Pitchers and catchers report in just over two weeks to Arizona and Florida to announce the beginning of Spring Training and the start of the 2023 MLB season. While Opening Day is still two months away exactly and transactions can still be made, it appears the Giants are done adding substantial names to their roster. Farhan Zaidi will continue to tinker as he likes to do, signing dudes to minor league free agent contracts with invites to compete for a roster spot, but when you look at the roster, there isn't much room for a surprise to break through. The roster is more or less set.
So how did their offseason go? Whewww boy.
My last post was lamenting the fact that the Giants struggled to sign free agents as a whole, but they especially had trouble with star level players. In a free agent market with three legit star hitters (Aaron Judge, Carlos Correa, Trea Turner), several really really good players (Xander Bogaerts, Dansby Swanson, Brandon Nimmo, Willson Contreras, Jose Abreu), and a plethora of solid hitters (Anthony Rizzo, Mitch Haniger, Justin Turner, Jean Segura, Andrew Benintendi, JD Martinez, Matt Carpenter, Brandon Drury) the Giants very publicly whiffed on Aaron Judge and Carlos Correa. Technically, they didn't whiff on Correa, they agreed to terms with him on a massive 13 year 350 million dollar contract. Except! Of course the first star player the Giants actually landed since 1993 had issues with his physical that scared the team away and nixed the deal. Giants fans, including this blogger, was furious. How could the team nix this deal last minute, literally right before they were going to introduce Correa to the media and fans at a press conference? It was asinine and the pitch forks were out for Farhan Zaidi and the Giants ownership and Lou Seal, and pretty much everyone associated with the Gaints front office. This was partly because just weeks earlier Aaron Judge, the number one free agent on the market, chose to remain with the Yankees over going home to the Giants. Fans were infuriated by this as well because for a hot minute (seven of them to be precise) it had been reported that Aaron Judge HAD signed with the Giants. The Giants finally had their star, a player who could challenge to be in the Hall of Fame. A hitter who could swat mammoth home runs all over Oracle Park. Turns out the report was false, and the Yankees slid back into Judge's DM's, offered him the exact same deal the Giants were (allegedly) and Judge accepted because at the end of the day, he was always going to go back to the Yankees as long as the money numbers added up to being his market value (which turned out to be a 9 year 360 million dollar deal). There were rumors the Padres actually offered him 400 million which just pissed Giants fans off even more. The Giants weren't even the highest bidder for Judge. Well, they were the highest bidder for Carlos Correa, and, as my last post so eloquently put it, for hitters to want to come to San Francisco, they have to be the highest bidder and blow the market away. Credit where credits due, they did this with Carlos Correa.
And it wasn't enough. Or maybe because it was TOO much. Correa had an old injury that was flagged on his MRI by the Giants doctors and it was scary enough to cause the team to walk away from the deal, knowing the fans would revolt. It didn't help that the New York Mets immediately signed Correa THAT NIGHT for a slightly smaller. but still huge deal of 12 years and 315 million. Giants fans were enraged. First Aaron Judge used the team to get the Yankees to pay him what he wanted, then the other New York team stole Carlos Correa from them. Literally, the deal was going to be officially announced that Correa was a Giant and that night it was announced (unofficially) that he was now a Met. Fast forward a few weeks and the Mets deal fell through as well, for the same reason the Giants deal fell thru, and Correa's drama finally ended with him returning to the Minnesota Twins on a much smaller (yet still insane) 6 year 200M deal.
Phew. By the time the Carlos Correa ordeal had ended, every big name free agent was off the board so the Giants were never going to have a "good" offseason after their very public dalliances with Judge and Correa and coming up empty on both of them and the rest of the stars out there. So they did the best they could. Was it good enough?
Hard to say. The Giants won 81 games last season and lost 81 games. They were the pure textbook definition of mediocre. Their best pitcher was Carlos Rodon and he's, well, he's a Yankee like Aaron Judge is and, let me check the schedule here, and... oh wow, the Giants start the season against the Yankees in New York. What a time to be alive. The Giants will get to see two of their failed pursuits (if they actually really ever pursued Rodon) the first few days of the season. If the Yankees sweep the Giants right off the bat, Giants fans are going to be intolerable. Anyways, I digress. The Giants did sign some free agents this offseason and... well... jury is out if this team is actually better in any real way. They could easily eclipse 81 wins and show improvement over the 2022 version. They also could rack up some injuries with some very injury prone players they signed and finish under .500, which might mean the end of Farhan Zaidi honestly. The irony here is that they had no qualm signing players with injury concerns or injury histories, but balked at signing the star with injuries in his past. It'll take some time to see if the Giants were right or wrong to be concerned but they really need the guys they DID sign to stay healthy. So who did they sign?
They signed two outfielders: Mitch Haniger and Michael Conforto
They signed, um, no infielders.
They signed a catcher: Roberto Perez
They signed a couple starting pitchers: Ross Stripling, Sean Manaea
They signed a couple relievers: Taylor Rogers, Luke Jackson
All these deals were some combination of 1-2 year deals, most with opt outs, except for Haniger and Taylor Rogers who somehow got Zaidi out of his comfort zone to give them 3 years apiece, though Haniger can opt-out after his second year. As a Giants fan, these short term, opt-out heavy deals are infuriating. If a player does well, they opt out and most of the time are not re-signed by the Giants. If the player does poorly, he essentially opts in to the remaining contract, which is typically not great for the team unless the player has a good bounceback season. To Zaidi's credit, he hasn't really had a misfire on these in that regard. The big misfire he has had was Tommy LaStella, but LaStella didn't have opt outs, he had a fully guaranteed 3 year deal. The Giants will be paying the last year of his contract for him to play for the Mariners. There's a whole tirade about how the Giants have been operating coming soon, but not today. Today the focus is on the offseason. No team had a bigger rollercoaster offseason than the Giants. If you look at the moves in a vacuum and forget about the Judge/Correa pursuits, the Giants did... fine. They did fine. They didn't do good. They didn't do great. They didn't do horrifically. They did fine. The team might be better. The team could be worse. We'll see soon enough. Like I said earlier, if they improved, it appears they improved marginally. They lost an ace in Rodon, but replaced him with two starting pitchers who are... fine. Stripling was quite good for the Blue Jays last season but he's not really an ace level pitcher. He's a pretty decent middle of the rotation guy though. Sean Manaea was awful last year for the Padres. Like really really bad. But the year before, most Giants fans would have been thrilled to have had him on the team. He's not going to be Carlos Rodon though. Those two guys are added to the Giants existing starters of Webb, Wood, DeSclafani, and Junis and that rotation is... fine. Webb is an ace. The rest are guys who have the potential to be very good starting pitchers or very mediocre starting pitchers. The starting pitching depth is better than last year, which hopefully means a minimal amount of bullpen games and openers so there's that, and that's a good thing. There was a lot of really good pitchers on the market this year though. Jacob deGrom! Justin Verlander! Carlos Rodon!! Clayton Kershaw!? Aces, all of them. The Giants pursued exactly zero, though we're told they were in on Rodon for a long time which, they better have been, because he pitched like a Cy Young for them in 2022 and liked the Bay Area and... WHY DIDN'T WE RE-SIGN RODON!? Ok, sorry. If the Giants have trouble signing hitters, I always hope they go big on signing a bunch of aces. I would have been perfectly happy with nearly the same line-up as last season if we had Webb, Rodon, and deGrom pitching every 5th day. But unlike the Sabean era, where the team loved pitching and defense, the Zaidi era spits on defense and hopes they can cobble together good pitching. To each their own I guess.
As for that line-up, it's hard to argue that it's not better. Joc Pederson, our best power hitter in 2022, accepted the qualifying offer for 20 million and will be back but strictly as a DH, which is good for the defense. Instead of being surrounded by injured versions of Longoria and Belt, he'll be surrounded by recovering from injuries Mitch Haniger and Michael Conforto. If Haniger and Conforto can stay healthy, those are three legit power hitters in the middle of the line-up all capable of hitting 25 or more home runs. The thing is, Conforto didn't play a single inning in 2022. Haniger has been oft-injured in his career. The health of these two outfielders is more or less the key to success for the Giants in 2023. That, and that they can still hit if they are healthy. Both Conforto and Haniger are decent with the glove. They won't be confused with Gold Glovers but they're much better than Pederson. Their signing pushes Yaz and Slater to centerfield, which isn't ideal since Yaz is a very good defensive right fielder but just an adequate centerfielder. He's fine there, as is Slater. Are we getting a sense here of the Giants? There's a lot of fine. Roberto Perez is a defense first catcher who likely will split time with Joey Bart. A veteran catcher was probably needed and Roberto Perez is totally... you guessed it, fine. The Giants offense has a lot of bat first guys in it and the defense is in wait and see mode. That's not really great when the majority of your pitchers put the ball in play and get ground balls but hey, let's see how this experiment works. It didn't work very well last year but there's a reason they play the games.
The bullpen got a little bit of a makeover. Tyler Roger's twin brother Taylor joined the team and that's fun and quirky. It's better if Taylor can be the elite left handed relief pitcher he's been most of his career. The Giants thought they had Jake McGee as their veteran left hander in 2022 after a stellar 2021 but he petered out and got DFA'd midway through the season. Let's hope Tay Rogers has a lot left in the tank. The Giants also brought in their common injury flier for the pen in Luke Jackson. He probably won't pitch until June but he was an effective reliever for the Braves for the last few seasons. Just don't ask him to pitch against the Dodgers because, yikes, his numbers against LA are horrific, including almost single handedly handing the Dodgers the NL Pennant in 2021. The bullpen though should be a bit better than last year's version though with a more competent setup duo in Brebbia and Tay Rogers setting up for Doval while Tyler Rogers and Scott Alexander can handle earlier innings. The Giants will actually have long relievers this season since they have an abundance of starting pitchers and unless they go to a 6-man rotation, one of those arms will be in the pen to protect the pen from overuse.
Oh, and for fun, let's look at who the Giants lost:
Starting pitchers: Carlos Rodon
Infielders: Brandon Belt, Evan Longoria, Tommy LaStella
Outfielders: None
Relief Pitchers: Jarlin Garcia
I've touched on Rodon's loss enough, but let's look at losing Belt and Longoria. Brandon Belt signed withe Blue Jays and it's going to be weird not seeing him in a Giants uniform or opening up Twitter and not seeing the Belt Wars waging. Honestly, bringing Belt back made some sense. If he is health, he could be a good hitter in this line-up and his defense will be missed. The Giants are replacing him with a combination of LaMonte Wade Jr, Wilmer Flores, and JD Davis and none of them come close to being the defensive player Belt is. It's a loss, though I understand some Giants fans were ready to move on. Quite honestly, the Giants wanted to get younger and more athletic and while not having Belt does make them younger, it doesn't necessarily make them more athletic which is hilarious but true. Longoria is sort of in the same boat as Belt. He signed with the Dbacks and he's been oft-injured as a Giant. However, when he was in the line-up he could mash lefties and play very good defense at 3B. He'll be replaced by some combination of David Villar, Wilmer Flores, and JD Davis and hopefully at some point, Casey Schmitt. Longo didn't have quite the same nostalgia loss as Belt and you could have seen both players coming back and having good 2023 seasons with SF but if the Giants really want to get younger and more athletic, giving their AB's to guys like Villar and Schmitt makes sense. Jarlin Garcia was a good Giant but he was never truly trusted by Kapler in high leverage innings and Scott Alexander, Sam Long, and Taylor Rogers can provide lefty coverage in his place.
The Giants offseason was a thing. It was mostly fine. Just like it looks like the team will be fine. It's doubtful they will be great. It's doubtful they'll be dreadful. Zaidi didn't land the big fish although he tried. He watched most of the other decent fishies sign elsewhere while he was trying to bring in the whale. He made do with what was leftover. He didn't come back from fishing empty handed. He brought in some salmon. It's basic, it's common, but it gets the job done more often than not. The Giants barely restricted themselves with big money long term contracts so expect another crazy offseason next year when they try to figure out whether to pursue Ohtani and devote their offseason to that pursuit or if they accept their fate and go for the middle tier and augment a roster that will likely have several openings all over again. It's the Giants Way.
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