The Texas Rangers are first time World Series Champions and the 84 win Arizona Dbacks were the NL Pennant winners. Just as everyone predicted before the season, right? Well, now that Bruce Bochy's 4th World Series champagne celebration has likely dried off, it's time to turn to the baseball offseason. As a San Francisco Giants fan, this may sound repetitive, but it's seemingly a big offseason for our boys in black and orange. More specifically, it's a big offseason for the Giants front office and ownership group to win back apathetic fans who have grown tired of the current formula of fungible players being replaced by other fungible players and a product that is, in a word, boring. Not to mention two subpar seasons following the high of a 107 win division winning season. The Giants have made the playoffs once in the last seven seasons. Fans are bored, they are angry, or worse, they are apathetic. The Giants used to sell out Pacific Bell/SBC/AT&T/Oracle Park on the regular. In 2023, they were one of a handful of teams that didn't show a substantial increase in attendance. That is because the product has become maddeningly inconsistent and, again, boring. Even with the youngsters debuting that many fans have been clamoring to see, the results were mixed, with only flashes of excitement by the rookies, but sadly a lot more swings and misses. Giants fans are tired of endless platoons, openers, and an offense that strikes out a lot while rarely popping the ball over the fence. Gabe Kapler got fired because of this. Zaidi somehow got extended, though extensions mean nothing for teams like the Giants who could eat the remainder of his salary easily if the local nine have another down season in 2024. So again, this is a big offseason for Zaidi and Co., and they got a jump on their offseason by hiring a very well respected and proven veteran manager in Bob Melvin. Whether it's catering to the fans or really trying to incorporate a mind meld of old and new, it doesn't hurt that Melvin and Zaidi have also brought along old familiar faces like Matt Williams and Pat Burrell as coaches either. Are Williams and Burrell any better or worse than Kapler's guys from last season? Who knows, but after two down years, shuffling in new faces, that happen to be old faces, doesn't hurt. In theory, they know what they're doing and will help the team both in terms of coaching ability and forming a better, tighter, more intense clubhouse than the one last year that started having issues as the losses mounted. So it's a good start to a key offseason. But what else will the offseason entail? Welcome to the SF Giants Offseason preview.
What do they need:
What don't they need? While they have plenty of starting pitching depth and can fill out a starting rotation right now with Logan Webb, Anthony DeSclafani, Ross Stripling, Kyle Harrison, and one of Keaton Winn/Tristan Beck, they likely want more upper tier starting pitching. DeSclafani is coming off another major injury that cut short his 2023 (after a cut short 2022) and he wasn't very good when he did pitch. Alex Cobb will be back, but he's having hip surgery, so the earliest he'll return to the rotation is early May at best. Cobb was an All Star and looked liked a solid #2 most of the season, but in a postseason worthy rotation, he's a #3. Ross Stripling was yo-yo'd from the rotation to the bullpen to the IL because he gave up homers like it was his job (which is actually the opposite of his job). He can't really be counted on to be a key starter for the team in 2024. Kyle Harrison will likely be given every opportunity to stick in the rotation all season while Beck and Winn probably will have to earn a rotation slot. All this is to say, the Giants will be looking at front of the rotation type starters this offseason. They've already been linked to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, arguably the #1 pitcher on the market this offseason. No one knows how he'll pitch in the US considering he's only ever dominated in Japan, but he'll be 25 and will likely get a ridiculous contract that may be 10 year or more. That being said, he is exactly what the Giants need. The competition will be stiff however. Other names that fit the "top of the rotation" mold: Blake Snell, Sonny Gray, Jordan Montgomery, Aaron Nola, and kinda sorta Marcus Stroman. Technically, you could add Julio Urias here, but as a twice alleged domestic abuser, the Giants and likely every other team has his name crossed off their list. Farhan has made it a point to say the Giants will really only look at starting pitching additions if they are in the top tier, so that is basically the list of free agents who fit that mold. On the trade market, there are a couple guys that would also fit that criteria, namely Corbin Burnes and Tyler Glasnow. Other names could become available, but if the Giants want to add one co-ace to pair with the Cy Young runner up Logan Webb (congrats Logan!), then those are the names to keep an eye on. Of course, I'd be remiss to acknowledge the premier free agent Shohei Ohtani, but we'll get to him in a bit. Besides, due to his second Tommy John, he won't be pitching in 2024 anyways. It's also why I'm omitting potential trade target Brandon Woodruff, who is unlikely to pitch meaningful innings in 2024 as well. Aside from upper tier starting pitching upgrades, what else needs improvement?
The offense. In my postmortem of the 2023 season, I noted how the presumptive middle of the order of Joc Pederson, Mitch Haniger, and Michael Conforto hit a combined 36 home runs when it was reasonable to expect that trio to hit at least 60. They were a huge part of the offensive issues in 2023. Wilmer Flores was the only player to hit over 20 home runs and he had 23. Oracle Park isn't the best park to hit homers in, but that's a ridiculous power outage. Granted, a lot of that was health related, but the Giants need offense with a capital O. No player solves this issue more than Shohei Ohtani. A left handed hitter who hit 44 homers in 135 games, Ohtani had his best season as a hitter in 2023, which followed his best season as a pitcher in 2022. Of course, with the second TJ surgery, he won't be pitching until 2025 at the earliest, but even without the added bonus of being a top tier pitcher, his bat is valuable in and of itself to make him the highest paid player in baseball history. He has legit 50 home run power and the Giants just a year ago was offering 30 year old Aaron Judge 360M to basically hit 50 home runs for them. Ohtani hits like Judge, is younger, and can be a co-ace once his elbow heals up properly. He'll get at least 500M this offseason from someone and ideally it would be from the Giants. He solves all sorts of issues for them: it gives them a legit superstar to build around, a marketable player that would drive attendance, and it would just be cool to have one of the best players on the planet again in a Giants uniform. The odds of it are happening are low, though. Ohtani wants to win and the Giants have NOT won very often the last decade. They should do everything in their power to sign Shohei, but expecting him to sign would be foolish and the Giants need to prep for him signing elsewhere. That means fixing the offense without his big bat. There are ways to do that but they're not great. The free agent market is awful this offseason for hitters. The best available beyond Ohtani are Cody Bellinger and Matt Chapman. That's... disgusting really. Cody Bellinger had a great season with the Cubs that followed two really really bad seasons. Of course, before those really really bad seasons, Cody had really really good seasons. He's 28, which is a major positive because he's going to get a contract for at least 10 years and having his ages 28-32 seasons at the forefront is likely good for the buyer. However, who is Cody Bellinger these days? Is he the really good player the Cubs just had? Is he the MVP type player he was at the beginning of his Dodgers career? Or is he a player that's really streaky and could have absolutely brutal seasons with a mix of some good to great seasons sprinkled in? That one might be the most likely. Is it worth 200M or more to find out? Tough call there. On one hand, Bellinger is an elite defensive centerfielder which makes him incredible valuable, especially at a park like Oracle. But if he bats .220 with a sub .700 OPS, like he did in 2021 and 2022, then you don't want to be stuck paying him 25M a year to just be a good defensive centerfielder. You can find those for 10% of that price. But unfortunately for the Giants, who absolutely need to make some splashes this offseason, there isn't much else out there. Matt Chapman? He's been linked to SF from the outset of free agency and it makes sense because he played for Bob Melvin in Oakland. He's a Gold Glove third baseman with some power, but like Bellinger, his best years seem to be behind him. Is he worth the megabucks he'll get? Likely not. He's hardly better offensively than JD Davis, who will get about 7M this year versus Chapman, who will likely get around 20M or more. Is Matt Chapman's defense worth the inflation? Likely not, but he's a "name" and one of the better bats on the market so it could happen. Will it actually help the offense though? Debatable. And the Giants really really need offense. Aside from those two, it's hard to find where else the offense comes from. The Giants could trade for more offense, but right now there aren't many names out there on the trade market that seem like slam dunk upgrades. Sure, Juan Soto is being bandied about, but there is literally zero chance San Diego trades him to a division rival. The other name is Ohtani's soon-to-be former teammate Mike Trout. He actually makes a ton of sense for San Francisco for a lot of reasons but he has to be willing to come and Mike Trout has shown very little motivation for leaving Anaheim despite all the losing he has endured. Outside of those men, there really aren't any other big bats being mentioned. Pete Alonso's name keeps coming up but it's hard to believe Steve Cohen, the owner of the Mets, would trade one of his core players, especially when there is a lack of bats to replace him with on the free agent market. So where does the offense come from? Dunno. But it's one of their biggest needs.
The final need is the defense. The Giants have played incredibly poor defense for two seasons in a row. Some of that would be solved if they signed Bellinger or Chapman. Some of it would be solved if they got a centerfielder that forced Mike Yastrzemski to right field, where he's a very good defender (again Bellinger helps here). If the Giants don't sign Ohtani, moving Mitch Haniger to full time DH would help the defense by just keeping him out of the outfield, much like hiding Joc Pederson in the DH spot was to help the defense. Michael Conforto wasn't great last season, but he can get a pass for coming back from a year off due to injury. An arrangement of Conforto in LF, a new solid defensive centerfielder in CF, and Yaz in RF would be a pretty good defensive outfield. Austin Slater would likely spell Yaz when facing lefties, though Slater also could be traded to give more opportunities to right handed outfielders Luis Matos and Heliot Ramos. Slater is a better corner outfielder defender than he is in center too, so any scenario where Yaz/Slater are kept at the corners due to a better defensive centerfielder being on the team helps. The one guy who's maybe more realistic than Cody Bellinger here is Korean outfielder Jung Hoo Lee. He's allegedly an above average centerfielder and a high contact good eye batter. Japanese ballplayers are notoriously hard to project when coming over to the States and Korean players are even harder. There's mixed reports on Lee's defense, with some reports saying he's a Gold Glove caliber centerfielder to other reports stating he's better projected as a corner outfielder. Hitting stats in the KBO are hard to gauge as well and while he's been a ridiculously good contact hitter there, it's impossible to determine how he'd hit in MLB. However, this uncertainty will keep his cost down and he'll come much more affordably than Cody Bellinger and for that reason, the Giants are heavily interested in him, as they should be. Having Patrick Bailey as the primary catcher should keep the Giants strong behind the plate for years. Bailey just finished his rookie year as a Gold Glove finalist and traditionally, being strong up the middle is very important for defensive minded teams. The Giants are good there with Bailey and Thairo Estrada, who himself is a very good defender at second base. It's the other half of the equation that is questionable. Marco Luciano will likely be the starting shortstop in 2024 but his defense is wait-and-see. He looked good there in a limited stint this past season but a lot of scouts believe his future is at 3B or the outfield. The Giants could use a backup at SS that is solid defensively, especially if Luciano scuffles and needs to be sent down at some point or, as has been the case for a lot of his career, gets injured, the Giants would be wise to have a backup SS that they could trust to make the plays there. Centerfield has been covered but if the Giants prioritize defense over offense, Kevin Kiermaier is a name to watch, too.
TL;DR: The Giants biggest needs are SP, offense wherever they can find it, and upgrading their defense.
What do they not need?
Well, actually, they don't really need bullpen help. Sure, most teams can always add to the bullpen. The old cliché that you can never have too much pitching. So yeah, they could add a couple bullpen arms, but they don't need to, not with Camilo Doval entrenched as the closer and Ryan Walker's emergence as a reliable setup man. Luke Jackson will be back as will the Rogers brothers. That's a solid start to a bullpen. They only have one reliable lefty reliever at the moment in Taylor Rogers, so another one of those could be useful, but they also just added Erik Miller to the 40-man roster and he's a lefty with nasty stuff that deserves a chance at making the roster. There aren't too many spots open. The bullpen is more of a nice-to-have type upgrade moreso than a true need and therefore it wouldn't be surprising if the Giants ignored this section of the market altogether besides taking fliers on minor league free agents.
What will they do?
The Giants know the fans are antsy and tired of excuses. At the same time, they can't force free agents to sign with them. While it has been strongly hinted at that their primary targets this offseason are Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, it's rather unlikely the Giants wind up signing either player. Last year, they were tied to Aaron Judge from the start, let that drag out, then pivoted to Carlos Correa, and when that fell apart, there were hardly any players left to sign. They can't make the same mistake this offseason. They should target those two players and aggressively pursue them while at the same time keep negotiations ongoing with other players. Striking first on other free agents might help too. That being said, the market is so very weak with hitters. Last year the trade market was slow and never gained much traction. Sean Murphy was the big name to be traded all offseason. That should be different this offseason. There are big names available via trade and teams are much more likely to explore trades this time around due to the lack of exciting names in free agency. Expect a substantial amount of trades this winter, not just by the Giants, but by many teams. The Giants now have the prospect pedigree and depth to deal for solid players. It's the route they likely will take because aside from Matt Chapman, it seems far more realistic those players will wind up elsewhere. San Francisco can't afford to be left out in the cold this offseason so bold moves will be made, but it just might mean saying goodbye to some favorites that established themselves in 2023.
Let the hot stove begin to boil!
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