By Jeremy Harness

Major League Baseball’s trade deadline came and went Thursday afternoon, but not without most of the playoff-contending teams making significant deals to bolster their lineups in time to make a second-half push.

The one team that was MIA on Thursday was, of course, the Giants, who judging by the way they conducted business near the deadline, look like they are pretty much conceding the National League West title to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Granted, the Giants got a nice addition to the rotation in Jake Peavy last week, but in order to catch the division-leading Dodgers, they had to do a lot better than that.

For starters, they did absolutely nothing about their long-standing issue at second base. Ehire Adrianza and Marco Scutaro are both on the disabled list with different injuries, and neither appears to be ready to come back any time soon.

As a result, the Giants will be forced to play Dan Uggla, a notorious butcher at the position whose only saving grace had been his bat, which has declined in the past few years to the point where no other teams would touch him after he was released by Atlanta a few weeks ago.

That is, of course, until general manager Brian Sabean went on a wing and a prayer that a simple change in scenery would make all the difference for a player who has really had only two solid big-league seasons to begin with.

It appears that all the Giants have been doing this season following their June collapse is playing the hope game, that all of their injured key players would magically come back and lead a major resurgence to catapult the team back into the postseason without having to make any real upgrades to do it.

In addition, Sabean failed to upgrade the team’s leadoff situation. This is especially important because Angel Pagan’s back injury is almost exactly the same as Scutaro’s, and the Giants are simply hopeful that Pagan will be able to return at some point and save their badly-struggling lineup.

The Dodgers have a bona fide leadoff man in Dee Gordon. The Giants, on the other hand, have been using Hunter Pence as their top-of-the-lineup guy. Even though Pence has been decent at that position, he is much better suited as a No.2 or even a No. 5.

This isn’t all Sabean’s fault, however. The main reason why the Giants could not pull the trigger on any significant moves is due to the fact that their farm system, once a reliable tool in situations like this, is not strong enough to entice other teams into giving up one of their key players.

So when you add it all up, the best move that the Giants were able to muster up was getting Peavy, who still a serviceable starter, is a few years past his prime and is ceiling at this point of his career is holding down the No.4 spot in the rotation.

Not exactly what you’re looking for when trying to catch a team that is gaining momentum and is already significantly better than you anyway. Now, it seems that the only question that remains is how long it will take the Dodgers to wrap up the division.

Meanwhile, that other Bay Area ballclub didn’t exactly half-step in the wheeling-and-dealing game.