What is the plan for the San Francisco Giants?

Ohtani is gone. Yamamoto is gone. Worse, they're both Dodgers for the next decade. If you missed my tongue in cheek Christmas poem about it, you can take a minute to read it here. The thing that sucks most about the two best free agents joining the Dodgers is that they chose the easy path, both joining a juggernaut that didn't necessarily need them. Instead of making baseball interesting, had even one just signed with LA and the other signing with someone else, it would have built up some fun storylines. Yamamoto and Juan Soto on the Yankees? Ohtani on the Dodgers? Potentially great theater in a World Series, much like watching Ohtani the pitcher face Trout in the WBC this past year. Or Ohtani the Dodgers hitter facing Yamamoto the Giants pitcher in one of baseball's best rivalries? It could have been a great addition to the rivalry for the foreseeable future. Instead? Yamamoto and Ohtani will team up to make baseball's best team for the past decade even better. Bah humbug indeed. National writers are saying it's great for baseball while the average fan seems to absolutely hate "the rich get richer" narrative. That being said, super villains can be good for baseball. It unites 29 fan bases against one franchise, much like most fans detested the late 90's and early aughts Yankees. Any season the Dodgers don't make it to the World Series, let alone win it, will be laughably hilarious to every other fan base outside of LA. So there's that. 

It doesn't answer the question on what the Giants will do now, though. According to Andrew Baggarly, Farhan Zaidi wanted Yamamoto more than any other free agent ever. He lost out yet again. We all know the story by now. Free agent hitters don't want to come to Oracle Park. I wrote a whole post about the free agency dilemma SF faced during their pursuit of Aaron Judge last year. Most, if not all, of what I wrote there still holds true. It happened again this season. Yamamoto and Ohtani, two players the Giants absolutely prioritized, chose to go elsewhere despite similar offers. Why? The Giants can make excuses about the city itself, the weather, the ballpark, etc. And none of that is untrue. All of those factor into a free agent's decision. However, the biggest issue the Giants face is that they're just not a very good team as presently constructed. They have legitimately 2.5 cornerstones on the team. Logan Webb and Camilo Doval and then hopefully Patrick Bailey. Their farm system ranks middle of the pack, hovering around 14th in most publications currently. The young guys outside of Bailey, Tristan Beck, and Ryan Walker didn't run with the opportunities presented and hardly looked like future cornerstones. They've been to the playoffs once in the last 7 seasons. They had a losing record in 2023. The only players signed long term are Logan Webb and Jung Hoo Lee. That's a blessing and a curse. It gives them financial flexibility, but if you can't get premium free agents to take your money, what's the point of having that flexibility? It also doesn't give free agents any certainty of what the team may look like in future seasons. Prospects are prospects until they're proven MLB players. Do you think Shohei and Yamamoto signed with LA because of Michael Busch and Emmett Sheehan? Of course not. They signed because of Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts and a track record of winning and spending. Meanwhile, the Giants have an owner who came out and said it's their intention to break even. 

If you're looking for why the Giants keep getting shunned, it's that. They're just not very good. Also, platoons and openers and constant tinkering with the line-ups and players and pitchers roles just isn't appealing to players. You know who accepts platoon roles? Platoon players. Players not good enough to play everyday. Pitchers are creatures of habit. They want to know what their role is and when they're likely to pitch. Hopefully, the Giants have realized this a bit with the firing of Gabe Kapler and the hiring of Bob Melvin, but there still definitely will be times this team platoons and uses an opener. It's fine for a couple positions, not all 9. And it's much better to have a filled out full 5-man rotation with the occasional bullpen game worked in to give guys an extra day then relying on bullpen games every 5th day, which the Giants were doing on the regular in 2023. The team lacks star power big time. 

So what's the plan? A lot of Giants fans angst would be mitigated if we knew there was a plan they were working towards that was tangible. I was fully onboard Farhan's plan of letting bad contracts ride out, augmenting them with fliers, and building the farm system the first few seasons of his reign, but that all changed after 2021. The Giants had a historic season, winning 107 games, and did nearly nothing that following offseason. How they ran back a team that everyone knew would regress and did not make any substantial moves to continue the goodwill of that year will always boggle my mind. In fact, they didn't even run it back, they got worse. They essentially traded Gausman for Rodon and then watched several of their best hitters walk out the door (or in Posey's case retire) without replacing them. The Giants rewarded their team and their fans after an amazing 2021 season by signing Rodon and Joc Pederson. They QO'd Brandon Belt and he accepted and they extended Brandon Crawford before the offseason began. Those two moves were feel-good moves in the present but everyone knew they were based off career years and it quite literally cost them pursuits of star free agents like Freddie Freeman, Marcus Semien, Corey Seager, and... checks notes... Carlos Correa. How would this team currently look had they let Crawford and Belt test free agency while signing, say, Semien, Gausman, AND Rodon. Or Seager AND Semien like the Rangers wound up doing? We'll never know. Given the Giants free agent history, they would have whiffed on those guys anyways. Not likely though since the Minnesota Twins actually wound up with Correa. If the Giants couldn't convince Correa to sign with them over the Twins, they'd really have issues. Correa proved that wouldn't be the case in the 2022 offseason when he actually did pick the Giants over every other team, only for them to opt out based on his flunked physical. But they needed a new plan after 2021. The farm system was on the up and up but it wasn't producing yet. Since then it's been a roller coaster. 2022 was a terrible year for the farm system before 2023 saw it course correct. But what is the plan?

The Giants cleared the books only to add more albatrosses to the ledger in the Haniger, Conforto, and Stripling deals last offseason on top of the DeSclafani deal in 2021. The farm system still isn't producing starting players. Yeah, they're going to give Luciano, Bailey, and Harrison a shot in 2024, but are any of those guys sure things? Harrison is electric but wild. He could be Jonathan Sanchez Part 2. Schmitt didn't necessarily show he is going to be a cornerstone. Matos clearly is NOT the centerfielder of the future Giants fans were sold on (maybe he'll be a fine corner outfielder, but who knows?) Does Heliot Ramos ever get a real shot or is he done? Bart will be lucky to not get DFA'd if he's not traded. The strength of the system is the starting pitching prospects but will the Giants keep them and develop them or trade them for offense? A lot of fans want Farhan to go out and sign Cody Bellinger, Matt Chapman, and Blake Snell, the three best remaining free agents. Will that solve anything besides giving fans "names" to augment a mediocre team? All 3 could be disaster signings given the length of contracts they will receive and their annual salaries will all likely be 20M or more. And the Giants absolutely won't sign all 3, they may sign one. Does that move the needle? It just seems like a Conforto/Haniger situation repeating itself from last offseason where they missed on the big fish and then tried to augment with decent players who wound up costing too much. Thankfully, with the Conforto and Stripling mistakes, they're off the books after 2024. Haniger likely will opt-in after next season and be gone in 2025. But Bellinger, Snell, and Chapman will all command deals at bare minimum of 4 years. It's not ideal. 

The argument can be made that the Giants can afford the risk. Again, only Webb and Lee are on the books long term so why not sign these guys and if they fail or suck, then oh well, the Giants can afford it. Sure, this makes sense, but it's also very clear the Giants have a budget and stick to it. Any "bad" contract reduces maneuverability of what this team can do in the future. Personally, I would like to see the Giants trade from their prospect base to acquire good players still in their 20's under contract thru at least the 2025 season. Bare minimum. Randy Arozarena? Come on down. Luis Robert? He's a pipe dream, but having him thru 2027 sure would be exciting. I don't know who else might be available, but Farhan should be calling to find out. Because what is the plan? Is it to cater to the angry mob of Giants fans and sign "names" to quell that anger? Is it to just roll with the young kids to see what they've got? If that were the plan, you'd think they would have come out and said it instead of making false promises about being active at the top of the market in free agency. Or do they just do what they do, find the value signings here and there and try to roll with what they have in the returning veterans like Conforto, Haniger, Yaz, Slater, JD Davis, Wilmer Flores, DeSclafani, Stripling, Cobb, etc? 

I'm not a betting man, but Farhan Zaidi always seems to revert to his norm which would be the final scenario. It would be a very dull offseason. And it would garner nearly no excitement for 2024. Yet the Giants cannot force players to sign here and this regime seems very reluctant to make trades using their premium pieces. It's 2024 now, Christmas and New Year's has passed and the Giants have about 6 weeks before pitchers and catchers report to execute their plan, if they even have one. Until then, Giants fans will be clamoring for them to do literally anything.