it OK to believe in the San Francisco Giants this year?

Is it too much to ask, too much to expect, too much to project that the black and orange can be the second-best team in the National League West?

Is it too bold to suspect that the left side of the field — third base Matt Chapman, shortstop Willy Adames, and left fielder Heliot Ramos — can make the All-Star Game? Too brash to believe that the top three in the rotation can go toe-to-toe with anyone in the show? Too saucy to think that the bullpen can be one of baseball’s best?

Is it merely wishful thinking to believe that this is the season the Giants — who have posted one winning campaign in the last eight years — can win just a few more than they lose over 162 games?

I’m not asking for 2025 to be the Giants’ year. But amid the dulcet daydreams that arrive with daylight saving time — hope springing eternal and all that — I am wondering if this upcoming season can be a year worth remembering for San Francisco. We haven’t experienced too many of those lately.

The Drive for 85 (wins) starts Thursday in Cincinnati.

We might not be able to watch every spring training game, but I have seen enough to see the path to the playoffs in those contests bestowed upon our cable subscriptions. Going into the weekend, the Giants led Major League Baseball in hits in spring training. The team’s starting rotation looks six deep, with a top three of Logan Webb, Robbie Ray (dominant in four spring starts) and Justin Verlander (1.69 ERA in four stars) leading the way. The bullpen — elite last year — looks even better in the Arizona sunlight.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this is a good team. With more than a half dozen All-Star-caliber players but no true superstars and a marginal distance to go to be in playoff contention, the Giants might be the ideal candidate to surprise baseball with a better-than-expected win total this season.

I pride myself on cutting through spin and telling it like it is.

But here I am, hyping up the San Francisco Giants. This column could age worse than tuna salad left on the counter.

These daydreams of quality might just be delusions.

Or maybe I’m just hoping that in this overly quantified sport, there’s still some value in the ephemeral and that new director of baseball operations Buster Posey — he of the famed title-winning Buster Magic as a Hall of Fame-caliber player — can bring it to this otherwise unremarkable and generally unchanged operation he now heads.

The thing with mediocrity is that it is not inherently bad. In theory, a mediocre operation like the Giants should have an equal chance at success as it does at failure. It’s undecided, on the edge — it could go either way.

And to the organization’s credit, the Giants have spent years staving off the worst-case scenario. They might not have been a good team for all but one season of Farhan Zaidi’s tenure in charge of baseball operations, but damned if they were ever a truly bad team.

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Of course, consistent (incessant?) mediocrity is a curse in its own right. Things get boring. And last year was enough to drive you mad.

It was enough to drive Zaidi out of his job, too.

In the Giants’ worst month, June 2024, they went 12-15. Their best month, May, they went 15-13.

They were never really in it and never really out of it.

Success for the Giants in 2025 would be for this team to pick a direction — to decide if they’re in or out.

Of course, for the sake of our own summer entertainment, we’re all hoping for the former.

And for a fan base conditioned to expect average, a bit of honest-to-goodness early-season success could go a long way at the ballpark on the bay.

Heaven help me, I think this team might have what it takes to provide just that.