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There's a FO issue at work with our continual failures.  Hopefully this is the year we get out of it, but we're SUCH an outlier in relying on young, unproven talent to build a contender it's ridiculous. Our kids are not allowed to come up alongside the pros and be lower-bullpen guys, or #8-9 hitters, or #5 starters.  We need Paxton to win 15 games the rest of the year to compete, and we need it NOW. Seager has to be a #3 hitter, Smoak a #5, rookies are leading off innings this year or closing games last year.
We have no idea what a soft landing looks like for a kid.  We just bounce them off the rocks under the Cliffs of Insanity and wonder why they are breaking bones and taking a long time to reach their potential.
Mike Trout is the greatest young hitter in the league, so the Angels naturally made him do everyth... no, wait, they spent a bajillion dollars to protect him.  The Rangers don't make Profar carry the offense, they have Fielder or whomever. 
Bad teams make rookies be #1 starters or MOTO hitters or closers.
Sometimes it works out.  The Giants have won two titles by making their rookie (Posey) be their only real MOTO bat and by having The Freak and Bumgarner and Cain do a TON of heavy lifting.
But that's the NL.  You can do that over there, where pitchers bat. Hard to win the AL playing that way - and if not for an epic Padres collapse the Giants wouldn't have even made the playoffs to have their shining lights pull out the World Series for em.
Most teams add a couple of rookies a year.  Nobody wins with the kind of youth we continually stuff into the lineup. I hope we're good enough to beat the odds, and that our dynamic young pitchers can come in and just wail away on the opposition while our young hitters all get it together and keep it that way.
But it's a desperate plan, not a brilliant one.  And it's desperate because once again (Cano aside) our hitting acquisitions OUTSIDE the farm system have gone belly up. Fingers crossed for Franklin to do a Jeter impression and help us get wins despite that.
~G